In the Spring of 2022, the New Orleans Saints selected Ohio State wide receiver Chris Olave 11th overall, and fantasy football managers were about as bullish as you can be for a player who had yet to take a professional snap.
He was coming off a flashy 13-TD season for the Buckeyes and checked every box we could ask for. After two 1,000-yard seasons, however, he battled injuries and inconsistency in 2024, leaving him as a seemingly distressed asset entering this season after Derek Carr elected to hang up his cleats.
Punting on a high-pedigree receiver ahead of his age-25 season seems crazy to me, almost regardless of the surrounding circumstances, but his current ADP suggests that I’m on the opposite side of the industry.
Join me on Olave Island, the water is fine.
Should You Draft Chris Olave in Fantasy?
The nine missed games last season only tell part of the negative story. He was an early-round investment that was unavailable for you during the second half of the season, but he was, at times, more harmful to your success when he was on the field in 2024 (four games with under 15 receiving yards and only one touchdown).
There’s undoubtedly a burn-me-twice feel to the Olave profile entering this season, especially with the offensive keys being handed over to Tyler Shough, a second-round pick out of Louisville who will turn 26 in September.
Shough is going to be the Day 1 starter. There isn’t much of a safety net, either, and that’s a terrifying proposition for a QB who completed under 62% of his passes over his final three collegiate seasons and is being labeled as the perfect leader of a tanking team in 2025.
A Chris Olave chart pic.twitter.com/VPTkfsoSs1
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) June 9, 2025
And that’s the root of the dip in ADP. The Olave question is simple, though it can carry a bit of a complex answer.
How much trust do you have in Shough?
That question is straightforward, but as long as he is even remotely competent (personally, I’m OK with giving Kellen Moore, a head coach with seven years of experience on the offensive side of the ball, not to mention 14,667 yards and 142 touchdowns through the air during his collegiate playing career at Boise State), it may not matter.
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I wanted to look at the per-catch production of the top pass catchers historically when playing alongside awful quarterback play. If you think Shough will be more than that, then you don’t need me to sell you. You’re already grabbing Olave as your WR3, the high-end of the expectations.
NFL Total Points Per Game
- 2000-06: 41.76 PPG
- 2007-24: 45.10 PPG
With the scoring boom starting in 2007, that’s where I began. Data from before then doesn’t tell us much, as the game wasn’t as open and featured fewer fantasy points for players across the board. From here, I used our PFSN QB+ grading metric to find the worst seasons of the 537 instances in which a QB appeared in at least 10 games.
Shough could be terrible and not register an “F” grade for us. That is unique company. JaMarcus Russell, Blaine Gabbert, and Trent Edwards are some of the 17 names that earned a failing grade. With Moore calling the shots, an indoor track, and some talent around him, I don’t think it’s crazy to rule out an “F” season.
So let’s move onto D- grades. Let’s be clear: This type of season would be deemed a disappointment by any measure, even for a player like Shough who enters his first season with little in the way of expectations.
It’s far from a hot take to say that Olave is the clear WR1 in this offense, and in vein, I took a look at how the top option did, on a per catch basis, during these D- seasons:
That’s on average, 2.79 fantasy points per catch. For context, that’s in the Drake London, Amon-Ra St Brown, and Rashee Rice (in a limited sample) neighborhood from a season ago.
To get ahead of things, no, I’m not drafting Olave in that tier of star receiver that you’re locking into lineups for 17 weeks and moving on. What I am doing is jumping up a half-round if need be to get Olave at this discounted price, and being happy with my investment.
Chris Olave in some pretty pretty good company, available at pick 65 by the way… pic.twitter.com/lVk4pzgqjF
— Willie Knows Ball (@WillieKnowsBall) June 23, 2025
Even if Shough is replacement level or worse, Olave’s price tag is too cheap for a player whose talent we trust, and volume should be locked in. The data above suggests that we don’t need an overly efficient season. We just need raw volume, and given how this New Orleans offense is put together, why wouldn’t we project that for their WR1?
By pulling on this thread, you’ll notice that 75-80 catches would put Olave in the 210-225-point range for the season, the exact spot where Jakobi Meyers, a receiver with less raw ability and terrible QB play, finished 2024 (WR19 in total points and WR20 on a per-game basis).
Mason LeBeau’s Chris Olave Fantasy Projection
This is the perfect situation where we have to look at an obvious situation and see if this is where value is. Has Olave been fantastic yet? Good, but not great. Is he an injury risk? Yes. Is the Saints’ situation at QB terrible? Also yes.
We’ve seen crazier things work. New head coach and offensive mind Kellen Moore has to have some plan for this offense, even if they aren’t going to win many games this year. RB Alvin Kamara is still here, and the offensive line could be pretty good with all of their investments. A scenario where Olave has a breakout season as this team’s clear WR1 is far from impossible.
Will I draft him anyway? No, probably not. Oddly enough, his value at WR34 is still a little too high, going around young players in better situations like Jordan Addison, Rome Odunze, and Jaylen Waddle. I can’t see a reason to go with Olave over those guys. Should he start to slip in your home drafts, he’s at least worth consideration.
