The first real night of preseason football was awesome. It was an action-packed night with 22 teams vying for our attention. We got our first look at a handful of talented rookies and were introduced to a pair of fantastic stories.
The only downer? In this world we're supposed to wake up on Friday morning and not care too much about anything that happened before. After all, the preseason has tricked many a man.
So how do we compromise between the excitement of seeing spectacular things on the football field and the rationality of ignoring most of the preseason? Buy upside... and buy it cheap. These six players are getting hyped up because of their preseason performances and they cost almost nothing in Fantasy drafts.
Feel free to buy the hype.
For most of training camp it seemed like everyone who visited Baltimore came away with the same impression: Lamar Jackson looks like a different quarterback. Then we saw Jackson complete four of six passes and lead the Ravens on a couple of scoring drives against the Jacksonville Jaguars without running at all. It's all a good reminder of just how high Jackson's upside is if he's even an average passer. I project him for 3,400 passing yards and 21 touchdowns. Those are extremely low totals for a quarterback playing 16 games. But if you tack on 800 yards on the ground and six rushing touchdowns you have a top-10 quarterback. In 2018, when Jackson was quite poor as a passer, he was a borderline No. 1 quarterback in Fantasy. Now everyone who sees him says he's improved. That shouldn't leave much doubt as to his Fantasy upside. And he's still only been drafted in 50% of CBS Fantasy drafts.
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I'm really surprised Justin Jackson's ADP hasn't skyrocketed yet. His ADP over the last week in NFFC drafts is basically the same as his ADP on CBS. In most drafts he's going in the 11th or 12th round. Maybe his preseason touchdown will have some impact, but even so I'm buying Jackson. For however many games Melvin Gordon misses I expect 10-12 touches for Jackson including a lot of the short yardage work. And remember, it's not just Gordon's holdout that could lead to playing time for Jackson. The veteran has accrued a lengthy injury history and Austin Ekeler missed time in 2018. You have three outs for Jackson to hit and provide instant flex value; that's well worth a pick in the double-digit rounds.
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It's sure starting to look like the dreaded three-headed monster in San Francisco is just going to be a typical Kyle Shanahan committee. And that's great news for Matt Breida, who is currently being drafted even later than Justin Jackson. If Jerick McKinnon is unable to be a part of the committee I'd expect 12-plus touches per week for Breida, who has been wildly efficient in the NFL. Last year he averaged 5.3 yards per carry and 8.4 yards per target. If there are only two backs heavily involved there can easily be two starting running backs in San Francisco.
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I've been considering it for a while but Miles Boykin's performance in his first preseason game is enough to move him past Marquise Brown and into the role of No. 1 receiver for the Ravens. This will remain true at least until Brown is able to fully participate in football activities. Boykin was peppered with targets on Thursday, leading the team with nine. He's a big bodied receiver who can win in the red zone and win outside, which is something the Ravens really need. Best of all, he doesn't even have an official ADP in CBS drafts so far; he's mostly off the radar. There's top-30 upside here if Boykin can truly earn No. 1 targets and Jackson takes the leap I expect as a passer.
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Of all the players I watched on Thursday, none impressed me more than Preston Williams. He caught four passes for 97 yards and all of them were spectacular. He "Mossed" a DB at the goalline, made a brilliant toe tap on the sideline, came back for an underthrown ball to make a diving catch through contact, and made a one-handed grab. There have been reports throughout camp that Williams has been the best Dolphins receiver and he looked like it on Thursday. While he was undrafted, that was not because of his production. He caught 95 passes for 1,345 yards and 14 touchdowns at Colorado State in 2018. I haven't drafted him in a redraft league but I checked all of my Dynasty leagues and put in waiver claims where he was available. Another performance like Thursday's and he'll show up on the redraft radar.
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We haven't seen Darren Waller in the preseason yet but he's gotten enough hype at training camp to qualify for this article. Waller has been by far the best Raiders' tight end at camp and Derek Carr leaned heavily on Jared Cook last year, turning him into a top-seven tight end. With the unknown status of Antonio Brown's feet and Carr's propensity to dump the ball off short, Waller could emerge as a must-start tight end by the time we get to Week 1.
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