Best Ball Strategy: Underdog Pay No Mind List

This article will list players in Underdog Fantasy NFL best ball contests whose prices are currently too high such that they are not worth any exposure at all. Some players are at price points that concede only narrow possibility of profit. This article means to identify ones whose possibilities are negligible at best pending price decreases.

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K.J. Osborn, WR, MIN (137.0 ADP)

Osborn might be a good receiver for real-life football purposes, but for fantasy he has a limited ceiling and a lower floor than generally understood. Osborn is valuable to the Vikings because he plays something like an undersized tight end, lining up in the slot and even in-line because of his prowess as a blocker and general ability to withstand the traffic he runs into. Those functions don't provide fantasy points, however, and as a threat from scrimmage Osborn has clear limitations.

It would be a mistake to think Osborn is in for a fantasy boost now that Adam Thielen is off to Carolina. Osborn might play more, sure, but (A) his playing time was already close to maxed out and (B) Osborn's peripheral stats are not encouraging. Osborn played just under 50 snaps per game last year – a starter's workload in most offenses – yet even last year's box score of 60 catches for 650 yards and five touchdowns would have been worse if not for a no-show game from the Colts defense in November. The Colts repeatedly cut Osborn loose in that game, particularly after the catch, and he posted nearly ¼ of his 2023 production in that game alone. Osborn averaged 1.13 yards per route run (31st percentile) last year, and that's with an anomalously high yards after the catch per catch (5.1 compared to 3.8 in 2022). Expect Osborn to lose as many or more targets to a rookie receiver as he did to Thielen last year.

Rather than Osborn, Underdog best ball drafters would be better off spending those picks on JuJu Smith-Schuster (139.0 ADP), Jakobi Meyers (140.9 ADP), Skyy Moore (144.1 ADP), Tyler Boyd (148.1 ADP), Allen Lazard (152.2 ADP), Zay Jones (156.4 ADP) -- I could keep going a long while.

Roschon Johnson, RB, Rookie (159.7 ADP)

Johnson would be worth selecting at some point in a draft, but not in the 13th round. Not ahead of Ezekiel Elliott (160.5 ADP), Devon Achane (166.6 ADP), Devin Singletary (176.2 ADP), Kendre Miller (182.7 ADP), Michael Carter (197.9 ADP), Chuba Hubbard (206.9 ADP) or Chase Brown (227.7 ADP). If Leonard Fournette (195.0 ADP) signs with a team then you can add him to that list, too.

The industry analysis around Johnson continues to be memorably awful, with a combination of bad guesses and clumsy parroting pairing with mishandled small-sample metrics to make one of the most ill-informed ADP consensuses in a long time. Johnson is capable of producing in the NFL in the same way that just about any NFL back can provide fantasy utility if given an opportunity, but the list of players for which that's true is quite long and with options not just cheaper, but cheaper and more qualified. Stated simply, any process that grades Johnson highly is one that will grade pretty much any running back prospect highly.

Johnson barely played at Texas – his playing time most reliably occurred in blowouts against lesser teams – meaning the skill set component of his prospect profile is ambiguous at best. Bijan Robinson wasn't the only running back better than Johnson at Texas – so was Keaontay Ingram before that, and Keilan Robinson was arguably as good or better, too. Johnson's per-game carry count dropped each year at Texas.

Jake Ferguson, TE, DAL (182.3 ADP)

I think Ferguson is a good player and I literally believe he's better than Dalton Schultz, but certainly not for fantasy. Not just that, but as much as Ferguson might be the de facto starter with Schultz now gone to Houston, Dallas is a candidate to select a Round 1 tight end like Darnell Washington. Even if Dallas doesn't add a notable rookie tight end, Peyton Hendershot was as good of a prospect as Ferguson and could split reps with Ferguson in 2023.

I like Ferguson more than Schultz because Ferguson contributes to an offense's structure by blocking well inline, which dares the defense to bulk up its edge personnel or crash toward him, making him more useful for playaction setup than Schultz, a flats and curl merchant. Ferguson's blocking prowess will help the Dallas run game and help create room for Brandin Cooks to coexist with CeeDee Lamb, but Cooks' role will largely come at the expense of Dallas' tight end production.

Don't take Ferguson ahead of Dalton Kincaid (190.9 ADP), Trey McBride (192.9 ADP), or Austin Hooper (231.0 ADP), in my opinion.

Isaiah Hodgins, WR, NYG (197.8 ADP)

I'm a fan of Hodgins and have been since his sophomore year at Oregon State, so it pains me that I'm compelled to be a hater in this particular instance. I still like Hodgins in general as a dynasty asset, mainly for the hope that he eventually gets away from Daniel Jones, but in best ball Hodgins is going too high. The people drafting Hodgins are clearly chasing his numbers from the final seven games of 2022, a span in which Hodgins had 34 receptions and five receiving touchdowns.

The problem is (A) that production occurred while both Wan'Dale Robinson and Sterling Shepard were out and (B) good as the production was, it screams of imminent regression. Hodgins' peripheral stats are pointedly clear in this – his catch rate of 78.6 is clearly not sustainable, especially if Jones is the quarterback, and there's concern in the fact that Hodgins' average depth of target (9.2 yards, 35th percentile) outpaced his air yardage per snap (0.94 yards, 31st percentile). You want a receiver's per-snap air yardage to register at a higher percentile than the percentile of their ADOT, because in such cases it means the receiver is drawing targets at the depth at a faster rate than the field of receivers. Since Hodgins' per-snap air yardage lags, it basically means he was lucky to draw as many targets as he did. In other words, Hodgins' catch rate will drop in 2023, perhaps by as much as 12 points, and his target rate could go down at the same time. At the very least it's insane to take Hodgins ahead of Darius Slayton (232.0 ADP).

Isaiah McKenzie, WR, IND (239.2 ADP)

McKenzie is fun to watch and the idea of a player so explosive logging snaps in the Buffalo offense was an intoxicating one to a lot of football fans and fantasy drafters. The problem is that McKenzie is not actually good, and while entertaining to watch with the football McKenzie is a drain on an offense if he plays more than 20 snaps or so in a game. With Indianapolis he is unlikely to play much more than that.

McKenzie is perilously small yet has no downfield game, meaning despite his speed his presence on the field encourages the safeties to crash forward, because they can usually do so with impunity. McKenzie's presence on the field shrinks the field on the offense, and his viability is so situationally-dependent otherwise that the more he plays the worse the offense gets.

While playing 529 snaps last year McKenzie averaged 1.0 yards per route run, which registered at the 24th percentile. Playing in a Josh Allen offense and running the easiest routes (8.3-yard ADOT, 23rd percentile), McKenzie was only able to catch 64.6 percent of his targets to average 6.5 yards per target. The Colts will no doubt set aside some gadget plays to make use of McKenzie's novel explosiveness, but his job in general is about to get much more difficult, which threatens regression he can't afford.