Cincinnati Bengals WR Tee Higgins had a very disappointing 2023 campaign mired by poor performance, as well as injuries to himself and his quarterback. Still a talented receiver, should fantasy football managers bank on a bounce-back performance from Higgins and target him in Best Ball drafts?
Tee Higgins’ 2024 Fantasy Outlook
After some light rumors of him potentially hitting free agency, the Bengals put an end to most speculation as to where Higgins will play this season. While there are still some whispers that he may end up traded, after getting slapped with the franchise tag, the prevailing belief is Higgins will play the 2024 season in Cincinnati.
Of course, this is not necessarily great for his fantasy value.
I still believe Higgins is worthy of being a WR1 on an NFL team. That is obviously never going to happen with Ja’Marr Chase on the other side of the field. Given the massive target share Chase commands, this inherently caps Higgins’ upside.
After breaking out in 2021, Higgins has regressed over the past two seasons. He averaged 13.1 fantasy points per game in 2022 and just 11.5 in 2023. But to be fair, injuries played a big role in his struggles last season.
Higgins missed five games and left another two early. He also dealt with a very limited Joe Burrow for half the season before being forced to deal with a backup quarterback. It was an all-around disaster year for the Bengals.
There’s really no sense in diving into Higgins’ metrics from the 2023 season. Quite simply, none of them are good. The question fantasy managers need to ask themselves is whether they believe Higgins can once again be the guy who finished top 10 in yards per route run and yards per target in 2021.
Should You Draft Higgins in 2024 Best Ball Leagues?
Every time I look at wide receiver ADP, it continues to amaze me how many good WRs there are. I don’t want to say Higgins is being drafted at his floor because, as we saw last season, his floor is objectively lower than WR28.
With that said, I’m mostly willing to give Higgins and the entire Bengals offense a mulligan for 2023. With a healthy Burrow and likely a new running back, we could see a very pass-centric offense in Cincinnati this year. And this is already an offense that had a 64% neutral-game-script pass rate last season, the second highest in the league.
KEEP READING: Best Ball Fantasy WR Rankings 2024
It’s much more difficult to stack Burrow with Chase than it is to stack him with Higgins. Plus, the Burrow-Higgins stack would likely provide some leverage on the plethora of Burrow-Chase stacks out there.
As a nice contrarian approach, Best Ball drafters should absolutely consider taking Higgins.
