At the midway point of the NFL season, it’s time to check in with the biggest disappointments and see how they got there.
It’s the midpoint of the NFL season and the fantasy season is more than halfway complete. It’s time to check in on the players who may have torpedoed your team’s shot at success.
Every draft has a couple of busts. The goal is to avoid them in the earlier rounds as much as possible; an errant pick in the early rounds can ruin your season before it begins. The 10 busts listed below have failed to live up to expectations--specifically, the expectations created by their average draft position (ADP) going into the season. Some are simply annoying and others may have single-handedly destroyed your playoff hopes.
For the purpose of this article, we stayed away from injured players as much as possible. Some players included may have missed a game here or there, but it’s apparent that Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook and Saquon Barkley missing several games is detrimental to their teams’ performance.
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Titans QB Ryan Tannehill
ADP: QB12, 85 Overall
Position Rank: 12
FPPG: 16.7
The Titans quarterback has yet to miss a game or have a bye, so he remains a low-end QB1 in total points scored. Still, his numbers game-to-game have been unimpressive. He has six finishes outside of the top 12 quarterbacks compared with three inside the top 12. Turnovers are partially to blame—Tannehill has more interceptions (8) this season than any other year during his time in Tennessee. His floor also isn’t what it was. Tannehill had just one game with zero passing touchdowns in 16 games in 2020; he already has two through nine games.
There’s a thought that the Titans will lean on Tannehill heavily with star running back Derrick Henry expected to miss at least the rest of the fantasy regular season. But in Tennessee’s first game without Henry, Tannehill had his second-worst game of the season. The Titans won anyway.
Rookie quarterbacks: Mac Jones, Trevor Lawrence, Justin Fields, Zach Wilson, Trey Lance
Stashing a first-year signal caller was a popular strategy during draft season. So far, it has been a colossal failure.
Mac Jones has been the most successful real-life and fantasy football player of the six first-round quarterbacks drafted in April. Jones, who quarterbacks the 5-4 Patriots, is QB23. He has scored 20-plus fantasy points in a game just once. Next best is Trevor Lawrence, QB26, who also has just one game with more than 20 and has tossed more interceptions than touchdowns.
Bears quarterback Justin Fields has the best single-game performance of any of his peers. Two weeks ago against the 49ers, Fields, QB29, went for 25.3 points thanks to 100 yards and a score on the ground. He followed that with 18.14 points against the Steelers on Monday night. It’s great to see Fields coming along, but it doesn’t excuse five straight outings below 10 points to start the season.
Zach Wilson, QB34, has been an interception machine when healthy and it doesn’t help his case that the offense has looked exponentially better with him sidelined. Trey Lance, QB36, has yet to snatch the starting job from Jimmy Garoppolo, so his inclusion in this is a bit unfair. But the fact that he’s still on the sideline is enough of an indictment of his performance to this point.
Washington RB Antonio Gibson
ADP: RB12, 17 Overall
Position Rank: 22
FPPG: 12
Remember when Antonio Gibson was supposed to be Christian McCaffrey lite? He has 20.4 points in his last three games combined. A nagging shin injury has limited Gibson and he often enters Sunday with a questionable designation. Meanwhile, negative game script for Washington has kept J.D. McKissic on the field catching passes. McKissic was drafted about 10 rounds after Gibson and isn’t far behind him in scoring.
Despite his ADP as the 12th RB drafted, Gibson hasn’t finished in the top 12 at his position any week this season--and he’s finished outside of the top 24 five times.
Eagles RB Miles Sanders
ADP: RB19, 35 Overall
Position Rank: 45
FPPG: 9
What does it say that Philadelphia’s rushing attack took off after Miles Sanders went on injured reserve? It’s worth noting the team appeared to be more committed to running the ball in the last two games with Jordan Howard, Boston Scott and Kenneth Gainwell, but Sanders fantasy managers were treated to a respectable Week 1 outing followed by seven weeks of disappointment.
Sanders still leads all Eagles running backs in carries, yards and yards per carry but has yet to find the end zone. We knew Jalen Hurts might poach some of Sanders’ rushing work, but Sanders has yet to see anywhere near the work he needs to be effective.
Buccaneers RB Ronald Jones II
ADP: RB33, 88 Overall
Position Rank: 73
FPPG: 3.7
Murkiness about the snap distribution between Ronald Jones II and Leonard Fournette drove both of their prices down in the preseason. Jones has been unplayable and is available in most leagues while Fournette has risen to RB1 status.
The dropoff from year to year for Jones (who is in a contract year) is jarring. He fumbled on his first carry of the season and seemingly never recovered. Jones has one game with double-digit carries, zero games with 10-plus points scored and one touchdown on the year. He’s not even playing backup to Fournette—Giovani Bernard is seeing more snaps as the pass-catching back.
Bills WR Stefon Diggs
ADP: WR3, Overall 14
Position Rank: 21
FPPG: 15.6
A year removed from leading the NFL in receptions, Stefon Diggs is only second on his own team this season. The entire offense was funneled through him in his first season in Buffalo; with the addition of Emmanuel Sanders and breakout of Dawson Knox, there’s less reliance on Diggs in ‘21.
Diggs has zero games with 10-plus receptions. He hit that mark five times last season. And he’s only broken 100 receiving yards in a game once this year after doing so seven times in 2020. Thankfully, he’s been consistent for managers who paid up for his second-round ADP. Diggs has one game under 10 PPR points and one over 20. You know what you’re going to get week to week, it’s just not what you hoped for when you drafted him.
Cardinals WR DeAndre Hopkins
ADP: WR4, 16 Overall
Position Rank: WR19
FPPG: 15.7
Maybe DeAndre Hopkins should be lauded for how effective he’s been with so few targets. But his fantasy managers are not exactly singing his praises. Like Diggs, Hopkins has been a fine fantasy player on the surface—he has seven touchdowns and three games with 20-plus points—but you weren’t looking to draft a “fine” player in the second round. Hopkins bottomed out with two outings under 10 points already this season and he just missed a game with a hamstring injury. Arizona has options in the passing game now with Christian Kirk, A.J. Green, Rondale Moore and even tight end Zach Ertz, all of whom detract from Hopkins’ potential.
Hopkins remains one of the best receivers in football. In Week 6, he turned a four-target game into 55 yards and two scores—but performances like that are outliers. It will be impossible to live up to his ADP if his targets don’t see an uptick in the second half of the season.
Bears WR Allen Robinson
ADP: WR11, Overall 31
Position Rank: 53
FPPG: 7.8
Bears fans, Allen Robinson owners and, I imagine, Robinson himself, are tired of hearing how bad Chicago’s top receiving threat has played this season. It’s impossible to not talk about his dramatic falloff, though. Checking his stats for this article, I had to scroll to the second page of ESPN’s wide receivers. That tells the story right there.
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Robinson has one touchdown. His season-high receiving yard total is 68. He went from a player having a slow start, to unstartable, to droppable. Because he was drafted so high, he remains rostered in three quarters of leagues, but he has been relegated to the second receiver on his own team with Darnell Mooney’s emergence. The hope for Robinson was that Justin Fields would save him from bad quarterback play. That has not been the case—Fields is the first quarterback whom Robinson has not succeeded in spite of.
Panthers WR Robby Anderson
ADP: WR33, Overall 76
Position Rank: 74
FPPG: 5.8
The nicest thing that can be said about Robby Anderson this season is that he’s a statistical anomaly. He’s caught less than 36% of passes thrown his way. Anderson turned 20 targets into 25 yards during a two-game stretch a few weeks ago. He has two games with double-digits—both anchored by his only two touchdowns. The Panthers’ second receiver bottomed out with a goose egg two weeks ago against the Falcons and is now owned in about half of all leagues.
Poor quarterback play can be blamed partially for Anderson’s massive regression, but Sam Darnold doesn’t get all of the blame. Anderson has already matched a career-high with six drops in just nine games.
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Packers TE Robert Tonyan
ADP: TE9, 86 Overall
Position Rank: 26
FPPG: 6.3
Robert Tonyan wasn’t expected to be in the top tier of tight ends after his unsustainable 2020 season. He also wasn’t supposed to be unplayable. Tonyan, who tore his ACL and will miss the remainder of the season, has been the only true disappointment of the top 12 tight ends drafted.
Tonyan had four games this season with less than 10 yards. Compare that with the two games that he surpassed 10 points, naturally anchored by his only two scores. Tight end is a dart throw week to week, but Tonyan burned so many managers early in the season that he was no longer worth the trouble of plugging into the lineup by the time he had a decent outing in Week 7.
Honorable mention: Julio Jones, Brandon Aiyuk, Odell Beckham Jr., Mike Davis
What say you?
Has someone been hurting your team that we didn’t mention? Let us know at winnersclub@si.com for a chance to be featured in Winners Club, SI’s fantasy and betting newsletter. Next week, we’ll be looking at the biggest overachievers of the season based on ADP, so feel free to send us some of your surprising stars, too.
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