Fantasy football: Terry McLaurin's breakout is coming

Terry McLaurin is one of the easiest players to get excited for in 2020, which is evidenced in his continually rising average draft position (ADP) and popularity on Fantasy football Twitter. The dude balled out as a rookie and is positioned quite well to build on that success in 2020. As the offseason has progressed, McLaurin has ascended from the WR30-40 ADP range all the way to the WR24 spot as of this writing.

I have McLaurin ranked as my WR18, so there is still a lot of meat left on the bone at his current ADP. However, I do worry that if he continues to rise up people's draft boards, McLaurin will eventually reach a place where his ceiling is too limited to warrant the selection. Washington's offensive limitations put a serious cap on his ceiling -- Mike Tagliere wrote an excellent piece detailing what type of offenses top-6 and top-12 Fantasy finishes have come from historically. Over the last eight years, just 10.4 percent of top-12 Fantasy WR finishes have come from teams ranked in the bottom-10 in offense. Unfortunately, that puts a ceiling on two of my favorite mid-round picks in McLaurin and D.J. Chark.

Okay, now that I have that out of the way, let's talk about what a stud Terry McLaurin is.

As a rookie, McLaurin's PFF receiving grade was the sixth-highest of qualified receivers. Only Michael Thomas, Chris Godwin, Julio Jones, Tyreek Hill, and DeAndre Hopkins graded out higher. That's the second-highest grade of any rookie receiver in the past 10 years.

McLaurin led the entire NFL in contested catch rate. The passer rating when targeting him was the fourth-best in the NFL among players with 90 or more targets, which is even more insane when you consider how atrocious Washington's QB play was last year. McLaurin's yards per route run was ahead of top-flight receivers like Kenny Golladay, D.J. Moore, Hopkins, Keenan Allen, and Allen Robinson, and this was all while enduring one of the worst QB situations in the NFL.

It doesn't matter how awesome McLaurin is if the volume isn't there

Even though McLaurin turned in one of the most impressive rookie wide receiver performances in recent memory, he still finished as just the WR25 in Fantasy. And it's tough to expect him to be much better than he was last year, even though it was just his rookie season. So, for him to experience the breakout everyone is expecting, McLaurin is going to need some support from his offense.

The most obvious way that support will come is an increase in volume as a whole. Washington ranked last in the NFL in plays per game last year -- over the past five years, only one team has run fewer plays per game than Washington's 55.3 mark. That number will come up. Over the past five years, nine teams have run fewer than 60 plays per game. The following year, all nine teams ran more offensive plays, and on average the group increased by 6.9 percent.

Coaching change should mean more passing in 2020

In addition to general positive regression, Washington's offensive play count should rise as a result of coaching changes. Ron Rivera and Scott Turner come from Carolina, where they ran the sixth-most offensive plays per game in 2019. That duo also led Carolina to the NFL's fourth-highest pass-to-rush ratio in 2019. Somehow, in spite of playing from behind at the second-highest rate in the NFL, Washington ranked just 18th in pass-to-rush ratio last season.

If Washington's total offensive plays increase by 6.9 percent -- the average following year increase from teams with fewer than 60 offensive plays per game -- it would bring them up from 885 to 946 plays. Carolina ran 1,077 plays under Rivera and Turner last year, so 946 seems realistic.

If 64 percent (Carolina's rate in 2019) of those plays are passes, Washington's pass attempt total comes out to 606, which is a massive increase from their 479 total last year. I have Washington projected for 575 attempts, but the ceiling is there for 600-plus throws while playing from behind on the majority of offensive possessions.

McLaurin had a 19 percent target share as a rookie, which was up to 24 percent when Dwayne Haskins was under center. 24 percent of 606 attempts is 145, which is way more than the 93 targets McLaurin saw in 14 games last year.

I'm not projecting McLaurin for 145 targets, but I do think there's a chance that he sees 120, or even 130 if Washington ranks in the top-10 in pass attempts in 2020. And if he's anywhere near as efficient as he was in 2019, McLaurin should have no problem finishing inside the top-15 at the position with that type of volume.

Again, I have McLaurin ranked as my WR18 and he is being drafted as the WR24 on average. So he doesn't have to finish as a top-15 wideout to return value where you're selecting him now. He actually has the 16th-highest base projection for me -- ahead of Mike Evans and JuJu Smith-Schuster -- but those two have access to a much higher ceiling than McLaurin.