It's funny how we decide which players have upside in Fantasy Football, and which upside is worth the risk. The Detroit Lions are a prime example.
Ameer Abdullah is entering his third year in the league, has struggled with injuries and fumbles, and has scored four touchdowns in his career. He's viewed as having an enormous amount of upside despite playing for a Lions' team that has one of the biggest pass/run splits in the NFL over the past three seasons.
Matthew Stafford is entering his ninth year in the league, most of which have been No. 1 quarterback-type seasons. He's finished in the top ten at the positions each of the past two years, largely because of that huge pass/run split we talked about. He's being drafted outside of the top 12 quarterbacks because of young quarterbacks who have more upside.
Do those last two paragraphs make sense? Probably not. But that doesn't mean I don't like Abdullah. Let's take a stab at ranking the Lions:
*Rankings expressed below are in terms of expected Fantasy points. This is a part of our actual Fantasy Football rankings but not a direct correlation to my rankings. Things like injury risk, upside, etc. factor into rankings but they're not being talked about here. This is simply an expectation as the team is currently constructed.
| Player | Expected FP | Position Rank | Expected PPR FP | Position Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Golden Tate
DET WR
| 129.2 | 28 | 221.2 | 21 |
Ameer Abdullah
DET RB
| 132.5 | 22 | 158.5 | 24 |
Eric Ebron
DET TE
| 102.5 | 9 | 162.5 | 9 |
Matthew Stafford
DET QB
| 334.9 | 9 | 334.9 | 9 |
Marvin Jones
DET WR
| 119.6 | 38 | 175.6 | 38 |
Theo Riddick
DET RB
| 90.7 | 43 | 143.7 | 32 |
Breaking down the touches
If there's one thing we know about the Lions it's that they're going to wing it. The team has averaged 610 pass attempts over the past three seasons and threw it 594 times last year despite running fewer than 1,000 plays. The flipside of that is that they haven't had 400 rush attempts in a season in the past three years. In fact, the past two seasons they've been closer to 350. That makes it really tough for the running backs to provide value unless they're heavily involved in the passing game.
In 2015, the Lions did use their backs a lot on the passing game, targeting them 167 times. Last year that number slipped to 114. If both Abdullah and Riddick stay healthy I would expect a slight improvement in that number, settling around 120. Here's a look at the rest of the expectations:
| Lions touches | ||||||||
| Player | RuSHARE | RuATT | ReSHARE | TGT | REC | TD | ||
| Ameer Abdullah | 48% | 180 | 7% | 39 | 26 | 6 | ||
| Theo Riddick | 17% | 64 | 10% | 70 | 53 | 4 | ||
| Zach Zenner | 21% | 80 | 1% | 6 | 4 | 3 | ||
| Golden Tate | 0% | 0 | 23% | 136 | 92 | 5 | ||
| Marvin Jones | 0% | 0 | 17% | 102 | 56 | 5 | ||
| Kenny Golladay | 0% | 0 | 11% | 68 | 41 | 3 | ||
| Eric Ebron | 0% | 0 | 15% | 90 | 60 | 5 | ||
Of note:
- That's a really low touchdown rate for Golden Tate, but it's hard to expect anything different. He's topped five scores just once in the past four seasons and only has one season in his career with more than six touchdowns.
- I believe Eric Ebron deserves more targets and could make a big splash if he gets them. But the Lions have only given 14 percent of their total targets to the tight end position in the past three seasons.
The Leftovers
Zach Zenner will battle Matt Asiata and Dwayne Washington for the role of short-yardage back, but as long as Abdullah stays healthy, they're all irrelevant. In fact, even if Abdullah goes down I wouldn't be too excited about any of them.
The most interesting sleeper for the Lions may not even be on their team yet. Anquan Boldin is still lurking out there, waiting for someone to offer him the job he wants. It's quite possible he returns to Detroit, which would limit the upside for both Ebron and Jones while postponing any possible breakout from Kenny Golladay.