I’ve always found listing players to avoid in fantasy football a more useful exercise than giving you players to target, simply because you don’t always get the chance to draft a “target.” I can tell you to look at Tony Pollard, but if you pick in the early first round, there’s a real chance you never get a chance to take him.
But when it comes to players to pass on, that is actionable advice. The odds are good that you’ll have an opportunity to draft a few of the players I’m about to rifle through, making it important to understand the bear case on them. Do what you’d like, but at their respective costs, I have no interest in drafting these five players this season.
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2023 Round-by-Round Fantasy Do Not Draft List
Round 3: Rhamondre Stevenson, RB, New England Patriots
Listen, I understand that a 25-year-old back coming off of a season with nearly 1,500 yards and a third-round price tag is enticing, but I’m not going there. The Patriots ranked 28th in red-zone drives a season ago, and unless I’m missing something, I’m not sure that changes in a substantial way.
That fact alone would have me worried about the ceiling for Stevenson, but the fact that the team made it clear that they wanted to give him less work is a 1-2 punch that I can’t get past.
New England settled on Ezekiel Elliott this summer as their RB2, and while I don’t think he has a ton left in the tank, the fact that over 40% of his fantasy points since 2021 have come in the red zone tells me that the dude is still capable of picking up those tough yards.
Could we see some efficiency regression from Stevenson as the league puts together tape on him (and the rest of this limited offense)? He caught over 78% of his targets a season ago while picking up 5.0 yards per carry — those are elite marks that could easily fall back a bit in 2023.
Combine that with about as low a touchdown expectancy as you can have from a featured back (he only scored six times on 279 touches during his breakout season in 2022, and that might be an optimistic rate for 2023), and I’m happy to look elsewhere at this point in the draft.
Favorite Pivots: Najee Harris, Jahmyr Gibbs, or Joe Mixon
Round 4: Deebo Samuel, WR, San Francisco 49ers
Deebo Samuel came crashing down to earth after a monster 2021 that saw him flirt with 1,800 total yards and 14 touchdowns. While fantasy managers aren’t as high as they were on him 12 months ago, they seem to be splitting the difference between those two campaigns — I’m not so sure that is right.
Samuel is a great player, and his skill set makes him a unique player to evaluate, but I do believe he holds far more value to the 49ers than he does fantasy managers.
He has more career rushing scores than receiving scores, and his target count is rarely going to put him in a position to offer a strong enough floor for me to be comfortable. (Including the playoffs last season, he didn’t clear 10 targets once and was held under five receptions eight times.)
This isn’t a knock on Samuel’s talent; it’s a knock on my ability to build a stable enough team around him at this price point to feel good about his weekly variance.
Favorite Pivots: Calvin Ridley, Keenan Allen, or T.J. Hockenson
Round 5: George Kittle, TE, San Francisco 49ers
See: Samuel, Deebo.
Kittle’s story is a little different given the position he plays, but the point remains: Is there enough value to create fantasy stability in this passing game? Clearly, for me, the answer is no.
In any given week, Kittle could easily rank fourth on this team on targets … a team that might not average 30 attempts per game (Jimmy Garoppolo was at 28 last season).
Kittle holds a ton of value to this Niners team, and it wouldn’t shock me if he had two of the top-10 fantasy games this season at the position, but if I can’t count on you for consistent volume/production, you’re not worthy of my fifth-round selection.
Sorry, not sorry.
Favorite Pivots: Darren Waller, Trevor Lawrence, or Mike Williams
Rounds 7-8: Dak Prescott, QB, Dallas Cowboys
How much different is he than Kirk Cousins 20 picks later or Aaron Rodgers 30 picks later? I really don’t think there’s much. All three of them carry limited rushing upside and a star receiver as part of a team that we all think will be pretty good.
We know Dallas moved on from Kellen Moore in an effort to get more conservative — fewer deep shots, fewer turnovers — basically, they want to play to not lose games.
Is there a world in which that works for them? Sure, that defense can get it done, and Tony Pollard will have weeks where he does all of the heavy lifting, but for fantasy managers, “playing not to lose” might be as bad a four-word sentence as you could hear.
Prescott will have a nice season — I’m sure of it. That said, he offers very little upside, and, therefore, he can’t distance himself from the next 3-5 quarterbacks that come off the board.
I think Prescott has more poor weeks than explosive weeks, and with a conservative offense that is probably going to land him in the QB10-14 range a lot of weeks, I have zero interest in drafting him at this point.
Favorite Pivots: Tua Tagovailoa, Gabe Davis, or Khalil Herbert
Round 8: Marquise Brown, WR, Arizona Cardinals
Don’t let the “Hollywood” nickname fool you; there aren’t going to be a lot of shows in Arizona this season. Calling this low-octane offense low-octane is disrespectful to all of the low-octane offenses that came before it.
Marquise Brown was a target hog before DeAndre Hopkins returned last season. But can he succeed on an Arizona Cardinals team sans Kyler Murray? https://t.co/wMYw1m5eCX
— PFN Fantasy (@PFNFantasy) August 27, 2023
Let’s put it like this. The team cut Colt McCoy, a quarterback who has NEVER had a receiver clear 90 yards and score in the same game, and there was legit shock within the football industry because he was considered that much better than the remaining options on this roster.
This team has no interest in winning this season, and if that results in Brown getting dealt before Halloween, then I’m going to be wrong in having no shares of him. He’s a fine field stretcher and can turn quality targets into fantasy points, but as it stands now, the man isn’t going to see that more quality targets than me, and I write about fake sports for a living, so…
If James Conner doesn’t fall into my lap, I’m leaving drafts without a single Cardinal and loving life as a result.
Favorite Pivots: George Pickens, Jordan Addison, and Isiah Pacheco
All Rounds: Kickers and D/STs
It should go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: Don’t draft a kicker or defense in the first 12 rounds … under any circumstance.
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If you want to jump the line and take your favorite in Rounds 13-14, I’m not going to stop you, but the idea that these “top” kickers and defenses continue to have an ADP inside the top 120 is downright appalling.
Don’t be that person. Embrace the variance, do your best on a week-to-week basis, and wear down your commissioner this year to eliminate the positions from your league for next season!