All of our rankings have been updated to reflect the DeAndre Hopkins news. If you still need your ETR Draft Kit or Draft Kit Pro, head here.
Nearly two months after the Cardinals cut him, DeAndre Hopkins has chosen his new home with the Tennessee Titans. He will immediately assume WR1 duties for Tennessee after posting a monstrous 28.2% target share in his age-30 season with Arizona in 2022. Treylon Burks and Chig Okonkwo will complement Hopkins for a Titans team that suddenly looks like they could make a run for the AFC South crown. Let’s get into how we changed our projections with the Hopkins signing.
DEANDRE HOPKINS
Old projection: N/A
New projection: 77.4 catches on 121.5 targets for 947.9 yards and 5.7 TDs. WR21 on Underdog.
- Hopkins had one of the highest target shares in the league last season despite being on the wrong side of 30. His advanced age is a concern, but he hasn’t shown signs of slowing down yet and we are projecting him as the clear alpha in this Tennessee passing game.
- However, the Titans posted a -10.4% Pass Rate Over Expectation in 2022 and -8.0% in 2021. The offense will run through Derrick Henry again, posing the question of whether Hopkins will have the volume necessary to post a truly elite season even if his target share is among the strongest in the NFL. Ryan Tannehill is also obviously significantly worse than some of the other QBs he could have teamed up with (i.e., Patrick Mahomes or Josh Allen).
- We are projecting Hopkins as a high target share player in a low-volume passing offense. That lands him 41st in our rankings and puts him in low-end WR2 territory.
TREYLON BURKS
Old projection: 63.9 catches on 106.9 targets for 839.2 yards and 4.3 TDs. WR31 on Underdog.
New projection: 58.1 catches on 97.2 targets for 762.9 yards and 3.9 TDs. WR39 on Underdog.
- We were previously projecting a sizable target share to unlisted (i.e., nobody) for the Titans because of the risk they sign Hopkins (or another wideout) before the season, so this is only a small downgrade for Burks in our rankings. The former first-round pick struggled with multiple injuries throughout his first professional season, but his 0.204 targets per route run was respectable for a rookie. Hopkins will be the WR1, but this is a thin pass-catching corps and we expect targets to be narrowly distributed between Hopkins, Burks, and Okonkwo. Burks is still capable of being a fantasy starter with Hopkins in town, and he has must-start upside if something happens to his new teammate.
- While he did fall eight positional spots in our rankings, it’s worth mentioning that this is a tight area of the draft and we dropped him fewer than 10 targets in total. Burks still has a path to smashing in 2023.
- Evan Silva expects Burks to be the primary downfield threat for the Titans, which gives him intriguing spike-week potential.
CHIG OKONKWO
Old projection: 50.8 catches on 75.3 targets for 619.2 yards and 4.0 TDs. TE12 on Underdog.
New projection: 45.9 catches on 68.0 targets for 559.3 yards and 3.6 TDs. TE13 on Underdog.
- Okonkwo was astonishingly efficient last year with 2.5 yards per route run and a 10.1% seasonal target share despite spending most of the season as a backup. He’s in a similar spot to Burks where he still has a path to crushing but has a lower target expectation with Hopkins aboard. Okonkwo, in particular, could simply be so efficient that he posts a high-end TE season despite operating as the third option in the passing attack. As noted above, this is a thin receiving group and targets could be concentrated around the top three options. Plus, Okonkwo has a path to a high target share season if something happens to Hopkins and/or Burks. In a vacuum, this is a negative for Chig because we project him for fewer targets, but it’s not the end of the world by any means.
OTHER TITANS PLAYERS
- This is a pretty notable signal that the Titans are all-in this year. We bumped Tannehill’s playing-time expectation significantly and he is now a viable option near the tail end of best ball drafts. Conversely, Will Levis looks like nothing more than Tannehill’s backup and probably won’t play unless Tannehill gets hurt or the Titans are out of contention in December and give him a couple of starts to see what they have in the rookie.
- Similarly, we upgraded Derrick Henry with Tennessee looking to compete this year. He still has risk as a 29-year-old running back with as much historical workload as anyone in the league, but Henry should get all the carries he can handle in 2023.
- Kyle Philips and Nick Westbrook-Ikhine will now fight for WR3 duties and are wholly irrelevant for fantasy right now, and neither profile as major contributors even if they get ample playing time. Moving from potentially high-snap roles to mere rotational pieces is a death blow for both of them, not that they were that fantasy-relevant before.
