Roundtable: One-Year Wonders

Photo: USA Today Sports

Welcome to Week 13 of the 2022 Footballguys Roundtable. Our intrepid panel of fantasy pundits discusses and debates four topics every week. Topics are now split into separate features.

This week's roundtable features these four topics:

• One-Year Wonders (see below)
• Jets Fantasy Prospects
• December Fantasy Darlings
• The Replacements

One-Year Wonders

Matt Waldman: Name two players from this list you believe are having career years and won't return to this level of production in the future.

• Christian Kirk
• Curtis Samuel
• Juwan Johnson
• Tyler Conklin
• Travis Etienne
• Jeff Wilson
• Marcus Mariota
• Geno Smith

Or, if you want to defend them, explain why they should have a career that has another 2-3 years of production in the same tier they're in based on current fantasy production in 2022.

Drew Davenport: Despite what has all the makings of a compelling storyline from Smith this year in Seattle, having another year like this seems unlikely. It isn't that he's doing it with smoke and mirrors because his efficiency numbers are quite impressive for what we pictured back in August. But after a blistering start, he's been fairly mediocre over the last six games so trusting that he's suddenly figured everything out at 32 years old seems like a bit of a premature conclusion to make. How he performs down the stretch will tell us a lot, but I'm not betting on a repeat performance next year.

I want to defend Kirk here because I think the tendency is going to be for people to think he's not going to be able to put up these numbers again. But he isn't putting up numbers that scream outlier to me. He's doing what a talented receiver in a new role should do - demand the ball. He's earning a 25% target share so far and he's WR15 in PPR points per game. He isn't an aging veteran having a random spike year, he's an ascending player who has a new and advantageous situation that he's using well. He will have to compete with Calvin Ridley next year for targets, but he's about to set career highs across the board in his new home and there is no reason to think he'll be cast aside for Ridley. Kirk will be entering his age-27 season next fall and will be a value as a WR2 in next year's drafts.

Gary Davenport: I have a feeling that I'm going to have even more shares of Kirk in 2023 than I do this year—because fantasy managers will talk themselves into the belief this year is a fluke. Kirk leads the Jags in targets by a fair margin. He's averaging over eight targets a game. And he's topped 70 receiving yards in over half of his games. Yes, Calvin Ridley will be there in 2023. But he doesn't have a rapport with Trevor Lawrence. Kirk does. And it's not like Zay Jones has been cat food as the No. 2 receiver in Jacksonville. Will Kirk be a top-10 wideout next year? Probably not. But does Ridley's arrival relegate him to irrelevance? I don't buy it.