The 2022 fantasy football season is truly underway as drafts fire off across the nation, meaning now is the time to dive into Chicago Bears WR Darnell Mooney’s ADP to determine whether or not managers are receiving a value in fantasy drafts. Coming off a promising yet inefficient season, can Mooney put it all together and break out in his third season?
Darnell Mooney ADP | Is he worth his current price in fantasy drafts?
As we draw closer to the prime draft season for fantasy football, Mooney currently has an ADP of 72, coming off the board as the WR30. For a comparison, Mooney is going 48 picks before Chicago’s next closest pass catcher in Cole Kmet (TE13) and 254 spots higher than fellow WR Byron Pringle at 331 ADP (WR103). In PFN’s 2022 fantasy Football redraft rankings, Mooney is currently the WR23 with an ADP of 54, but be sure to check back as rankings will fluctuate between now and the start of the season.
My rankings fall right in line with Mooney as the WR24 (ADP 55). That’s actually a bit lower than where he was right after the 2023 NFL Draft. Mooney was one of the big winners of the draft as the Bears added no competition. He is someone I have been high on since he came into the league.
However, with a little more reflection, he did slide from the low-end WR2 to the high-end WR3 range. This is due to some players looking like they have returned from injury (Michael Thomas) plus being bullish on some other receivers, such as Gabriel Davis.
If anything, this makes Mooney a better value. Realistically, who else will see the targets in Chicago? Allen Robinson is now in Los Angeles. Marquise Godwin and Damiere Byrd are gone.
Outside of Kmet (93), the next highest returning Bears pass catcher in targets (non-RB) is Dazz Newsome with five. When the closest competition is a 25-year-old kick returner from Tennessee and the Kansas City Chiefs’ former WR4, managers should feel pretty confident that Mooney will be a target hog in 2022.
I want players who will be the No. 1 option on their team. That’s Mooney by a landslide. I also want paths to opportunity for not only targets but explosiveness through air yards. Once again, Mooney checks that box. As a third receiver in fantasy, Mooney has as much upside as anyone and could quickly jump multiple tiers throughout the season. I’ll take that upside all day long around the sixth to the seventh round of 2022 fantasy football drafts.
Darnell Mooney’s projected fantasy value in 2022
Mooney’s ADP is “low” due to the state of the Bears. I wouldn’t be shocked if they had the first overall pick come next April, but that is a different story for another day. However, as we have seen every year, a team doesn’t need to be winning to produce high-level and impactful fantasy assets. In fact, Mooney was that last year.
The WR23 last year, Mooney was 31st in PPR/game due to the offense’s inefficiency, not by his own skill set. Despite finishing 11th in targets (140), Mooney was tied 18th in receptions (81) and 17th in yards (1,055), converting just 71% of his air yards (1,480) into actual yards. Last year, he saw 34.8% of the air yards and 27.3% of the targets and is likely to blow both stats out of the water in 2022.
If Mooney can be more efficient with a hopefully improved Justin Fields, we’re looking at one of the best ADP values on the board. It’s why I was so high on him in the early summer. The absence of Robinson, not that he did much last year anyway, should also allow Mooney to flourish.
In five games without Robinson on the field last season, Mooney averaged 9.6 targets and 78.2 receiving yards per game. Extrapolated to 17 games, Mooney was on a pace for the seventh-most receiving yards and over 160 targets.
While I hate using small sample sizes, this is honestly in his range of outcomes due to the sheer volume of garbage time this offense will find itself in during the season. We’ve seen the floor for Mooney. Now, it’s time to see the ceiling. Enjoy his current ADP because Mooney will be a top-15 receiver off the board this time next year.
