• Kyle Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr. will be the No. 1 QB-WR fantasy stack in 2024: Murray and Harrison have the upside to finish as top-three performers this season.
• Malik Nabers is not the only LSU WR who has league-winning upside in Year 1: Brian Thomas Jr. was a touchdown-scoring machine at LSU in 2023 and now has a prime opportunity to lead the Jaguars offense in red-zone looks as a rookie.
• Unlock your edge with a PFF+ subscription: Get full access to all of our in-season fantasy tools, including weekly rankings, WR/CB matchup charts, weekly projections, the Start-Sit Optimizer and more. Sign up now!
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
The NFL season is upon us, and fantasy lineups are being set. Here are seven players with league-winning upside for your fantasy football teams this season. If you missed out on these players in your draft, trade for them before it is too late!
QB Kyler Murray and WR Marvin Harrison Jr., Arizona Cardinals
There is no QB-WR stack with more fantasy upside than Kyler Murray and Marvin Harrison Jr., especially considering Murray’s extremely kind draft cost.
With the emergence of C.J. Stroud, Jordan Love and Anthony Richardson, many fantasy players seem to forget that Murray was a stud fantasy quarterback before tearing his ACL. From 2020 to 2021, the Cardinals signal-caller scored 21-plus fantasy points in 18 weeks — only Aaron Rodgers had more such games (21) during that span.
Murray also displayed elite upside during that period, scoring 32-plus points in six games. Murray and Josh Allen (seven games) were the only quarterbacks to score that many points in five or more games from 2021 to 2022.
Even including his lackluster 2023 season, Murray has scored the third-most fantasy points per game among all quarterbacks over the last four seasons, behind only Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes.
Murray has THE QB1 overall upside with Marvin Harrison Jr. joining the offense. Harrison, who dominated defenses at Ohio State, led the FBS with 1,020 deep receiving yards and posted a 98.4 PFF deep receiving grade from 2022-2023. And despite struggling with deep throws over the past two seasons, Murray led the league in deep passer rating in 2021 while playing alongside DeAndre Hopkins.
With both Marquise Brown and Rondale Moore out of Arizona, 130-plus targets is a very realistic projection for Harrison Jr. to earn in year 1. A top-three fantasy finish for Harrison Jr. is in the realm of realistic possibilities — over the last few years, we have seen rookie Ja’Marr Chase finish as the fantasy WR5 with only 128 targets in 2021 and rookie Justin Jefferson finish as the WR6 in 2020 with only 125 targets.
The Cardinals' defense is still expected to be one of the worst in the NFL after allowing the second most points per game in the NFL in 2023. The Cardinals will be playing catch-up in a lot of games, which only means more fantasy points for their passing attack.
QB Jayden Daniels, Washington Commanders
A quarterback rarely has top-three fantasy upside ahead of his rookie season, but with the combination of Jayden Daniels’ athleticism and the extreme advantage mobile QBs have in the fantasy scoring system, Daniels has elite upside in Year 1.
Last season at LSU, Daniels became just the sixth Power Five quarterback to record 1,000-plus rushing yards and 30-plus passing touchdowns in a single season since 2000. The other five quarterbacks to do it were Jalen Hurts, Kyler Murray, Lamar Jackson, Deshaun Watson and Cam Newton — and each of these guys ended up with at least 500 rush yards in their first full NFL, with Hurts, Jackson and Newton each putting up 700 or more rush yards and seven or more rushing touchdowns.
If Daniels follows suit, he is going to have a fantastic season. There have been 17 instances of a quarterback rushing for over 700 yards and scoring five or more rushing touchdowns in a single NFL season. In each of these cases, the quarterback averaged at least 18 fantasy points per game, with 13 of those instances averaging over 20 points per game.
RB De’Von Achane, Miami Dolphins
Despite playing a limited number of snaps as a third-round rookie, Achane still averaged the fifth-most fantasy points per game among all running backs in 2023. Due to his insane efficiency, Achane scored 20-plus fantasy points in five of the nine games in which he played at least 10 offensive snaps.
Achane's consistent chunk gains were something we hadn’t witnessed since Saquon Barkley was a rookie in 2018. The Dolphins back recorded a 54.0% breakaway percentage in 2023, tied for the second-highest by any player with 100 or more carries in a single season in the PFF era, tied with Barkley in 2018 and behind only Adrian Peterson (who posted a 56.5% breakaway rate in his 2012 MVP season).
Of course, there was a risk that came with drafting Achane early in drafts because the type of efficiency he showed as a rookie is nearly impossible to repeat. However, his upside is tremendous, especially if he sees a larger workload.
Achane averaged 1.47 fantasy points per touch in 2023, which is the second-most in a single season by a running back with 100 or more carries since at least 1991, behind only Alvin Kamara in his 2017 rookie season. Kamara earned nearly 75 more touches the following year and finished as the RB4 overall.
Considering that Achane’s biggest competition for backfield snaps is 32-year-old Raheem Mostert, who has not been the epitome of health throughout his career, makes it a realistic possibility that Achane could see a much bigger workload in his sophomore season.
WR Brian Thomas Jr., Jacksonville Jaguars
Just because Malik Nabers is the more exciting prospect coming out of school doesn’t mean we should overlook the other dynamic LSU wide receiver who was also drafted in the first round this year.
Brian Thomas Jr. is a dude who led the FBS with 17 receiving touchdowns last season and then went and ran a 4.33-second 40-yard dash at 6-foot-3 and 209 pounds at the NFL combine. Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson and DeVonta Smith are the only other players who have scored 17 or more receiving touchdowns in a single season playing in the SEC since 2000.
There is an immediate opportunity for Thomas to lead his team in receiving touchdowns this season. With Calvin Ridley leaving in free agency, the Jaguars are in need of a new top red-zone target, as Ridley led the offense with 26 red-zone targets in 2023, 16 more than any other Jaguars player.
Combining Thomas’ big play and touchdown-scoring abilities, he has a super high ceiling and league-winning upside in his rookie season.
WR Rashee Rice, Kansas City Chiefs
Rashee Rice averaged 2.39 yards per route run as a rookie in 2023, the 10th-best average in the NFL among players with 30-plus targets, behind only stud fantasy producers Tyreek Hill, Nico Collins, Brandon Aiyuk, Justin Jefferson, CeeDee Lamb, Jaylen Waddle, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Puka Nacua and A.J. Brown.
It was a slow start for Rice in his rookie year, as he didn’t earn significant playing time until the middle of the season. However, once Andy Reid trusted him to stay on the field consistently, Rice proved his worth.
From Weeks 7-18, Rice led the Chiefs in receiving yards and touchdowns. In the nine games in which Rice played at least 40 offensive snaps, he averaged 16.2 fantasy points per game.
Patrick Mahomes and Rice’s connection looks as strong as ever entering this season, with the two connecting on four of Mahomes' eight completions in the 2024 preseason.
TE Kyle Pitts, Atlanta Falcons
Kyle Pitts’ skill set has been sorely underused over the last few seasons, but things should be dramatically different in Atlanta this season with Kirk Cousins under center and new playcaller Zac Robinson coming over from the Sean McVay system.
Over the last two seasons, not only did Arthur Smith underutilize Pitts in his offense, but even when targets did come his way, they were highly inaccurate. Only 65.5% of Pitts’ targets have been deemed catchable since 2022, which is by far the lowest rate by any tight end with 100-plus targets during that span. Kirk Cousins threw an uncatchable pass on only 13.9% of his attempts in 2023 (the second-lowest rate in the NFL, behind only Patrick Mahomes at 13.3%).
Pitts can be the best pass-catching tight end in the league with Cousins.
Despite playing with bad quarterbacks, Pitts still has the fourth-most downfield receiving yards by any tight end over the last three seasons, behind only Travis Kelce, George Kittle and Mark Andrews. At the same time, Cousins has led the NFL in downfield completion percentage and passer rating since 2021.
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