Noah Fant Breakout Coming
Noah Fant is primed to breakout in 2020 and it does not appear people have caught on to it yet. He is already one of the most athletic tight ends in the league and is walking into a very promising situation coming into year two of his NFL career. He is a rare combination of size, speed and agility. With is athelic ability is able to make big plays so he doesn't need alot of volume in order to produce in fantasy football.
Looking back at 2019
I honestly expected a bit more production in 2019. 2018 Broncos OC Rich Scangarello was a Shannahan disciple and I expected him to use more 21 personnel (2 WRs, 1 TE, 2 RBs). This scheme typically uses the TE as a slot WR like George Kittle. This actually turned out to be the case but there were other factors working against him. And given the 1st round draft capital it seemed they drafted him to make him a featured part of the offense.
1. Passing Volume. Denver finished 28th is pass attempts. The team appeared to take a noverall conservative approach with the passing game. Ranked last in passing touchdowns and 24th in net yards per attempt. However they only had 12 interceptions. Given the team was in the playoff race for most of the year, it makes sense that they went with this defense first approach.
2. Running Back Targets. Lindsay had 48 targets, Royce Freeman had 50. That's alot of targets in the short/intermediate areas of the field going to running backs. It's not clear if this was scheme related, just Joe Flacco's preference or a dump offs as a result of bad offensive line play. Either way this did not do Fant any favors.
3. Splitting time. It took Fant a while to work up to a high snap share. He also lost playing time after a couple of bad drops. But once he earned a starting role there was an increase in targets and production.
| Week | Snap Share | Targets | Recs | Yds | PPR Points | Quarterback |
| 8 | 82% | 9 | 5 | 26 | 8.6 | Joe Flacco |
| 9 | 86% | 4 | 3 | 115 | 25.5 | Brandon Allen |
| 11 | 86% | 10 | 4 | 60 | 10.8 | Brandon Allen |
| 12 | 74% | 5 | 3 | 14 | 4.9 | Brandon Allen |
| 13 | 72% | 3 | 1 | 5 | 1.5 | Drew Lock |
| 14 | 49% | 4 | 4 | 113 | 23.8 | Drew Lock |
4. Injuries at the end of the year. After a few breakout games he suffered a foot contustion and hip strain in the middle of a monster game week 14, followed by a shoulder sprain week 15. This lead to a decrease in his snap share and production to end the season.
| Week | Snap Share | Targets | Recs | Yds | PPR Points | Quarterback |
| 15 | 46% | 3 | 2 | 56 | 9.6 | Drew Lock |
| 16 | 58% | 2 | 2 | 10 | 3 | Drew Lock |
| 17 | 59% | 2 | 1 | 4 | 1.4 | Drew Lock |
Despite all this he still finished 2nd on the team in targets with 66 and averaged 14.1 yards per catch which was 2nd amoung tight ends.
In comes Shurmur.
Clearly the front office wasn't happy with the conservative nature of the offense and decided to make a change. Pat Shurmur has an extensive history of using tight ends as a focal point of his offense. Evan Engram averaged 8.5 targets per game, the only other tight end to average that amount of targets was Travis Kelce. If Engram has finished the year he would have had more targets than Kittle and likely finished in the top 3. Even when Engram went out Kaden Smith averaged 12.5 fantasy points per game (ppr) and 6.8 targets per game in the games he started.
| Year | Shurmur TE | Targets Per Game | Target Share | PPR Points Per Game | Overall Finish in PPR |
| 2019 | Evan Engram | 8.5 | 22% | 13.7 | 18th (8 games) |
| 2018 | Evan Engram | 5.8 | 16.8% | 11.3 | 13th (11 games) |
| 2017 | Kyle Rudolph | 5.1 | 15.4% | 10.6 | 8th (Thielen happened) |
| 2016 | Kyle Rudolph | 8.3 | 22.5% | 13.1 | 2nd |
| 2015 | Zach Ertz | 7.5 | 18% | 11.3 | 9th (Split with Celek) |
Furthermore there is likely to be an increase in passing volume under the new system. Shurmur's giants ranked 9th in pass attempts in 2018 and 2019. Barring the a big move in the draft there isn't any real target competition for Fant. It appears he will be the 2nd option in the passing game behind Courtland Sutton. He also only had a few games with Drew Lock before he got hurt. So we have:
1. Increase in passing volume
2. Little target competition
3. Featured role for tight-end under Shurmur
4. Better Quarterback play with Drew Lock
There is an easy path to over 100 targets and a top 5 finish in 2020.
