The 2021 Seahawks Fantasy Football Primer
As we prepare for Week 3 of the NFL preseason, we are quickly approaching the busiest weekend of the fantasy sports calendar. More fantasy football leagues will hold their drafts this weekend than all other weeks combined. With your draft right around the corner, there are a few things you should keep in mind when you select these Seahawks.
QB Russell Wilson
If you play in a standard fantasy league, Wilson will cost you, on average, a fifth or sixth-round pick. His current ADP (average draft position) in ESPN leagues is the 60th overall player and seventh quarterback overall. It's a bit odd to see Dak Prescott getting taken a few spots ahead of him, considering that Prescott is coming off a serious injury and doesn't have a significantly better supporting cast around him.
The price feels fair for Wilson in a standard league, but if you play in a superflex or two-quarterback league, you'll need to commit a second-round pick to land him. What you're paying for in Wilson is consistency. He's the only QB to throw for 30 or more touchdowns in four consecutive seasons and he's never missed a game. You likely aren't getting the No. 1 fantasy QB when you select him, but you're almost certainly getting a good return on this investment.
RB Chris Carson
Very few running backs are as overlooked as Carson. He consistently produces like a high-end RB2 when healthy and is consistently treated as a low-end RB2 by most of the fantasy community. But the market appears to be catching onto the value of the Seahawks' bell-cow running back. This year, Carson is the 19th running back off the board in ESPN's standard game and will cost you around pick 42 to land him. The middle of the fourth round is a great place to land a rock-solid second running back and allows the drafter to focus on a receiver with two of their first three picks, a position that features a lot of depth but just as many question marks.
WR DK Metcalf
No Seahawk will cost you more than Metcalf and it's not difficult to see why. We all know he's an absolute beast and the jump he took between years one and two was truly impressive. Metcalf was incredibly consistent in 2020, posting just three games with fewer than 10 fantasy points, which were easily offset by the eight games in which he scored 18 or more points, including a 40-point bomb against the 49ers in Week 8.
Metcalf is currently going at the 19th pick in the draft and is the fifth WR off the board. The landmine to avoid when selecting Metcalf is to not become bored with consistency. Metcalf may very well see a small decrease in his fantasy value this year, causing impatient owners to become angry that he didn't improve over his incredible 2020 season. If there is an owner like that in your league, you may be able to feast on their disappointment.
Don't get angry with a top-10 season; it's exactly what you're drafting Metcalf to give you.
WR Tyler Lockett
Anybody who had Lockett on a fantasy team last season will tell you that the ride to finish as the eighth-best fantasy receiver was not a smooth one. After his monster 200-yard, three-touchdown game against the Cardinals in Week 7, Lockett was largely ordinary until Week 17 and that was too late to help most fantasy owners. But the market seems to understand the inconsistency of Lockett's 2020, and as such he is currently going as the 55th overall pick and the 19th wide receiver off the board.
Lockett will cost you a mid-to-late fifth-round pick, which is a solid value for a player capable of winning you weeks. Ideally, Lockett is a flex play in a standard league, but with a solid No. 1 receiver like Davante Adams, Lockett is a great player to match with him. I wouldn't recommend you spend a second-round pick on Metcalf and then a fifth on Lockett, but there are scenarios where rostering both of Seattle's wideouts make sense.
Everybody else
Nobody else is all that worthy of a draft pick in standard leagues, except for kicker Jason Myers. But you should never draft a kicker before the last or second-to-last round, so that is more about luck of the draw than anything else.
If you want to play the waiting game on tight-end, Gerald Everett could be a sneaky grab, but you're better off grabbing him as a flier to hang around the bench until we see what this new Seahawks offense can do with him. Rashaad Penny is a late-round flier worth looking at, especially if you roster Carson. But other than that, Seattle's "big four" are where you should spend most of your attention.
