Las Vegas Raiders WR Jakobi Meyers has been a value in fantasy football for two straight seasons. Now competing for targets with Brock Bowers in addition to Davante Adams, is this finally the year Meyers won’t outperform his cost in fantasy drafts?
Jakobi Meyers’ 2024 Fantasy Forecast
All things considered, Meyers has had a really impressive career. The former undrafted free agent, who is slow with average athleticism, worked his way into a perennial starting WR2 role. Yet, it seems like Meyers can never shake the fact that he went undrafted.
Meyers is coming off the best season of his career, averaging 13.7 fantasy points per game. This was one year after the previous best season of his career, where he averaged 12.9 points per game. In fact, he’s improved every year since entering the league in 2019.
Last year, Meyers commanded a very respectable 21% target share. However, nothing else about his production profile really stood out. Ironically, the guy who usually plays better than his numbers suggests actually had better numbers than his performance suggested.
Meyers scored 10 touchdowns last season; 27% of his fantasy points were due to finding the end zone. It’s nice to see the guy who went the first 34 games of his career without a touchdown be able to score so frequently.
It was great if you had Meyers last season. But in terms of projecting him going forward, he scored about double the amount of times his yardage indicated he should’ve last season.
Had Meyers only scored five touchdowns, that would’ve taken him from his WR24 finish to roughly WR40. He still would’ve outperformed his ADP, but that’s the difference between weekly fantasy starter and bench player.
This season, the Raiders do have a QB upgrade going from Aidan O’Connell to Garnder Minshew. However, they also have more players that need the ball, adding first-round TE Bowers to the mix. With Adams not about to lose any of his volume, it’s likely Meyers’ volume takes a slight hit.
Normally, a slight drop wouldn’t be a concern. However, Meyers was already extracting as much value as he could out of the volume he received. In fantasy, we don’t want to bet on efficiency, especially from a player on a weaker offense whose efficiency is entirely in the touchdown department.
With all that said, Meyers’ ADP reflects this fact. He’s going off the board as the WR54, No. 147 overall. He’s cheaper than he’s been in either of the past two seasons despite performing his best those two years.
I’m supremely confident Meyers will outperform his ADP once again. I have him ranked as my WR52, which is right in line with consensus. So, does that make him a player fantasy managers should aggressively target? Not exactly.
Overall, I think Meyers is better than the WR54. He’s probably better than the WR50, too. But the reason he’s not an overly appealing selection is because drafting the WR40 at a WR58 price doesn’t move the needle for your fantasy team, even though that’s a significantly positive return on investment.
There are a whole bunch of wide receivers going around Meyers who are far more likely to fail. These guys also have a chance — albeit not a large one — to finish inside the top 24 if they reach their ceiling outcomes. The only way Meyers can do that is with a repeat of last season with outlier TD efficiency, which is not something I’m willing to bet on.
Depending on your roster construction, you may have use for a safe, “won’t get you zero” type of player like Meyers. In that case, he’s a fine pick in the latter stages of drafts.
But typically, we want to chase upside, especially in the final few rounds when we know we’re almost certainly dropping everyone we draft within the first couple of weeks. Meyers just isn’t an exciting selection.
