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 wide receivers. Today, we take a look at Courtland Sutton, who got himself a new quarterback this offseason, and who many hope will finally push through and fulfill the promise he once displayed. What can we expect from him in 2022 fantasy football leagues? Let’s take a look at his player profile!
Courtland Sutton ADP and AAV:
Average Draft Position: WR22, Pick 57 overall
Average Auction Value: $6.7
Courtland Sutton Statistics:
| Year | G | GS | Tgt | Rec | Yards | TD | Tgt/G | Rec/G | Rec% | Yds/Tgt | Yds/Rec |
| 2021 | 17 | 16 | 98 | 58 | 776 | 2 | 6.13 | 3.41 | 59.2% | 7.92 | 13.38 |
| 2020 | 1 | 1 | 6 | 3 | 66 | 0 | 6.00 | 3.00 | 50.0% | 11.00 | 22.00 |
| 2019 | 16 | 14 | 124 | 72 | 1112 | 6 | 7.75 | 4.50 | 58.1% | 8.97 | 15.44 |
| Year | Std Pts | HPPR Pts | PPR Pts | Pts/G | HPPR Pts/G | PPR Pts/G | Pts/Tgt | HPPR Pts/Tgt | PPR Pts/Tgt |
| 2021 | 92.2 | 121.2 | 150.2 | 5.4 | 7.1 | 8.8 | 0.94 | 1.24 | 1.53 |
| 2020 | 6.6 | 8.1 | 9.6 | 6.6 | 8.1 | 9.6 | 1.10 | 1.35 | 1.60 |
| 2019 | 150.4 | 186.4 | 222.4 | 9.4 | 11.7 | 13.9 | 1.21 | 1.50 | 1.79 |
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | YAC | YAC/Tgt | YAC/Rec | AYMS | Tgt MS |
| 2021 | 1509 | 15.4 | 135 | 1.38 | 2.33 | 31% | 18% |
| 2020 | 106 | 17.7 | 7 | 1.17 | 2.33 | 21% | 16% |
| 2019 | 1471 | 11.9 | 352 | 2.84 | 4.89 | 41% | 25% |
2022 Courtland Sutton Fantasy Football Overview:
So far, Courtland Sutton is the only wide receiver on the Denver Broncos who has ever really shown anything for fantasy football in the NFL. In 2019, he finished with 124 targets, 72 catches, 1,112 yards, and 6 touchdowns. He played so well to start the season that the Broncos traded Emmanuel Sanders to the 49ers about halfway through the year and rode with Sutton as their WR1 down the stretch. Unfortunately, he fell to an ACL tear just three touches into the 2020 NFL season and didn’t really come back to full form in 2021, but that had more to do with sharing a football field—and a meager passing volume—with Jerry Jeudy.
Sutton finished 2021 averaging 3.4 catches for 46 yards per game, on 6 targets per contest, but he had to split the fifth-fewest wide receiver targets in the league last year three ways (not only with Jeudy but also with Tim Patrick). It made things incredibly messy in Denver. But, losing Jeudy for a chunk of the year certainly cleaned up matters. In the seven games Sutton played without Jeudy in 2021, he averaged 15.8 PPR points, garnering 8.6 targets, 5.7 catches, and 83.6 yards per game. In the ten games with Jeudy, he averaged 3.8 targets, 1.8 catches, and 19.1 yards per contest. It was a simple matter of volume. There just wasn’t enough to go around for a team that wanted to run the football as much as humanly possible.
Now, he has Nathaniel Hackett as his head coach, who previously coached the Packers, who targeted wide receivers at a 63.5% clip (ninth in the league) as well as Russell Wilson at quarterback, who targeted wide receivers 65.3% of the time last season, the fifth-highest rate in the league. There’s going to be a lot to eat for Jeudy, Sutton, and Tim Patrick. So the days of four targets with Jeudy in the lineup are gone.
But the real question, and one that nobody can really answer, is if it’s Sutton over Jeudy, or Jeudy over Sutton. People aren’t considering: maybe, it’s both?
2022 Courtland Sutton Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Courtland Sutton Salary Cap Value: $9
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!
Ultimately, the Courtland Sutton/Jerry Jeudy/Tim Patrick selections are just big ol’ guesses at this point, and anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. We have a new head coach with a strong offensive philosophy and a new quarterback with a strong offensive philosophy. Will it be one guy, like Hackett did with the Packers? Or will it be a Tyler Lockett/D.K. Metcalf situation with Sutton & Jeudy, just like Russ put together in Seattle? There’s a lot of uncertainty here, and it’s a question of how much will it cost to accumulate the uncertainty?
In salary cap drafts, you’re looking at an absolutely braindead, dirt cheap cost to get Jeudy and Sutton onto your roster, with Sutton costing $6.5 by AAV, and Jeudy costing $4.9. This way, you can’t be wrong! And if there’s no way to be wrong (both are top-fifteen wide receivers) then good news, you have two top-fifteen wide receivers!
Things get messier in snake drafts, where you have to make a Sutton-or-Jeudy determination. It’s worth getting both of them onto your roster, but given how snake drafts work, and given that they go five picks apart, you have to prioritize one over the other. Personally, I’m leaning into Sutton first, as he had the second-highest depth of target last season and the fifth-most unrealized air yards. There’s plenty of Courtland Sutton left on the bone, compared to Jeudy who had an aDOT outside of the top-fifty and just under two-thirds as many air yards per game as Sutton.
Best Case Scenario:
Russell Wilson unlocks Courtland Sutton and Jerry Jeudy. Unfortunately, this causes the rest of the ancillary offensive pieces to take a slight step back.
Worst Case Scenario:
Russell Wilson unlocks Albert Okwuegbunam and Tim Patrick, leaving Courtland Sutton and Jerry Jeudy on the outside looking in.
Check out all our 2022 player profiles, here.
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[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]
[Image Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Courtland_Sutton.jpg under CC BY SA 2.0]
