Minnesota Vikings wide receiver K.J. Osborn is coming off a solid, if unspectacular season, where he flashed legitimate NFL talent. Adam Thielen is gone, but Jordan Addison was drafted to replace him, leaving Osborn as the likely WR3. What is Osborn’s fantasy football outlook for the 2023 season?
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K.J. Osborn’s Fantasy Outlook
Osborn was unable to earn a single offensive snap as a fifth-round rookie in 2020. Fortunately, normal rookie thresholds don’t typically apply to Day 3 picks, given how unlikely their success is to begin with. As a sophomore, Osborn was able to work his way into the every-week WR3 role.
For the better part of the past decade, the Vikings’ offense has been very consolidated. They run things through their RB1 and top two receivers. As a result, any receiver other than Stefon Diggs and Thielen, and then Thielen and Justin Jefferson, was largely a random occurrence.
Looking at Osborn’s last two seasons, we see a guy worth rostering in fantasy but not one you could ever confidently start. He averaged 9.3 PPR fantasy points per game in 2021 and 9.2 ppg in 2022.
Last season, Osborn was very good at getting open, but playing alongside Jefferson and Thielen, he just wasn’t targeted because he wasn’t a priority. Osborn’s 16.5% targets per route run rate was outside the top 80.
Even so, Osborn was able to put together some quality performances. He popped off for 18.3 fantasy points in Week 3, yet didn’t do much after that until he closed the season on a tear.
Over the final five weeks of the season, Osborn posted a WR1 finish and three WR2 finishes, including the overall WR2 with 31.7 fantasy points in Week 15. Fantasy managers likely didn’t have him in their lineups, but Osborn was one of the best wide receivers in fantasy down the stretch.
Heading into the 2023 season, Minnesota’s offense once again projects to be consolidated. The primary difference this time around is T.J. Hockenson is likely to be the second-most targeted pass catcher, with Addison third behind him. So, while Osborn remains the WR3, he likely drops further down the target hierarchy with the presence of a quality tight end.
MORE: 2023 Fantasy Player Projections
There is one other big move the Vikings made that could stand to benefit Osborn, and that was releasing Dalvin Cook. Although Alexander Mattison has proven very capable of filling in for Cook, he’s not the receiver Cook is, and thus, unlikely to see the same target share.
Cook’s departure could not only lead to a higher target share for Osborn but could also push the Vikings more toward being a pass-first offense. And this is a team that already threw the ball 63% of the time in neutral game script last season. It would not be a surprise at all if Kirk Cousins finished top five in pass attempts this year.
Should Fantasy Managers Draft Osborn at His ADP?
When an NFL team’s WR3 is drafted, it’s for one of two reasons. Either the wide receiver room is ambiguous, and fantasy managers are taking a shot on someone emerging, or the offense is good enough to potentially support three fantasy-relevant receivers. The Vikings are the latter…kind of.
Osborn is going off the board as the WR73, No. 184 overall. He’ll be drafted in some leagues but not all of them.
According to my projections, Osborn is probably being undervalued a bit. I have him projected for 58 receptions for 682 yards and 5.9 touchdowns. That comes out to 9.4 ppg and a WR50 finish.
Given Osborn’s last two seasons, combined with my projections, I think we can confidently say Osborn will outperform his ADP. However, that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily someone fantasy managers should target.
Even if you’re able to find multiple WR6s that finish as WR4/5s, that’s not moving the needle for your fantasy team outside of very deep leagues. The reason Osborn isn’t going higher in fantasy drafts is because there are other players with more plausible upside.
I have Osborn ranked as my WR73 for that exact reason. It’s not that I think all of the guys going ahead of him will finish ahead of him, but rather that their ceilings are higher.
In the latter stages of fantasy drafts, we don’t care about a reliable 8-10 ppg — we only care about upside. There comes a point where the options are so weak that Osborn will be an appealing pick. Until you reach that point, though, Osborn is not someone you need to focus on in fantasy drafts.