Tyler Boyd is a Fantasy Football Value in 2022

Fresh off an AFC Championship, the Cincinnati Bengals have a lot to be excited about heading into the 2022 season. From a fantasy football standpoint, both Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins are two of the most talked about players of the offseason. So much so that both have average draft positions (ADP) within the first two rounds and top-10 at their respective position (Chase WR3, Higgins WR10), per UnderDog Fantasy.

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With so much excitement around the passing game, you’d think Tyler Boyd, the Bengals’ WR3, would also be getting some flowers. That has, unfortunately, not been the case. His ADP has slipped to 109.3 overall (WR51), as the natural thought seems to be that if Chase and Higgins thrive, it’ll come at the expense of Boyd. This line of thinking is a mistake at his ADP and here’s why.

The Bengals are Going to Pass…a lot

If the second half of the 2021 season is any indication, we should expect a heavy dosage of the Bengals' passing attack. Per Football Outsiders, the Bengals jumped to No. 7 in pass DVOA (27.3%) from Weeks 10-17 after starting the season ranked No. 24 in pass DVOA (6.9%) from Weeks 1-9. This aligned almost identically to their passing play percentages. From Weeks 1-9 last season, the Bengals ranked 22nd in pass play percentage (57.02%). By the end of the season, they had jumped to 13th overall (59.48%).

Coming off of a torn ACL in 2020, it was obvious the Bengals wanted to ease Joe Burrow back into the fold and progress as the season went on. This data backs that up. With a full season of health under his belt, we’re much more likely to see the passing play percentages that we saw towards the back-end of last season rather than the beginning.

Looking solely at those final eight games of the 2021 season, the Bengals averaged 68.38 plays per game, 36.88 pass attempts per game, and 281.25 passing yards per game. Operating under the assumption that the 2022 offense will look more like this team than the team we saw in Weeks 1-9, we can extrapolate these numbers and apply them to the 2021 season as a whole to provide some perspective.

Taking those as season-long metrics, the Bengals would have ranked No. 8 in pass attempts per game, No. 4 in passing yards per game, and No. 2 in plays per game.

This bodes incredibly well for the entire offense, but is this just a boost for the two alpha receivers? Not so fast. Boyd showed an ability to thrive as well.

Tyler Boyd has a Solidified Role

Continuing the theme of splitting the 2021 season into two separate groupings for the Bengals, we continue to notice a few more themes. This time, they are specific to Boyd. Using 4for4’s Market Share Splits App, Boyd saw a jump in production despite a slight dip in target share:

‘In Mean’ refers to Weeks 1-9 while ‘Ex Mean’ refers to Weeks 10-17

While his target share went from 19.6% to 17.0%, Boyd actually averaged more yards per game (+14.5), more air yards per game (+4.4), and accounted for a much higher percentage of the team’s receiving touchdowns (21.4%).

On top of this, the reliable constant is Boyd’s snap share. After logging 74.9% of the snaps in Weeks 1-9, he played even more in Weeks 10-17, playing 80.0% of the team’s snaps. The other reliable aspect of his role as the WR3 is the route running, as the Bengals’ WR3 ran a route on 81% of the team’s dropbacks, good for the highest mark in football, illustrated below:

Something we don't talk about a lot, but may be more impactful than we want to admit is WR-by-committee situations pic.twitter.com/6wEp3gFljW

— Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) July 20, 2022

Given the number of snaps that Boyd plays, the vast majority of these routes are his.

From a macro-level, Boyd saw fewer looks, but the looks that he did see carried far more value than the ones he saw earlier in the season while also maintaining a consistent role in terms of playing time. In the back half of fantasy football drafts, it’s the high-value touches that we want to target.

Reliability Late in Your Draft

Hammering home the aforementioned point about Boyd’s reliability in terms of his role, it’s difficult to find another player hovering near his ADP that you can say the same about.

Currently being drafted as the WR51 (109.3 overall), Boyd is sandwiched between a number of backup running backs and a handful of wide receivers with far more question marks around them than he has.

Among some of the receivers being taken near him, we have:

• Treylon Burks (WR46): A rookie wide receiver in a run-heavy offense that carries some of the worst camp reports of the offseason related to his conditioning into 2022.
• Chase Claypool (WR50): a third-year receiver coming off of a putrid 2021 and now playing with a combination of either Mitch Trubisky or rookie Kenny Pickett.
• Rondale Moore (WR55): a second-year wideout that had a minimal impact in 2021, remains undersized, and will still be fighting for targets behind Marquise Brown and Zach Ertz. This is all excluding DeAndre Hopkins, who is set to return in Week 7.

These are only three of the players being drafted in Boyd’s vicinity, but three players that we can confidently say have lower floors than Boyd and arguably, lower ceilings as well as undoubtedly more question marks.

It’s incredibly difficult to find stable floors with high-value-touch upside at this point in drafts like the combination that Boyd carries, making him an incredibly safe selection in the back end of your drafts.

Bottom Line

• The Bengals are poised to air it out in 2022 and despite starting off last season with a more conservative approach, this is an offense that has proven the ability to support three fantasy-friendly pass-catchers.
• Thanks to a stable role with high-value touches, Tyler Boyd provides bench depth with some flex appeal late in your fantasy football drafts.
• Tyler Boyd’s ADP is currently 109.3 as WR51 on UnderDog and provides plenty of room for a finish far north of his ADP if his second-half role from 2021 carries over into 2022.