Last season was a tale of two halves for Cleveland Browns TE David Njoku. Finishing the season scorching hot, Njoku’s 2024 ADP doesn’t seem to reflect his upside. What does his projection say about whether fantasy football managers should target him in drafts this year?
David Njoku’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
- Fantasy points per game: 10.7
- Receptions: 70
- Receiving Yards: 793
- Receiving TDs: 5.6
These are PFN’s consensus projections, correct as of August 14. The most up-to-date projections can be found in our Who Should I Draft Tool.
Should You Draft Njoku This Year?
The most wild stat about Njoku is how long he’s been in the NFL. Despite being around for eight years, he’s just 28 years old. Njoku is firmly in his prime, creating the potential for 2024 to be his best season yet.
Njoku is actually coming off the best season of his career, averaging 12.6 fantasy points per game and finishing as the overall TE7. Those numbers aren’t exactly moving the needle. A tight end really needs to get to 14 ppg to truly make a difference. However, Njoku actually did move the needle for fantasy managers over the second half of the season.
Njoku didn’t really “average” 12.6 fantasy points per game. From Weeks 1-7, he averaged 7.3 and had absolutely no fantasy value. You were justified in dropping him (which I did in a league where I drafted him).
Then, beginning in Week 8, a switch flipped. Overnight, Njoku went from an irrelevant fantasy asset to an elite TE1.
From Week 8 through the end of the season, he averaged 15.8 fantasy points per game, which are borderline WR1 numbers.
Over that stretch, Njoku was the overall TE1. Having Joe Flacco and his elite passing volume certainly helped, but Flacco didn’t take over until Week 13. The Njoku Express had left the station well before then.
Not only was Njoku a TE1, but he was also a league winner. In Weeks 14-17 — the most important weeks of the fantasy season — Njoku posted games of 27.1, 26.4, 16.4, and 17.4, respectively.
Njoku led all tight ends in yards after the catch and commanded a target on an impressive 24.7% of his routes run. He was the clear second option in the passing game behind Amari Cooper.
The Browns haven’t done much at wide receiver. Cooper remains the alpha, and their WR2 is now Jerry Jeudy — not exactly a guy who commands volume. Thus, Njoku is still the second-best pass catcher on this team.
I have Njoku projected for a 21.5% target share, which is the same as he had last year. My projections give him 82 receptions for 898 yards and 7.0 touchdowns, which comes out to 12.57 fantasy ppg.
As great as Njoku was over the second half of last year, it’s hard to project him to maintain that pace. I believe Deshaun Watson to be a downgrade from Flacco. In fact, I’m hopeful for Njoku’s prospects that Watson gets benched for Jameis Winston at some point during the season.
Given the potential for things to break in a positive direction for Njoku, combined with his TE9 ADP, I’m quite interested in the Browns’ tight end. Njoku is my TE9 as well. While that’s only in line with consensus, the gap between him and the tight ends in front of him in overall ADP is larger than I think it should be.
If you don’t grab an elite tight end, bypass the mid-TE1s and target Njoku in the latter stages of your fantasy drafts.
Derek Tate’s Fantasy Insight on David Njoku
Over the last 12 games of the season, Njoku was the TE1 in PPR formats with 62 receptions for 720 yards and six scores on 101 targets. It goes without saying, but that is outstanding production for the TE position.
Despite this, can we definitively say he is in store for the same type of role in 2024?
The team added Jerry Jeudy this offseason, and it feels a bit difficult to project exactly what the target distribution will look like in Cleveland this year.
Now, does either the addition of Jeudy or Njoku’s diminished production with Watson under center suggest the veteran tight end will revert to a streaming option at tight end? No, absolutely not.
Njoku led all tight ends with 599 yards after the catch last year, and his seven receptions of 30+ yards in 2023 finished behind only George Kittle. This type of production likely means Stefanski is going to continue to try to get the ball in Njoku’s hands as much as possible.
Njoku caught the second most screens (16) of any tight end not named Evan Engram last year. He was great to finish the year and is likely to get more looks schemed up by Stefanski as a result, but his dip in production with Watson is worth noting.
He is still a top-10 fantasy TE heading into the 2024 NFL and has top-five potential if the Browns continue to utilize him similarly to how they did over the back of last season.
