Baltimore Ravens WR Zay Flowers is coming off a very impressive rookie season. With natural progression expected, how do we project Flowers to improve in his sophomore campaign? Is he someone fantasy football managers should be looking to draft?
Zay Flowers’ 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- Fantasy points per game: 13.8
- Receptions: 88
- Receiving Yards: 982
- Receiving TDs: 5.7
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 14. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft Flowers This Year?
Flowers burst onto the scene in his debut game, catching nine of 10 targets for 78 yards in his first NFL action. Interestingly, that would be his highest receiving total until his final regular-season game in Week 17. However, you could often rely on him for some explosive plays.
On the whole, Flowers’ rookie season was very impressive. He caught 77 passes for 858 yards and five touchdowns, averaging a very respectable 12.9 fantasy points per game and an overall WR31 finish.
Since 2011, there have been 40 wide receivers to reach 800 yards in their rookie seasons. Half of them posted a top-12 season at some point in their career. Another 12 posted a top-24 season. Overall, I would classify just six of them as busts. That’s an 85% hit rate.
Flowers commanded a 24.4% target share as a rookie, 20th in the league. However, he was targeted on just 21.1% of his routes (outside the top 40) while playing on an offense that threw the ball fewer than 500 times.
The primary concern for Flowers would be his splits with and without Mark Andrews. In 11 games with Andrews, Flowers averaged 11.0 fantasy ppg. Yet, in six games without him, he averaged 17.4!
At the same time, Flowers’ improvement came during the second half of the season, a prevalent theme for talented rookies. It was this exact thought process that led to Amon-Ra St. Brown’s scorching close to his rookie season, making him one of the best values during his sophomore campaign.
My projections have Flowers catching 83 passes for 935 yards and seven touchdowns. I have him at 12.95 fantasy points per game, very close to PFN’s consensus projections.
Flowers lands at WR35 in my projections, which is quite a bit lower than his WR26 ADP, as well as my personal WR28 rank. Why the difference?
First, I see potential in Flowers. He’s the WR1 for Lamar Jackson on an offense that really only has two reliable pass catchers. There’s a world where Flowers catches 90 passes for over 1,000 yards and eight touchdowns. He has that in him.
Second, the projections aren’t as bad as the rank may seem. Flowers may be WR35, but there’s less than a point per game separating him from the WR26. It’s a very tight cluster of largely interchangeable players. In ranking them, it comes down to many external factors and personal preferences in how managers choose to apply them.
Historically, sophomore WRs coming off strong rookie seasons are good bets. While I would stop short of calling Flowers someone I want to aggressively target, he’s firmly on my radar as a player worth drafting at the right price.