When participating in early Best Ball drafts, fantasy football managers need to be ready to react and capitalize on all news, however big or small. Stefon Diggs did not report to the Buffalo Bills’ mandatory minicamp on Tuesday, June 13. Should early Best Ball drafters be targeting Gabe Davis on the possibility Diggs isn’t a Bill this season?
Did you get a trade offer in your dynasty or redraft league? Not sure what to do? Make championship-winning decisions with PFN’s FREE Fantasy Football Trade Analyzer and Calculator!
Stefon Diggs’ Minicamp Absence Could Be an Opportunity for Fantasy Managers
There are pros and cons to drafting fantasy teams this early. On the one hand, with values still very much in flux, you can put together rosters that simply won’t be possible in a couple of months. On the other hand, players can get hurt, or their values can shift so much so that you have literally guaranteed zeros on your roster.
Regardless of your opinion on the matter, if you’re drafting a Best Ball team in May, you need to embrace the uncertainty. If you’re not going to wait until player roles and team situations are more clear, you need to at least attempt to leverage the time in which you are drafting to your advantage.
Over a month ago, I wrote about how fantasy managers should be prioritizing Alexander Mattison in Best Ball drafts, as his ADP did not reflect the high likelihood that Dalvin Cook was cut or traded. Now, Mattison’s ADP has shot up several rounds.
If Diggs’ rift with the Bills is real and irreconcilable, we could be looking at a similar situation.
The Athletic’s Joe Buscaglia reported that “Bills HC Sean McDermott says WR Stefon Diggs is not in attendance for mandatory minicamp. McDermott said, ‘he’s very concerned.'”
Typical June news is all sunshine and rainbows. Every player is lighting up minicamp and in the best shape of his life. Positive news can largely be dismissed as noise. But negative news — that’s something we need to pay attention to.
MORE: Top Fantasy WR Redraft Rankings 2023
Diggs’ issues with the Bills stem back to last season when he was visibly frustrated with Josh Allen and his offense following their loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the Divisional Round.
The report is even more curious in the wake of Adam Schefter’s report from Diggs’ agent that Diggs “is in Buffalo, has been in Buffalo since yesterday morning, took his physical, met with the head coach and GM the past two days and the Pro-Bowl WR ‘will be there for the entirety of the minicamp.’”
If Diggs were to leave Buffalo for whatever reason, that would elevate Davis into the WR1 role. At the bare minimum, his ADP would increase multiple rounds if that were to happen. To fully extract value in Best Ball, fantasy managers need to be drafting Davis before the potential ADP spike.
Without Diggs, the Bills’ WR Situation May Resemble the Kansas City Chiefs
There’s a key difference between the Cook-Mattision situation and a potential Diggs-Davis situation. We already saw Mattison operate as the lead back. Also, the RB position provides a much more direct replacement scenario. But when a WR is removed from the equation, the next man up almost never provides a true 1-to-1 replacement.
In seasonal leagues, drafting Davis right now would be a low-risk proposition. His WR40-ish ADP is already near his floor. Even given his volatile nature, he’ll produce enough boom weeks alongside Diggs to be a fantasy WR4. If Diggs does leave and you didn’t believe in Davis, you could just trade him for a profit.
In Best Ball, however, there’s no trading. So, if you’re drafting Davis, you have to believe he could step up and be the team’s true WR1. Unfortunately, I don’t believe that’s the case.
When the Chiefs traded Tyreek Hill, fantasy managers were too quick to anoint JuJu Smith-Schuster as not necessarily a replacement, but certainly a guy that could be a fantasy WR2 with WR1 upside as the clear top receiver. Instead, Patrick Mahomes distributed the ball around, and no Chiefs pass catcher — outside of Travis Kelce — had any real consistent fantasy value.
The Bills may not have a Kelce, but I fear a similar outcome should Diggs leave. Allen is a top-five quarterback and could make it work without Diggs. My expectation is we would see Davis, Khalil Shakir, Deonte Harty, and possibly even Trent Sherfield all have games where they lead the team in receiving. We could even see more 12 personnel with Dawson Knox and Dalton Kincaid on the field together.
There’s also the looming possibility of the Bills signing DeAndre Hopkins, which would only increase in probability if Diggs was no longer there. Even if Buffalo doesn’t sign Hopkins, they’ll undoubtedly sign someone, adding to the list of receivers that could potentially take targets.
Gabe Davis Just Isn’t an Appealing Fantasy Option
The Diggs report is definitely something to monitor, and the ultimate outcome is highly relevant in fantasy football. However, I’m just not a believer in Davis as a talent.
Last season, the Davis hype propped him up in the fifth and sometimes even the fourth round of Best Ball drafts. With Emmanuel Sanders and Cole Beasley gone, the expectation was Davis would thrive as the team’s WR2. He did assume the WR2 role, but thrive he did not.
Davis averaged 8.8 half-PPR points per game last season. And even that, he did on the heels of spike weeks. Davis posted weeks of 16.8, 30.6, 14.9, and 18.3 fantasy points. Those four games accounted for 54.6% of his total fantasy points for all 16 games he played.
More concerning is Davis’ usage was indicative of a player not trusted by his quarterback or offense. Despite running a route on 94.2% of pass plays — 16th-most in the NFL — Davis was targeted on just 18.3% of them, 68th in the league.
Davis only averaged 1.87 fantasy points per target, which is low considering his 15.2-yard average depth of target was sixth-highest in the NFL.
Of course, Davis’ volume numbers would undoubtedly tick up if Diggs weren’t around. However, I don’t think it would be by nearly the amount the market would expect, and it would be partially, if not mostly, offset by a decrease in efficiency.
At his WR41 ADP on Underdog, Davis currently comes with very little risk. Fantasy managers can continue to draft Davis the way they were previously. I would just caution against aggressively targeting him with the hope that Diggs might not be there this season and that Davis would derive more than a minimal benefit from it.
