The Minnesota Vikings spent their first pick in April on Jordan Addison. He’s expected to fill the WR2 void left by Adam Thielen, a potentially friendly fantasy football spot to be in. Addison comes to the pros with a varied skill set that should play well next to all-world WR Justin Jefferson in an offense that has seen Kirk Cousins clear 4,200 passing yards in back-to-back-to-back seasons.
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Jordan Addison’s Fantasy Outlook for the 2023 NFL Season
Addison enters a Minnesota offense with a pair of elite target earners in Jefferson and T.J. Hockenson, which obviously caps his fantasy upside. That said, Thielen is now in Carolina, which opens up targets — valuable targets, given the usage of the veteran receiver around the goal line.
K.J. Osborn will push Addison for targets and is coming off a fine season, but the draft capital spent on Addison makes him the favorite in this battle.
Everyone is aware that Dalvin Cook is no longer in the Vikings’ backfield, but few are accounting for his vacated targets. Alexander Mattison will slide into the featured running back role, but he is nowhere near the pass catcher that Cook is, which creates even more potential looks for Addison.
Cousins remains the leader of Minnesota’s offense, and while he doesn’t have elite upside, he’s averaging north of 4,300 yards and 30 touchdowns over the past three seasons. Cousins may not be a talent elevator, but he is certainly a talent showcase. If you think Addison is a good player, Cousins is more than capable of highlighting him.
Is Addison a Good Fantasy Pick?
You’re darn right he is! We are talking about a player being drafted as a fringe FLEX option in the deepest of leagues. That’s not much risk to take, given his clear path to targets in an offense we (should) trust.
They didn't give Jordan Addison this catch because they just didn't believe there was any chance he actually did this pic.twitter.com/agcPv6YNGO
— Sam Monson (@PFF_Sam) August 11, 2023
To gauge just how involved Addison can be, let’s take a look at the per-game target distribution following the Vikings’ Hockenson acquisition before Week 9:
- Justin Jefferson: 11.3 targets per game
- T.J. Hockenson: 8.6
- K.J. Osborn: 5.9
- Adam Thielen: 5.7
- Dalvin Cook: 3.4
Those 20-ish targets for Jefferson/Hockenson feel safe, so let’s not mess with that. Osborn benefited from some deterioration of Thielen’s skill, and I have my doubts about him repeating that 5.9 number. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that also stays the same. Using this logic, Addison should absorb the vast majority of Thielen’s targets — but that’s not all.
Mattison will take over as the lead back in Minnesota’s offense, and he simply isn’t the threat out of the backfield that Cook is.
For his career, Cook averages 3.4 targets per game. In Mattison’s 14 career games with at least 10 carries, he has averaged 2.2 targets. Easy math
Because it’s hard to put more on Jefferson or Hockenson’s plate, and the projection is already optimistic for Osborn, let’s give the vacated 1.2 targets to Addison.
Are you still with me? That puts the rookie at roughly seven targets per game, a nice showing but not impossible by any means. Over the past decade, a rookie receiver played at least 10 games and averaged at least seven looks per game 18 times.
Those receivers, as a group, averaged 13.2 half-PPR ppg, which would have been the WR15 last season. The majority of them averaged at least 12 pp, which would have been the WR24 last season).
For me, Addison’s ADP is much closer to reflecting his floor than his ceiling, and that means he gets the highlighter treatment on my printed-out cheat sheet (sorry not sorry, I like my hard copy).
- PFN Consensus: 97th overall
- ADP: 85th overall