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 look at Darnell Mooney, who is literally the only halfway decent wide receiver in Chicago. What can we expect out of him for our 2022 fantasy football leagues? Let’s take a look at his 2022 fantasy football player profile!
Darnell Mooney ADP and AAV:
Average Draft Position: WR29, 71 overall
Average Auction Value: $2.0
Darnell Mooney Statistics:
| Year | G | GS | Tgt | Rec | Yards | TD | Tgt/G | Rec/G | Rec% | Yds/Tgt | Yds/Rec |
| 2021 | 17 | 14 | 140 | 81 | 1055 | 4 | 10.00 | 4.76 | 57.9% | 7.54 | 13.02 |
| 2020 | 16 | 9 | 98 | 61 | 631 | 4 | 10.89 | 3.81 | 62.2% | 6.44 | 10.34 |
| Year | Std Pts | HPPR Pts | PPR Pts | Pts/G | HPPR Pts/G | PPR Pts/G | Pts/Tgt | HPPR Pts/Tgt | PPR Pts/Tgt |
| 2021 | 138.7 | 179.2 | 219.7 | 8.2 | 10.5 | 12.9 | 0.99 | 1.28 | 1.57 |
| 2020 | 91.1 | 121.6 | 152.1 | 5.7 | 7.6 | 9.5 | 0.93 | 1.24 | 1.55 |
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | YAC | YAC/Tgt | YAC/Rec | AYMS | Tgt MS |
| 2021 | 1480 | 10.6 | 381 | 2.72 | 4.70 | 35% | 27% |
| 2020 | 1016 | 10.4 | 325 | 3.32 | 5.33 | 20% | 16% |
2022 Darnell Mooney Fantasy Football Overview:
There are a lot of ways to cut up Darnell Mooney’s 2021 season that can tell you pretty much whatever you want it to tell you. Without Allen Robinson, he averaged an extra 1.5 targets and 13 yards per game. Without Justin Fields, he averaged an additional 26 yards and 3 catches per game. Or, you can look at his last eight games, post-bye, wherein he averaged 10 targets, 5.6 catches and 76 yards per game, compared to 4 catches for 50 yards on 6.6 targets prior to the bye. Also, you can just sort of… wipe that all away for 2022 because the Bears fired head coach Matt Nagy and brought in Luke Getsy to run the offense. Outside of a one-year sojourn to Mississippi State, Getsy spent 2014 through 2021 with the Green Bay Packers, where he was a wide receivers coach, quarterbacks coach, and passing game coordinator. I would say that bringing in the guy who spent over half a decade hanging around with Aaron Rodgers talking game planning is probably someone you should get excited about running your offense if you’re Darnell Mooney.
Unfortunately, the rest of the Bears’ wide receiver room leaves a ton to be desired, as their wide receiver two is likely to be one of Equanimeous St. Brown, Byron Pringle, or Velus Jones. Yes, those are all real people with real names. So, that means that Mooney will get a lot of attention, but also a ton of targets. He should be just fine with that, as he just needs to get the ball in his hands and his seventeenth-ranked juke rate should do a big part of the rest. Even if he gets manned up, according to PlayerProfiler.com, that shouldn’t be any problem, as he has the eleventh-best win rate against man coverage.
Unfortunately, the entire Bears offense carries a weird stink surrounding it. Likely because they were terrible in 2021, scoring the sixth-fewest points on the ninth-fewest yards, and their only attempt to address this was getting a career quarterbacks coach to run their offense. It doesn’t really bode well for things getting much better in Chicago, and because of this, Darnell Mooney’s draft price is not commensurate with his upside.
2022 Darnell Mooney Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Darnell Mooney Salary Cap Value: $5
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!
Look up and down that Bears offense and tell me who is coming for any piece of Darnell Mooney’s 140 targets from 2021? Now, who is stopping him from getting 160 targets come 2022? Nobody, that’s who. The second-best target in the offense is a tight end and the third-best is their starting running back, who isn’t even a pass-catching specialist! It’s truly a wild situation going on in Chicago, but given Darnell Mooney’s draft cost, it’s hard to pass on a guy with true 160 target potential.
Mooney is WR33 in average draft position (pick 80 overall) and goes for two dollars by average auction value (AAV). For that price, you can’t afford to not get Darnell Mooney on your team, especially since you could easily get him as your fourth receiver in round seven. Imagine a world where you can have 160 targets nestled safely away on your bench for dirt cheap. That’s the world of Darnell Mooney.
Best Case Scenario:
It’s Darnell “TO THE MOON”-ey SZN and he and Justin Fields get on the same page, allowing him to end up with 1,300 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Worst Case Scenario:
It’s literally Darnell “TO THE MOON”-ey SZN as he joins SpaceX to be a test pilot. Elon Musk then steals all his jokes and memes, in a futile effort to make people on Twitter like Elon Musk.
Check out all our 2022 player profiles, here.
If you would like our $7 Draft Kit, then follow this link!
Want more 2022 fantasy football draft discussion? Check out these links!
Discord!
Podcast!
Patreon!
Twitch!
[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]
[Image Source: Darnell Mooney on Twitter]
