Houston Texans WR Tank Dell quickly burst onto the scene as a rookie, establishing himself as a legitimate NFL receiver with real fantasy football upside. Entering his second season, is Dell the Texans WR to target in Best Ball drafts?
Tank Dell’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
It was quite the rookie season for Dell. Aided by a Noah Brown injury, it took Dell all of two weeks to find himself in a prominent role within the Texans offense. He posted 20.2 fantasy points in his second professional game — from that point forward, it was pretty much game on for the rookie.
Dell is an interesting player in that he’s 5’8”, 165 pounds. For context, I am 5’8”, 160 pounds. Even in my youth, I was too small and too afraid to play tackle football with my normal-sized friends. Dell is out here playing professional football with defenders a lot bigger than him, and he’s thriving.
Historically, receivers that look like Dell are pigeonholed into being slot guys primarily targeted underneath. They are used as niche pieces, not primary receivers.
But the NFL is changing. More and more receivers are coming into the league looking like Dell and DeVonta Smith, and as the game changes, so must our evaluation tactics as fantasy managers.
Dell was almost exclusively an outside receiver as a rookie — he ran just 22.1% of his routes from the slot. There’s no reason to expect that to change. The point of this is not to say slot usage is bad but rather to illustrate Dell’s ability to be a complete receiver.
Dell won on the outside consistently, got open regularly, and made plays downfield. His 14.3 aDOT (average depth of target) was 12th in the NFL. As a result of his downfield targets, Dell averaged 2.36 yards per route run (14th) and 9.5 yards per target (21st).
The most exciting part of Dell’s profile is that there’s so much room for improvement. Although he was targeted on an impressive 24.9% of his routes run, he only saw a 20.4% target share.
Even if his target rate goes down, his target share as a sophomore should increase. He’s now firmly established himself as at least the Texans WR2. It would not shock me at all if he wound up being more valuable than Nico Collins this season.
Should You Draft Dell in 2024 Best Ball Leagues?
Dell averaged 15.0 fantasy points per game as a rookie — he finished as the overall WR18.
The biggest blemish in Dell’s rookie season was the way it ended, as he missed the final six games of the season with a broken leg.
Given Tony Pollard’s comments last season about not being fully recovered from his own broken leg until midway through the season, we would be negligent to completely dismiss the notion of the injury affecting Dell in 2024.
With that said, Dell is 24 years old, and he plays receiver, not running back. Plus, Dell’s injury occurred much earlier in the season than Pollard’s did in 2022. Unless we get reports later in the offseason about Dell’s recovery not going well, fantasy managers should operate under the premise that he will experience few ill effects from the injury.
KEEP READING: Best Ball Rankings 2024
Dell is now entering his second season, along with fellow sophomore and reigning rookie of the year, C.J. Stroud. Both should be even better this year. Stroud has all the makings of the next elite quarterback capable of supporting multiple fantasy-relevant assets.
The gap between Dell and Collins isn’t too large. If you’re looking to get a Texans stack for your Best Ball rosters, I would forgo Collins in the second round in favor of Dell a round or two later and try and pair him with Stroud.