The Los Angeles Chargers surprised everyone when they traded productive veteran WR Keenan Allen to the Chicago Bears this offseason. Now, he’s bringing 904 receptions, 10,530 yards, and 59 touchdowns’ worth of production to the Windy City as a great safety-blanket option for rookie QB Caleb Williams in 2024.
Considering his age, target competition, and the fact he’s playing for a rookie quarterback in Chicago, what is Allen’s fantasy football outlook entering his 12th season in the NFL?
Keenan Allen’s 2024 Fantasy Forecast
Through the first three games of the 2023 NFL season, fantasy managers who passed on drafting Allen because of age concerns quickly realized they may have made a big mistake. His 32 receptions for 402 yards and four receiving TDs had him sitting atop the fantasy leaderboard as the WR1 overall in full-PPR formats.
What may be even more impressive is his WR8 overall finish on the year — with 108 receptions for 1,243 yards and seven TDs — despite missing the final four games of the year. If you rank Allen on just a fantasy-points-per-game basis, he was the WR3 behind only CeeDee Lamb and Tyreek Hill. That is how much of an elite fantasy asset Allen was last year when on the football field.
Allen was a great fit for Chargers offensive coordinator Kellen Moore’s scheme, which deployed him in the slot on 55.5% of his snaps in 2023.
Allen’s 2023 target share was in the elite category at 32.0%, which ranked third highest at the WR position. This is where we could spend much of our time trying to figure out a projected role with his new team.
Allen has been peppered with targets when on the football field over his last seven seasons, averaging a healthy 141 targets per season. If you dissect his 987 targets over the 101 games played during that span, then Allen averaged an elite 9.7 targets per game.
Yet, there’s an issue projecting a big season for Allen in 2024 — his target competition is some of the best in the league, and he’ll be catching passes from a rookie prospect. Granted, Williams’ outlook is exceedingly bright, but there’s no getting around the fact he’ll inevitably take some rookie lumps this coming season.
DJ Moore produced a WR6 overall season in 2023 with 96 receptions for 1,364 yards and eight TDs with Justin Fields and Tyson Bagent under center. It is hard to imagine a scenario where either Moore or Allen don’t eat into each other’s looks to some extent this year. Yet, another major wild card in the target-share equation is the team’s No. 9 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, Rome Odunze.
Odunze is a versatile wide receiver who combines savvy route running, a physically imposing frame, and exceptional contested-catch ability. He has all the tools to be a WR1 in the NFL and should at the very least be a big contributor to the offense over the back half of the 2024 campaign.
Last year, we saw a similar situation in Seattle, where the productive veteran duo of DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett were impacted by the addition of talented rookie Jaxon Smith-Njigba, a development that led to all three receivers failing to produce a top-20 fantasy season.
Allen proved he can still be an elite fantasy producer in the right situation, but this doesn’t exactly feel like the ideal scenario for Allen to produce one more top-10 fantasy season at the age of 32.
Allen’s ADP certainly honors his exceptional production from last year as the WR30 off the board at No. 70 overall, putting him in the middle of the sixth round of fantasy drafts.
For some perspective, he is currently going off the board after Zay Flowers, Tee Higgins, and George Pickens. Personally, I have all three of these players ahead of Allen in my fantasy rankings because of the crowded Bears receiver depth chart and the reliance on a rookie quarterback to drive the fantasy success of all these talented players, a tall ask for even the best of prospects.
