Fantasy Football Today - Gabriel Davis Profile: Consistent Improvement (07/23 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: July 23, 2022

SportsLine's Jacob Gibbs tells you why looking at the college data of Gabriel Davis can help us predict what his 2022 season will look like.  You can also follow the full-length Fantasy Football Today podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-podcast/id261735167 Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs, You can listen to Fantasy Football Today in 5 on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today in 5 podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today in 5 podcast." Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Gabriel Davis, 74th off the board right now, according to Fantasy Pros ADP. That is wide receiver 31.

Jacob Gibbs is here. He says he's getting very excited about Gabriel Davis. Let's find out right now on Fantasy Football Today in 5. All right, Jacob, without any further ado, why are you getting really excited about this 30-wide receiver who has yet to crack 600 yards in the NFL? Yeah, like a lot of the cases that I make, it's going to have a lot to do with his per route data,

which is really all we have to go off with Davis because we haven't seen him play a regular role yet. But more of Doug into his college data and also just really getting into everything we have from last year. It is pretty exciting. So the per route data from Davis's rookie season was atrocious. But then a funny thing happened. He got better. In year two, Davis increased his target per hour run rate by 39 percent uh his yard per hour run rate rose by 26 percent and this is consistent with something we saw from davis um in college he improved across the board year over year um so in 2017 target on only 16 percent of his routes his first year

um in college up to 23% the next year, and then all the way up to 31% in his final season, which is really, really impressive for somebody who is running as deep of routes and drawing as deep of targets as he was. And we saw that reflected in his yard per route run rate, which is all the way up to three yards in his final season. It started at 1.5 in his first season, then went to 2.2 and then up to three in his last year. So just, we've seen him, he does have a track record of maybe taking a while to adjust, but then really once he starts to figure things out, really becoming an elite producer with the types of routes that he's running and being able to draw targets on those deep routes. And I think

we've seen some signals that that could be happening for him at the NFL level. All right. So you think it's just going to keep getting better from here? I think it could. Yeah, I think he's in a perfect situation here in Buffalo to continue to elevate his game like we've seen. So at the college level, he elevated his target per hour rate by 43 percent from year one to year two, which is really pretty insane progression from one year to the next. I dig into this stuff a lot and I just don't see the type of a jump hardly ever. But that's almost exactly what we saw in year two at the NFL level. Like I said earlier, 39% from year one to year two. From year two to year three at UCF, he rated his target per hour rate by 31%. So a 31% increase from year two to year three at the NFL level,

we'll put him at 24.3%, which just happens to be his exact target per hour and rate in routes that he's run without Cole Beasley on the field in 2021. So we've seen some indication that he could drop targets that high of a rate, 24%. And if he were to increase from year two to year three, the same way that he did at the college level, which we've seen some indication that he could do that because of the jump he saw from year one to year two, it would put him up 24%, which would be really, really a lead for someone who is running as deep a route as he is. There's not very many people who run such deep routes and draw targets on over 22% of the routes. Yeah, he is quite the downfield threat.

Hopefully he can become a more well-rounded receiver now in a bigger role. But what did you see later in the year? Obviously he had that 200-yard game with the four touchdowns in the playoffs, but after their bye week, what kind of splits did you see for Gabriel Davis? Yeah, so it's just like we've talked about here. Even on a more micro level, he continues to get better. We see his progression even within one season where he's not being targeted at a high rate at the beginning of the year.

And then the longer the year goes on, he continues to work his way into a larger role. And we see Buffalo really be intentional about getting the ball in his hands. So in 2020, his rookie season, he was targeted on 13% of his routes. Last year, prior to the bye, he was targeted on 11% of his routes. And this happened right in the middle of the season. So it's pretty even split. After the bye, he was targeted on 22% of his route so double that um 24 if you include the playoffs obviously there's some injuries to emmanuel sanders that helped factor in there but also

buffalo just was intentional about getting him the ball um if you guys listen to the uh full-length fantasy football today podcast we just had we talked about first down targets uh davis was targeted on 25 percent of his first down routes after the buy compared to just 10% before the buy and 11% as a rookie. So these are important because first down targets are worth 20% more fantasy points than all other targets, any other down. And it just indicates the team is, again, trying to get the ball in his hands. And they were. After the buy, it was more than double. And then we saw the same thing in the playoffs. From the bye on, including the playoffs, he was targeted on first downs at almost the same rate as Stephon Diggs,

27% for Diggs, 25% for Davis. So I think everything shows that Davis is a really talented player. The team believes in him. The moves that they've made signal that. And they are continuing to get the ball in his hands more and more. So I'm really, really excited for year three. There were also four games that he played without Emmanuel Sanders, three where Sanders didn't play,

one where Sanders played just 32% of the snaps. And Gabriel Davis had seven or more targets in three of those four games. So all signs point to a big target boost. I'd love to get him in the 70s. I hardly ever see him last that long, but ADP says that's where you're getting him. Pick 74, wide receiver 31. That would be an exciting time

to be able to draft Gabriel Davis. We'll talk about Rashad Bateman. Would we rather have Bateman or Gabriel Davis? Pardon me. We'll tell you on the Sunday edition of Fantasy Football Today in 5.