Don't Leave Your Draft Without CeeDee Lamb

Photo: USA Today Sports

Click here for other Player Spotlights

Early draft results indicate the fantasy community is wise to CeeDee Lamb’s breakout appeal, as he typically comes off the board inside the top-15 wide receivers. While some might think Lamb’s presumed year-two progression is already built into his draft cost, it’s more likely he currently remains undervalued and is poised to leap into the elite tier in 2021.

• Lamb entered the league as an elite prospect, and his skills translated immediately
• Dak Prescott has shown the ability to unlock Lamb's upside
• Prescott is now healthy and predicting a breakout year for Lamb
• There are enough targets to go around in Dallas to support a true breakout season

In Like a Lion

Lamb -- the consensus top receiver prospect in the 2020 draft class -- enjoyed historical success as a rookie. He may not have broken the rookie record for receiving yards as Justin Jefferson did, but the list of first-year wideouts to eclipse 900 yards at age-21 or younger is a short one that places Lamb in an impressive cohort:

As well as he performed, we’ll always be left wondering what could have been for Lamb in his rookie year had Dak Prescott never suffered a gruesome ankle injury in Week 5. In the five games Prescott started, Lamb racked up 422 yards, two touchdowns, and blew the other Cowboys receivers out of the water in Receiver Air Conversion Ratio (RACR), a sticky metric developed by Josh Hermsmeyer that measures how many receiving yards a player creates for every air-yard thrown his way.

Had he continued on the pace he set with Prescott for the entire season, Lamb would have finished with 86 receptions, 1,318 yards, and 6 touchdowns -- numbers that rival Jefferson’s record-breaking production. The resulting 253.8 fantasy points would have placed Lamb inside the top-10 fantasy wide receivers.

While it’s always dangerous to play the extrapolation game with small samples, there are several reasons to believe a top-10 finish is attainable for Lamb this year, and his ceiling might be even higher.

Let’s Cee How Dees Guys Did in Year-Two

Lamb’s rookie year output placed him in rarified air. But is there anything we can glean moving forward from the Year 2 production of the other 21-year old players who topped 900 receiving yards as a rookie?

Takeaways

• We should remove Keenan Allen from the sample. He appeared in 14 games in 2014 but played through a rib contusion, groin strain, and quadriceps strain before a broken clavicle mercifully ended his season in Week 15.
• Each of the five remaining wide receivers had more receiving yards in their sophomore year than they did as rookies. On average, the cohort saw a 15% year-over-year increase in receiving yards, but JuJu Smith-Schuster (35%) skewed the sample. The median increase was about 7%.
• Likewise, the combined PPR fantasy points scored from year one to year two for the five players in the sample also increased by roughly 7%.

There is no rule that receivers who tally at least 900 yards as a rookie are guaranteed to increase their production by 7% as a sophomore. But a 7% increase in fantasy points for a player who entered the league with Lamb’s pedigree seems like a modest enough bump and within reasonable boundaries. If we raise his 2020 fantasy point total accordingly, the resulting 226.5 fantasy points would have made him a top-20 wide receiver last season.

But are we juicing the wrong numbers? If we add 7% to the pace Lamb set with Prescott, it would have boosted him inside last year’s top-10. And even if Lamb’s sample with Prescott is too tiny to extrapolate (fantasy production is not linear, after all), couldn’t he also improve at a greater rate than the median curve?

The Dak Factor

We already know Lamb’s counting stats decreased markedly in the nine games quarterbacked by Andy Dalton in 2020. The table below paints a clear enough picture of why:

Despite a near-identical share of the team’s targets, Lamb’s overall volume decreased because the entire offensive pie shrunk with Dalton under center. The Cowboys ran 71.8 plays per game in Prescott’s five starts vs. 62.4 per game on Dalton’s watch -- a 13% decrease in overall opportunity for the offense.

Dalton’s C+ arm strength and preference for short- and intermediate throws also capped Lamb’s upside. Whereas Prescott can stand tall in the pocket long enough to let downfield routes develop, Dalton has always been a quick-rhythm passer who made his living throwing accurate slants and digs.

Lamb had the second-highest slot route rate in the NFL in 2020 (84.7%), so it’s no surprise his targets didn’t crater when the Cowboys turned to Dalton. But not all slot routes are created equal.

With Prescott under center, Lamb dominated the deep-middle of the field against zone defenses. It’s no coincidence both of his 100-plus yard games and his only multi-touchdown performance came with Prescott as his quarterback. Perhaps most impressively for a slot receiver, Lamb ranked fourth among all wideouts in yards generated on passes thrown 20-plus yards downfield through the first five games.

Entering this season, we should expect Lamb to continue lining up primarily from the slot, but it appears he’ll get more of an opportunity to spread his wings as a downfield threat.

Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy called WR CeeDee Lamb "an excellent example of what you're looking for in your second-year players." Want to see strides made in offseason. "I see CeeDee making that jump. He is very comfortable, very natural." Playing four different receiver spots.

— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) June 3, 2021

This is a welcome development for fantasy purposes. Lamb’s floor will get bolstered by high-percentage slot targets, but he’s also back in business for a high weekly ceiling. He’ll once again have a quarterback who enables him to maximize his playmaking ability from the slot while also spending more time running fantasy-friendly downfield routes.

At least one specialist when it comes to wide receiver fantasy analysis thinks Lamb’s expert route-running and ability to make contested catches will shine through against tougher man coverage outside the numbers:

The Cowboys heavily deployed CeeDee Lamb as a slot receiver in 2020 but with a 72.5% success rate vs. man coverage in #ReceptionPerception, I have 0 doubt he can win anywhere. Changes in 2021?

Full profile:https://t.co/aglUO7zAni pic.twitter.com/UakmdgcPBY

— Matt Harmon (@MattHarmon_BYB) May 26, 2021

Silence of the Lambs? Quite The Opposite

Fantasy analysts aren’t the only ones making noise in anticipation of Lamb’s sophomore campaign. Those closest to the situation can barely contain themselves when asked what we should expect from Lamb in his second season:

"My expectations are super-high. I’m so excited for CeeDee. He’s a special playmaker that we’re privileged to have and he’ll be big-time and definitely have a breakout season."
- Dak Prescott

"I'm so excited for just his growth from our five games together to just getting back out there in OTAs and throwing it to him and watching him get off the line, run routes, go up and get contested balls time and time again. It’s exciting. It’s exciting what he’s going to offer and it’s exciting what he brings to this whole receiving corps and this offense.''
- Prescott, again

"I always thought that second-year players, you get to see that jump from their initial start line, and that's something I have paid close attention to. If you don't see it by the third year, it's probably an uphill climb for that particular player. To answer your question, I see CeeDee making that jump. You can see he is very comfortable. Very natural."
- Cowboys head coach Mike McCarthy

"I feel like the jump is definitely there. It's all on the future to gauge it. I am excited about the future. Can't wait for the season."
- CeeDee Lamb

A Lamb’s Share of the Targets Will Do Just Fine

Lamb is the type of receiver who can turn the “too many mouths to feed” narrative on its head. But even if he weren’t skilled enough to command his fair share of targets in the same offense as Amari Cooper and Michael Gallup, there is probably more opportunity to go around in Dallas than you think.

Our consensus projections have the Cowboys pegged for roughly 38 pass attempts per game. If our projectors are on point, Lamb only needs to increase his rookie-year target share by two percent to reach the 120-target plateau across 17 games played.

Let’s create a loose projection for Lamb based on 120 targets by using his rate stats from last year (the same ones that included starts by Dalton, Ben DiNucci, and Garrett Gilbert) and adding 7% to his fantasy production for the year-two bump detailed above. Lamb’s 2021 would look something like this:

Last year, those qualified as borderline top-15 numbers (on a per-game basis), which means, at worst, Lamb is valued appropriately in early drafts. But if you don’t believe upside exists from there, you’re not giving enough weight to:

• Prescott’s impact on Lamb’s efficiency
• The possibility his target share increases by more than a measly two percent
• Indications Lamb will run more downfield routes
• The likelihood his production increases ahead of the curve set by his statistical peers

And there’s one more important factor that might be flying below the radar. Cooper had an offseason scope on his ankle and “irritated” the injury at the start of OTAs. There are reports he may miss the start of training camp and concerns his inability to run will affect his early-season conditioning. This lingering ankle issue is the latest in a long list of lower-body ailments for Cooper, who we have seen struggle to play effectively through injury numerous times in the past. If he is unable to command his usual volume or misses games, Lamb’s ceiling is inside the top-5 wide receivers.

Projections

Final Thoughts

Lamb has all the trappings of a fantasy superstar. His third-round ADP doesn’t make him a screaming value based on median projections, but Lamb is precisely the type of player you want to be a year early on rather than a year late. Hitch a ride on his rising star now while you can still surround him with other cornerstone players in Rounds 1 and 2. By the time we’re drafting our 2022 fantasy teams, the only debate will be whether Lamb is worth your first-round pick.

Other Thoughts From Around The Web

The Athletic's Jake Ceily also thinks Lamb will reach the WR1 tier.

It’s Lamb’s ability — separates with ease, catches just about everything, elusive after the catch, dangerous short or deep — that would make him dangerous on any team. His early success shows Lamb is ready to be one of the best in his second season, and with Prescott at the helm again, Lamb is ready to reach the WR1 tier, even surpassing Cooper.

It's unanimous! Michael Fabiano at Sports illustrated also sees Lamb overtaking Cooper this season.

Lamb finished his rookie year ranked 22nd among wideouts based on fantasy points, but it could have been a much higher finish. In five games with Dak Prescott under center, he averaged 17.1 fantasy points and was on pace to nearly equal the production of Justin Jefferson. Don't be surprised if it's Lamb and not Amari Cooper, who leads Cowboys wideouts in 2021. He’ll be worth every bit of a top 40 overall selection.

Follow @PhilFBG