Carolina Panthers: The Return of Kelvin Benjamin
The Carolina Panthers will return a big chip to the fantasy football train, and you might want to get on now.
The Carolina Panthers got Kelvin Benjamin back this week. His return changes the nature of the team and the nature of fantasy production for this team. He becomes a big part of the offense again and he could relegate others to non factors in the fantasy lineup.
One only needs to look at the numbers. Cam Newton’s efficiency was slightly better in 2015 than it was in 2014, and that was a reflection of his relative health in both campaigns. The number that changed was his touchdown passes.
Fantasy football cares only about the numbers and those are passing yards and touchdowns for quarterbacks that become receiving yards and touchdowns for wide receivers.
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Newton was good for 3,127 yards and 18 touchdowns in 14 games. A simple full season projection would yield 3573 if he had played sixteen games with twenty-one touchdown passes. Over the sixteen game period, Benjamin would have 1008 receiving yards with nine touchdowns. That is 28% of Newton’s theoretical production and 43% of his touchdown passes.
With those ratios in hand, let’s see what a healthy Benjamin would have produced in 2015 in the surge of Newton scoring. This time Newton had 3837 yards over 16 games and thirty five touchdowns. Benjamin would have had a 1074 receiving yard season. If the scoring percentage had stayed the same, Benjamin would have accounted for fifteen touchdowns. A Pro Bowl season if it had happened.
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The question becomes would Benjamin have had that season? Newton threw to a number of targets last year, but Greg Olsen’s numbers were only slightly better in the absence of Benjamin. It is not a dissimilar comparison to Tom Brady before and during Randy Moss. Brady had a security blanket (first Deion Branch then Wes Welker now Robb Gronkowski) whose production was consistent, while Brady used a number of targets to succeed.
When Brady had Moss, Brady’s production increased and Moss became the key target. Moss and Welker managed to coexist just fine as Olsen and Benjamin did. It was the other receivers who became less of a factor in the offense. So Benjamin should provide a boost to the offense, but your interest in Ted Ginn or Corey Brown should decrease.
Draft Benjamin. If you don’t, you can’t make it up from drafting a collection of others.
We will never know what Benjamin would have meant for last year’s Panthers team. Less drops than Ginn? Could Aqib Talib have pulled the facemask of a receiver six inches taller and thirty pounds heavier? Come September we will at least get another look at it.