By all accounts, Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Drake London had a fantastic rookie year. Unfortunately, the box score didn’t necessarily show it. Baking in a likely sophomore-year leap, will there be enough passing volume in Atlanta for Drake London to finish as a top-15 fantasy football WR in 2023?
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Does Drake London Have Top-15 Fantasy WR Upside?
London has a lot going for him as a talent. He caught 72 passes for 866 yards and four touchdowns as a rookie. That production is more than enough to suggest he is likely to have a very successful NFL career. We want rookie WRs to surpass 500 receiving yards. London did that with no problem. And 800+ is even more suggestive of high-level future performance.
As a rookie, London commanded a truly elite 29.4% target share. That didn’t just lead all rookies; it was the fifth-highest target share in the entire NFL.
The Falcons may not have thrown often, but when they did, the ball typically went London’s way. His 32.4% targets-per-route-run rate was fourth in the league. Again, I remind you all that he was a rookie.
While London was a great NFL player last season, he wasn’t particularly great for fantasy. He averaged just 10.5 PPR fantasy points per game, largely because his near-30% target share resulted in just 117 targets, and he caught only 61% of them.
Two things contributed to London’s lackluster production. First, he had poor quarterback play. Marcus Mariota completed just 61.3% of his passes last season, 28th in the league. London’s 74% catchable target rate was 59th among receivers with at least 50 targets.
The second issue was the Falcons’ unwavering commitment to running the football, no matter what. And I literally mean no matter what.
Not only did the Falcons run the ball 54% of the time overall, they ran it 51% of the time when trailing by seven points or more.
Somehow, they ran it even more (52% of the time) when trailing by 10 or more. 30 out of 32 teams threw the ball at no less than a 62% clip when trailing by 10+. Not the Falcons; they continued to run.
At this point, let’s just see how far the rabbit hole goes. When trailing by 14 points or more, the Falcons ran the ball at an outrageous 56% rate. Down 21 or more? It shot up to 68%! Essentially, the more the Falcons were trailing, the deeper they buried their feet in the sand in their commitment to the run.
Will the Falcons Throw More in 2023?
The Falcons attempted just 415 passes all of last season. I can confidently say there’s no way that number doesn’t increase. We already have evidence it will.
Desmond Ridder has mobility to his game, but he is nowhere near the runner Mariota is. Mariota averaged 6.5 rushing attempts per game in his 13 starts. In Ridder’s four-game audition at the end of the season, he took off just 4.0 times per game. Extrapolated over a full season, based purely on mobility alone, that’s an extra 2.5 pass attempts per game.
Then there’s the added likelihood that the Falcons will just call more pass plays in general. My projections have them attempting 506 passes. That’s nearly an increase of 100 on last season but only 17.25 more than Ridder’s four-game average extrapolated over a full season.
Although the Falcons spent an early first-round pick on Bijan Robinson, this is still an offense that projects to have a very consolidated touch share. Robinson, London, and Kyle Pitts should combine for a large percentage of this team’s offensive production. Robinson can run it over 300 times while still leaving room for London and Pitts to eat.
There’s no doubt London will improve upon his WR43 finish. His WR23 ADP is already presuming a pretty substantial leap. And my projections agree. I’ve got London averaging 14.2 ppg and finishing as the WR21. The question is, how can he get up to the WR15?
There’s no doubt in my mind that London has the talent to finish as a top-15 WR. In fact, if you swapped London with Garrett Wilson or transposed London onto the Chiefs, he would almost certainly have an ADP inside the top 15. But London is not on those teams. He’s on the Falcons.
So, how does London crack the top 15? I projected London for a 28% target share. If we presume an increase in passing volume, it’s really difficult to go any higher.
So there’s not really room to improve there, especially with Pitts healthy. It is worth noting that London averaged 5.8 targets per game with Pitts active and 8.3 targets per game without him, resulting in a split of 9.8 ppg vs. 12.3 ppg.
With that said, London was the eighth overall pick in the 2022 NFL Draft and is just 22 years old. He is still getting better. I’m confident he can maintain an elite target share even with Pitts in the lineup because targets are a skill statistic, and London has a whole lot of skill — talent commands targets.
How Likely Is London To Be a Top-15 Fantasy WR This Season?
My projections have the WR15 averaging 15.1 ppg. Let’s call 15.0 ppg the threshold London needs to hit. That’s just 0.8 ppg more. How does he get there?
Two ways: touchdowns or efficiency. Although London averaged 2.4 yards per route run last season, he averaged just 7.4 yards per target, 64th in the league, and 12.0 yards per reception, 58th in the league. There’s also room for his catch percentage to increase by a few percentage points. If those numbers can tick up just a little bit, that would be enough to push London into the top 15.
The other way is to score more touchdowns. He scored just four times last season, and I have him projected to score only five times this season. Touchdowns are a bit random. Even with the Falcons running so much, they could easily score a higher percentage of their touchdowns through the air.
London could certainly have an 8-10 touchdown season. A very slight uptick in efficiency combined with just two more touchdowns than I projected would be enough to propel London into the top 15.
Of course, this is all painting an optimistic picture of the Falcons’ offense. At their core, they still want to run the ball. Those extra touchdowns could easily go to Robinson or Pitts. Or the Falcons could just be a far worse offense than their talent suggests.
Ridder is a complete unknown. He could be a significant upgrade on Mariota or just a slight one (no, I won’t entertain the notion that he can possibly be worse).
I won’t say London is being drafted at his ceiling because we’ve already established his ceiling is a top-15 finish. However, London is certainly being drafted closer to his ceiling than his floor.
Ultimately, a top-15 finish is firmly within London’s plausible range of outcomes, but it is definitely on the lower probability side. Can he do it? Yes. If I had to take a side, would I bet it against it? Also yes.