According to David Njoku’s fantasy football history, he’s being drafted right now at his absolute ceiling. He’s never finished higher than the PPR TE9 in his career, and that was all the way back in 2018 during the early days of Baker Mayfield’s tenure with the Browns. He did finish as the TE10 last season, but it doesn’t tell the whole story as he finished with single-digit fantasy points 8 times in 14 games played – yikes!
And that was with lesser target competition in 2022 than he’ll have in 2023! Amari Cooper should be good for 120 targets again as he’s been for his entire career, but the potential danger for Njoku’s volume lies in the offseason addition of Elijah Moore. Word is that Deshaun Watson and Moore have been building strong chemistry, and Moore was a second-round pick in the draft just two years ago.
There’s no way Moore’s lost the talent that saw him average nine targets a game in his rookie season over a five-week span before he was injured. Watson will be the best QB he’s played with yet in his career, and we can’t forget about Donovan Peoples-Jones, either, who averaged 6 targets a game and 13.8 yards per reception. There’s plenty of talent around Njoku now – as much as there’s ever been in his career, actually, – so the odds of him leading Browns pass catchers in targets any given week is quite low.
And if that’s not enough, here’s the kicker – in Deshaun Watson’s three prime fantasy years between 2018 and 2020, no Texans tight end finished higher than the TE17 in any of those seasons – and even that high of a finish was a TD-dependent anomaly of a year that saw Darren Fells score 7 touchdowns. Njoku realistically could slide all the way down to the TE18-20 range, which is half as high a finish as he’s currently being drafted. He’s a bust waiting to happen, and it’s officially a crime that he’s going ahead of Pat Freiermuth.