It may not have been the jump into the elite category many fantasy football managers were hoping for last season, but Chris Olave did set career highs across the board in a successful second season in the NFL.
Should Olave’s fantasy projections entering the 2024 season predict another leap in production across the board in Year 3 with the New Orleans Saints?
Chris Olave’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- Total Fantasy Points: 290.0
- Receptions: 107.3
- Receiving Yards: 1,463.4
- Receiving TDs: 6.1
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 15. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft Olave This Year?
Upon first glance, these projections suggest Olave is going to set career highs for receptions, receiving yards, and touchdowns for a third consecutive season. Let’s dissect this a bit further, shall we?
Let’s start with receptions. Olave caught 15 more passes in 2023 (87 total) than his rookie year (72 receptions). Naturally, this meant his overall target volume increased — which went from 119 in two seasons ago to 138 last season. Both of these improvements were very encouraging from a fantasy perspective.
Now, Olave tends to win more with precision, timing, and speed as a route runner than he does with exceptional physicality at the catch point in contested situations, which could explain his low touchdown totals and 11 red-zone targets in 2023. In the latter metric, Olave ranked outside of the top 30 at the position and saw just three more red-zone targets than teammate Alvin Kamara — who was suspended for three games last year.
If we continue to look at some of the negatives, there were more than a handful of moments where Olave and quarterback Derek Carr weren’t on the same page last year. This led to some head-scratching miscommunications and rough fantasy outings for a player of Olave’s talent level.
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Yet, there are far more signs that should have you optimistic as opposed to pessimistic regarding Olave’s 2024 fantasy outlook. He generated 2,165 receiving yards through the first two years of his NFL career, which ranks 22nd all-time. This already makes him a very productive player at the NFL level.
Olave’s air yards even suggest there is plenty of room for his numbers to improve if both he and Carr can connect a bit more often down the field. Only 99 of his 138 targets (71.7%) were deemed catchable, which ranked as the 43rd-highest rate in the league.
Olave’s Advanced Metrics
- Air Yards: 1,834 (sixth)
- Deep Targets: 32 (fourth)
- Yards Per Route Run: 2.08 (21st)
These numbers should tell you that there is plenty of room for optimism if Carr’s play is a bit more consistent in 2024.
As far as target competition goes, Olave essentially received no additional threats to contend with this offseason. In fact, the team decided to part ways with Michael Thomas, making him the unquestioned alpha in this passing game — which gives him a plausible road to setting a career-high in targets in 2024.
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Additionally, I love Olave’s formation versatility and the creative manner in which the Saints tried to get him the ball. He spent 35.9% of his snaps from the slot last year, which makes him a receiving threat from anywhere horizontally in the formation, and he can attack all three levels of the football field.
Olave’s bump in usage combined with a lack of elite target competition on the roster. Rashid Shaheed, A.T. Perry, Cedrick Wilson Jr., and Juwan Johnson were his biggest threats outside of Kamara for targets in 2023. Olave could potentially make the jump from a solid WR2 to a top-10 option at the position in 2024. And while his projections may be a bit on the optimistic/aggressive side, they are certainly plausible for an ascending player.
Olave’s average draft position (ADP) at No. 17 overall, going off the board in the second round as the WR12, certainly suggests fantasy managers are expecting a jump in production from the third-year receiver in 2024.
The talent has been apparent through Olave’s first two years in the league. He has already proven he has a WR2 floor and is well-positioned as the clear alpha in this passing attack — which means he should be in the low-end WR1 conversation for this season.
A second-round price tag is certainly expensive but one that has the profile of producing big returns with some improved play under center in 2024.
Kyle Soppe’s Fantasy Insight on Chris Olave
The age curve and skill growth are marks very much working in Olave’s favor and allow him to enter 2024 with the hope of becoming a stable WR1 for his fantasy managers.
Last season, the former Buckeye had more catches (87) than any of his teammates had targets — a trend that seems likely to continue given that New Orleans’ only investment to its skill-position group on draft day was Bub Means (a burner out of Pittsburgh with a Rashid Shaheed-like profile) with the 170th overall pick.
You could argue that Olave’s target share is more likely to increase than decrease if you’re factoring in some natural decline as a result of age for Alvin Kamara. The Saints’ starting running back was the only other player on this team to catch even 50 balls in 2023, and baking in some diminishing of skills entering his age-29 season is reasonable.
The question, of course, is if Olave is in for another season in which he suffers from Garrett Wilson-itis. That is — an elite talent whose numbers are kneecapped by average (or worse) play at quarterback.
Derek Carr isn’t as bad as what the New York Jets have thrown out there to open Wilson’s career, but he does have limitations, and there is little question in my mind that Olave’s best days will come with a different quarterback.
