5 Fantasy Football Busts for 2022

Not every selection you make in a fantasy football draft is going to be a league winner, but it would be nice to hit on the majority of your roster. Players will bust every season and we all do our best to mine out guys who may let us down before we even walk up to the draft board and put that sticker on, or virtually hit that draft button.

Here are five players with the potential to underwhelm or underproduce in 2022 who are most likely being valued too high in terms of average draft position, or ADP.

Javonte Williams, Broncos (Underdog ADP: 22.9, RB12)

This is a steep price to pay for someone who is going to need an injury or extreme shift in backfield touch% to truly reach his ceiling. The addition of quarterback Russell Wilson has no doubt buoyed the entirety of the offense, but that doesn’t mask the fact that Javonte Williams is in a near 50/50 split with Melvin Gordon through training camp, exactly like this backfield operated throughout 2021. En route to finishing as the RB25 (Gordon) and RB26 (Williams) last season, the tandem had the exact same number of carries (203) and the exact same snap% (51).

As the 12th RB off draft boards right now, his price tag is way too steep for a back who will operate in more of a 1A/1B situation. Let someone else pay for Williams while you grab Mike Evans, Tyreek Hill, or Tee Higgins in that ADP range.

David Montgomery, RB - Bears (Underdog ADP: 60, RB21)

On an offense with a terrible offensive line and an ever-dwindling amount of options to move the ball into scoring position, David Montgomery’s only saving grace was a possible monster workload, and we’re hearing reports that it may not be in the cards for 2022. Training camp buzz is oftentimes just that; buzz. But it’s worth noting that Khalil Herbert performed admirably in Montgomery’s steed last season, using his four opportunities of manning the backfield by himself to turn in numbers not too dissimilar to those of the team’s RB1.

Would the sixth-round rookie have kept this pace if his one month as a starter had extrapolated over an entire season? It’s hard to say, but if Matt Eberflus and the rest of the new coaching staff like what they see in Khalil Herbert, then they may mix him into action more than the last coaching staff, who were content to ride one running back for the whole game, no matter who was their RB1. That scenario would severely limit Montgomery’s upside in what is already likely to be a terrible offense.

Treylon Burks, WR - Titans (Underdog ADP: 87.4, WR43)

It may be tempting to try to replace A.J. Brown with rookie Treylon Burks, especially since the pick the Titans acquired in the trade with Philly was used on the Arkansas WR. However, this is not the year to invest in Burks in both best ball and redraft formats.

The Titans are a run-centric team and may be even more ground-heavy without Brown on the roster. Robert Woods is a decent value as WR50, but Burks’ ADP is currently in the eighth round as WR43 which seems high for a rookie who could be behind not only Woods, but TE Austin Hooper in what receiving work there is in Tennessee.

In that same ADP range, look at Hunter Renfrow, Chris Olave, and Christan Kirk, guys with higher floors and ceilings in 2022.

T.J. Hockenson, TE - Lions (Underdog ADP: 90.7, TE7)

Hockenson was sadly in the article last year as well, but again he finds himself too expensive compared to the players that are going around him on the draft board. He would more or less return value in 2021, as he was being selected as the TE6 before finishing as the TE7 in half-PPR PPG, but the types of players you were having to sacrifice to select him turned out to be brutal; Diontae Johnson, Ja'Marr Chase, and Cooper Kupp, to name a few.

It’s more of the same heading into 2022 with an added caveat of a bolstered pass-catching Lions group around him. An eighth-round price to include Hockenson onto your team doesn’t seem that bad on paper, but when we consider that Amari Cooper, Chris Godwin, and Gabriel Davis are going around that same ADP, it doesn’t sound as enticing. When looking at the landscape of his own team, it’s difficult to imagine Hockenson overcoming the odds to pay off his draft position. Before Amon-Ra St. Brown truly rolled into form, Hockenson knocked out two TE1 performances to begin the year on the back of 19 combined targets. Over the rest of the 10 games he would go on to play, he totaled 76.5 half-PPR points, operating as fantasy’s TE16 in PPG. Now he has to compete with not only St. Brown but also veteran D.J. Chark and 12th-overall selection Jameson Williams. This all feels like a lot of mouths to feed on a kneecap-biting offense that had the third-slowest situation neutral pace last season.

Mike Gesicki, TE - Dolphins (Underdog ADP: 148.1, TE15)

After coming off draft boards as the TE12 in 2021, Mike Gesicki would wrap up the year by averaging 7.4 half-PPR points per game, good enough for a TE16 finish despite finishing fourth amongst tight ends with his 111 targets. Gesicki had a woefully inefficient season, finishing 19th in yards after the catch, 16th in yards per target, and 23rd in receiver rating, each out of 29 qualifying tight ends. What’s more damning, the majority of the tight end’s fantasy-relevant production came with quarterback Tua Tagovailoa out of the lineup, as highlighted by our Market Share Splits App.

In all, Mike Gesicki put together four TE1 weeks with his 111 targets; two were with Tagovailoa sidelined. It’s hard to see how Gesicki is going to beat his 2021 output, especially considering how much of the team’s target share is going to go to Tyreek Hill after Miami shipped off five draft picks for his services. I’d put my money on Gesicki being nothing more than a streaming option on an offense that could provide him a couple of spike weeks.