The Baltimore Ravens ran back the same offense from last season, only adding around the edges. As such, there aren’t a lot of edges to be found in analyzing the ADP of the Ravens. But, they still have some mismatches between value and price, so let’s press on those leverage points and get ourselves some fantasy football wins this season.
Underdrafted:
Zay Flowers, Wide Receiver (WR26, Pick 55 Overall)
Zay Flowers finished with 74/1059/4 on 116 targets (25.7% target share), finishing as WR32 per game, and WR25 in overall points. However, two blowouts at the end of the season (a combined 66-12 final score) saw the Ravens resting key players; Flowers averaged 80% snap share in the first 15 games, and just 41.4% in the last two. He also ran 23 combined routes after averaging 29 routes per game. He also did this while ranking first in man separation score, 18th in yards per route run, and 10th in targets per route run (min 250 routes).
If we strip out those games, we see Flowers with a 17-game pace of 124 targets, 80 catches, 1,151 yards, and five touchdowns. This comes out to 13.887 PPR points per game, or 236.1 PPR points throughout the season. This would have been WR16 last season.
However, that doesn’t tell the whole story, as Flowers was extremely boom-bust last season.
Zay Flowers, on the aggregate, was a must-start player in 2WR leagues. Unfortunately, his boom-bust nature made it so that you could not reliably start him in 2 WR leagues:
| PPR | # | % | Rank | # | % | |
| 0-10 | 4 | 26.7% | Top 10 | 2 | 13.3% | |
| 10.1-15 | 5 | 33.3% | 11-20 | 3 | 20.0% | |
| 15.1-20 | 3 | 20.0% | 21-30 | 1 | 6.7% | |
| 22+ | 3 | 20.0% | 31-40 | 4 | 26.7% | |
| 40+ | 5 | 33.3% |
So, Flowers is ideally suited as my perfect WR3: a boom-bust player whose down weeks won’t hurt you, and whose up weeks will give you the boom to put you over the top. With another year under his belt, he should boom more than bust, and will finish inside the top-20 at the position.
Overdrafted:
Rashod Bateman, Wide Receiver (WR58, Pick 145 Overall)
The Rashod Bateman Industrial Complex is one of the most insidious forces in fantasy football. They have somehow gaslit people into thinking that Bateman “is good now” and is someone you should take for fantasy football. Neither is true. He finished last season with nine touchdowns or 45 receptions, which boosted him up to… WR45.
However, those touchdowns are coming down. 27 wide receivers had at least seven touchdowns last season, and on average, they scored a touchdown every 12.7 targets and every 8.3 receptions. Bateman scored a touchdown every 8th target, and every 5th catch, and he did this despite getting two targets inside the 10-yard line last season, which suggests severe touchdown regression for Bateman next year.
His peers in these statistics are DeMarcus Robinson, Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, Jalen McMillan, and Alec Pierce. Robinson, Westbrook-Ikhine, and McMillan have all been replaced by their teams, and Rashod Bateman got a 3/$36.7 contract from the Ravens, for some reason.
He ranked outside the top-40 in routes run, route participation, air yards, deep targets, fantasy points per game, yards per team pass attempt, and fantasy points per route run.
He ranked outside the top-50 in targets, target share, target rate, snap share, air yards share, red zone targets, receptions, yards after catch, unrealized air yards, expected fantasy points per game, and contested catch rate.
Bateman is the #3 target on this team, and they need to reform the offense entirely to get him to be a part of the offense that has the upside to be a viable target in drafts, to me.
Sleeper:
Isaiah Likely, Tight End (TE17, Pick 149 Overall)
This is a highly focused offense, and the sleeper case for Isaiah Likely falls solely on a Mark Andrews injury. Mark Andrews’ role in the offense is an extremely strong one, and one that Likely is set to inherit sooner rather than later. Likely was extremely efficient last season, and will likely (seriously, no pun intended) mean a massive output for him if he takes the TE1 role. He was top-twelve in yards per route run, yards per target, yards per reception, average depth of target, and red zone targets. There’s a lot here bubbling just under the surface, with just a Mark Andrews injury standing in the way.
