Fantasy Points Logo - Wordmark

Fantasy Fallout: Will Fuller to the Dolphins

season

We hope you're enjoying this old content for FREE. You can view more current content marked with a FREE banner, but you'll have to sign up in order to access our other articles and content!

Fantasy Fallout: Will Fuller to the Dolphins

Will Fuller is off to South Beach on a one-year deal worth a shade over $10 million in 2021. As far as the one-year deals have gone, Fuller — who will turn 27 next month — is making just $4M than aging veterans A.J. Green and Emmanuel Sanders will pull in this season. GM Chris Grier has done a masterful job with the Dolphins rebuild so far and with four picks inside of the top-50 overall in the upcoming draft, Miami is well positioned to greatly improve their offensive line.

With Fuller and DeVante Parker out wide, along with Mike Gesicki playing in the big slot role, the Dolphins have the best pass-catching corps they’ve put together in a very long time. They still need a little more depth, but surrounding Tua Tagovailoa with weapons is paramount.

Now, there is no denying that the Dolphins offense was better with Ryan Fitzpatrick under center than Tua last year. Miami averaged 2.32 points scored per drive with Fitz compared to 2.0 points/drive with Tua as the starter. And, according to SIS, the offense averaged -0.03 EPA/pass with Tua and +0.12/EPA/pass with Fitzpatrick.

Those are significant splits for sure, but some context is obviously needed. Tua was coming off of a major injury and would have benefited greatly from a normal offseason. Plus, it’s not like the Dolphins have the best offensive line talent and Parker was dealing with injuries for most of the season. Tua has only thrown 290 career passes — we don’t know enough to say whether he’s going to be a high-end starter or not.

Adding Fuller is a legitimate game-changer. Need evidence for just how much his separation and speed matters? Just take a look at Deshaun Watson’s career splits with Fuller on the field/without him:

SplitWith Fuller (33 Games)Without Fuller (21 Games)
Yards per game281.3249.2
TDs per game2.241.43
INTs per game0.760.52
Attempts per game32.232.6
Completion%67.4%68.7%
Yards per attempt8.787.62
TD% (TD/attempt)7.0%4.4%
Fantasy points per game23.020.6
Passing fantasy points per attempt0.580.45

(Data from RotoViz’s game-splits app.)

With one of the games premier deep threats, we’ll now get to evaluate just how good Tua’s arm is.

Again, it’s a tiny sample to go off of — but Tua was actually just as aggressive as Fitzpatrick was last year. According to SIS, Fitzpatrick threw deep (15+ yards downfield) on 17.2% of his attempts while Tua did so 16.9% of the time. On that note, Fitzpatrick led the league in tight window throws (22%) according to Next Gen Stats but Tua wasn’t too far behind (20%; sixth-highest rate).

Fuller was one of my ride-or-die picks in the sixth/seventh round last year and I’m going to be back if the public remains unreasonably and unnecessarily low on Tua. Fuller’s early ADP is WR27, in a similar range as Chase Claypool and Tyler Boyd. If Fuller proves his worth and has a massive season, he’s set to cash in big on a long-term contract in 2021. And this is as good a time as any to remind you that being Injury Prone is a Lie.

Graham Barfield blends data and film together to create some of the most unique content in the fantasy football industry. Barfield is FantasyPoints’ Director of Analytics and formerly worked for the NFL Network, Fantasy Guru, and Rotoworld.