Fantasy Football – Gabriel Davis Breakout Season

You’d have to be living under a rock to avoid Gabriel Davis‘s name during the 2022 fantasy football offseason. The standout Bills wide receiver has the space chirping about how he will fare in the upcoming season. I, for one, am a Davis guy. Or shall I say he is one of my guys for 2022?

If you have followed my work throughout my career in the fantasy football space, I do not often go out on a limb. However, I did just that with Davis in a Tweet that got quite a bit of attention, both positive and negative last week.

The Tweet Heard Round The World

I was accused of engagement farming and I was told I was smoking crack, which is fine. It is part of the business. If you are a grown-up, you understand this and can handle it.

What I can’t stand are the people writing paragraphs in my comments telling me why I am wrong. In theory, I am supposed to be wrong. What’s more, I do my job right. I understand that every player has an upside and a downside. I appreciate the fact that my tweet lived rent-free in people’s heads, but it is not that much of a big deal.

Here was my response to the keyboard warriors on Fantasy Twitter

I am not going to read your paragraphs. I rather read the funny comments about me being a crackhead over your novels.

The most important part of this job is accountability. If I am wrong, I will gladly announce it to the world as I have with past premonitions. If I am right, I will let you know that too. I won’t, however, let this live in my head fearing the outcome. If you think I really care that fantasy Twitter may come at me over a bad take, you got the wrong guy.

My resume speaks for itself.

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Why I Am All-In On Gabriel Davis

I know that the postseason game against the Chiefs put Davis on the map, but he has flashed beforehand. While playing sporadically in his first two NFL seasons, Davis has caught 70 receptions for 1,148 yards and 13 touchdowns on 125 targets. If we include last year’s postseason, we can add another 10 receptions for 242 yards and five scores on 13 targets to his totals.

Those numbers aren’t too bad for a fourth-round wideout stuck behind reliable veterans that have included John Brown, Cole Beasley, and Emmanuel Sanders through the first two years of his career.

In Week 14 of last season, we began to see the emergence of Davis following a Sanders injury that left the veteran wideout playing sporadically for the duration of the year. Since that Week 14 outing, Davis’ opportunity and production saw a significant bump in the right direction.

*Please note that I pulled these numbers from a DynastyFF Reddit post courtesy of user u/wscii. Feel free to e-mail us to give us your name to give you credit or remove this post. You can read the full post here.

• 6 games played
• 84.2% snap share
• 45 targets (20.4%)
• 26 receptions
• 449 yards
• 8 touchdowns
• 16-game pace: 69/1197/21

As the Reddit user indicated, Davis’ 16-game pace including the Chiefs game would be absurd. Notable, the 21 touchdowns. That pace would have slated him with 314.7 PPR points as the WR5 on the year ahead of Ja’Marr Chase.

Those numbers included that game against the Chiefs. If we omit that explosion, Davis is still on the right track.

• 5 games played
• 84.4% snap share
• 35 targets (19%)
• 18 receptions
• 248 yards
• 4 touchdowns
• 16-game pace: 58/794/13

Even at the above 16-game pace, which is more feasible in the touchdown department, Davis would have ended the season with 215.4 PPR points, which would be good for the WR26, one spot ahead of the fantasy football space’s beloved Terry McLaurin.

I don’t see Davis popping so much that he finishes as a top-five wideout. I don’t even see him in the Top-10. But I also believe he will fare better than a fringe WR2. Davis ceiling is fringe WR1 if all the stars align.

Not only will Davis have Stefon Diggs drawing the coverage, but he also has a clear-cut rapport with Josh Allen. And if Allen is elite, which he is, then why can’t he support a pair of WR1s in fantasy? Joe Burrow did it last year.

What may be ruffling many feathers is the fact that I drug Diggs’name into the equation.

Diggs has finished as a WR1 in PPR points per game in 4/7 seasons. His best finish was WR3 in that category but he never finished better than WR9 the other times.

I can see people getting antsy if I said that he would outplay the Green Bay version of Davante Adams, who finished as a WR1 in six straight seasons and as the WR2 or better in three of his past four. But that is not Diggs’ resume.  Diggs is a lot closer to a back-end WR1 in fantasy points than a top-end guy.

Gabriel Davis Fantasy Football Summary

While the Bills did add Jamison Crowder and Khalil Shakir to their wide receiver room this offseason, Davis is slated to be the No. 2 receiver until proven otherwise. Although the jury remains out on Shakir, a fifth-round rookie, we already know what Crowder is and what he is not. Crowder is not a threat to Davis. He has never finished better than the WR25 in fantasy points in seven seasons.

Sure, neither has Davis, but he is only entering his third year in the NFL. He is also entering the season projected to be the No. 2 pass-catching option in the Bills’ high-octane passing attack. Davis had been buried on the depth chart but has flashed enough to warrant a marquee role.

Per Pro Football Focus, Davis was also the 10th best-graded wideout in 2021 with an 81.5 grade.

You can do two things with Davis in fantasy football. it is not complicated. If you believe he is the real deal and will out-perform his current 56.6 ADP at Underdog Fantasy, then draft him. If you believe he will be a bust, then don’t draft him. Fantasy Football is not complicated. Stop making it so.

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