It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout June, July, and August. We continue with the running backs. Fantasy football Twitter loves 2021 Cole Kmet, but the Chicago Bears seem to want to keep the shuffling corpse of Jimmy Graham around for some reason. Will he stifle a Cole Kmet breakout this season?
Cole Kmet ADP and AAV:
Average Draft Position: TE37, Pick 292
Average Auction Value: $1 (T-TE19)
Cole Kmet Statistics:
| Year | G | GS | Tgt | Rec | Yards | TD | Tgt/G | Rec/G | Rec% | Yds/Tgt | Yds/Rec |
| 2020 | 16 | 9 | 44 | 28 | 243 | 2 | 2.75 | 1.75 | 63.6% | 5.52 | 8.68 |
| Year | Std Pts | HPPR Pts | PPR Pts | Pts/G | HPPR Pts/G | PPR Pts/G | Pts/Tgt | HPPR Pts/Tgt | PPR Pts/Tgt |
| 2020 | 34 | 48 | 62 | 2.1 | 3.0 | 3.9 | 0.77 | 1.09 | 1.41 |
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | YAC | YAC/Tgt | YAC/Rec | AYMS | Tgt MS |
| 2020 | 288 | 6.55 | 136 | 3.09 | 4.86 | 10% | 10% |
2021 Cole Kmet Fantasy Football Overview:
Cole Kmet is pretty darn athletic, boasting an 8.92 (out of 10) RAS score prior to last season. He has the draft capital behind him, as well, as with the Chicago Bears taking him with the #43 overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. He didn’t do much last season… since that’s how it goes with every rookie tight end (that was a Kyle Pitts clause). But, he did get some increased opportunity toward the end of the season, notching at least 6 targets in four of the last five games. Granted, he did next to nothing with those targets (4 catches for 29.8 yards per game), but he got them, nonetheless.
Now, people hopped onto the Cole Kmet Hype Train because we all thought the Bears would part ways with Jimmy Graham. As of writing this, they still haven’t. They have Andy Dalton and Justin Fields as their quarterbacks, so that means that even with Jimmy Graham, we should see a target distribution that just might favor Kmet. No matter what happens, their quarterback room is better than the jokers throwing him footballs last year. So, I guess that’s the big Cole Kmet Hype: maybe he’ll be better than last year, maybe he’ll get more targets than last year, and maybe his offense will be better. That’s an awful lot of maybes for someone who didn’t even have one game that gave me hope for the future.
2021 Cole Kmet Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Cole Kmet Auction Value: $0
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!
The thing with Cole Kmet, and every other depth upside guy, is not the cost of admission. Instead, the problem with leaning into him comes with the fact that you have a limited number of roster spots in your fantasy football league. So, if you believe in Cole Kmet, go ahead and get him with your last pick before the kickers and defense. But, I wouldn’t go out of my way to get Cole Kmet onto my roster with a more premium pick.
Kmet is a fine upside play and has a path to top-12 production. But, top-12 doesn’t really mean a whole lot when you are talking tight ends. His upside is the upper tier of The Blob, which is a perfectly cromulent use of a roster position. But, as I said, he isn’t a guy you go out of your way to get. If his ADP gets some helium, there are other players I would rather use that roster spot on, and other tight ends I would rather have (Adam Trautman, hello) with the spot I could use on Kmet. If I’m in a deep bench league, I will snatch up Kmet. But, in a standard league, I run out of rounds before I run out of players I like more than Kmet.
Best Case Scenario:
I’m wrong and a big dumb baby and taking him at the end of your roster turns in some productive weeks for you before you realize he’s floating around TE12 and you move on.
Worst Case Scenario:
I’m right, and I am going to be a big dumb baby about it.
Check out all our 2021 player profiles, here.
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[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]
[Image Source: Cole Kmet on Twitter]
