Fantasy Upside
Teddy Bridgewater now has two seasons under his belt, and continues to progress as a quarterback. His overall numbers improved in his sophomore season, and he’s starting to get some receivers to throw to.
Stefon Diggs emerged last season as a rookie with some eye-popping games, and the Vikings drafted Laquon Treadwell in the first round to help out as well. Reports from OTAs say Bridgewater is focusing on the deep ball, which would be a massive improvement from last season where he only took 39 shots downfield.
Fantasy Downside
The downside of Bridgewater is blatantly obvious if you look at the simple statistics from last season. He averaged less than a touchdown per game throwing the ball (14 in 16 starts) and had the fewest yards per game out of any quarterback with at least 400 pass attempts.
The Vikings are a team that will focus on running the ball with Adrian Peterson in order to control the clock. Very rarely will you see them air the ball out a bunch. In fact, Bridgewater only had one game with more than 40 pass attempts. For comparison, Philip Rivers averaged 41 attempts a game.
Bottom Line
Bridgewater is a good quarterback, on a good team, with a solid offensive line and players around him to support him. But the Vikings philosophy of run-first doesn’t bode well for Bridgewater’s fantasy purposes, and that’s way he’s at the lower-end of quarterback rankings.
A bump up in production can be expected from Bridgewater, but we’re not projecting a huge year unless something crazy happens.