Minnesota Vikings 2023 Fantasy Football Preview: Should Justin Jefferson be the No. 1 overall pick?

2022 Stats

Points per game: 24.9 (8th)
Total yards per game: 361.5 (7th)
Plays per game: 65.5 (7th)
Pass attempts + sacks per game: 40.9 (3rd)
Dropback EPA per play: 0.069 (10th)
Rush attempts per game: 23.3 (30th)
Rush EPA per play: -.129 (29th)

Coaching Staff

Kevin O’Connell enters his second season as Minnesota’s head coach after bringing a modern edge to the team’s offense in 2022 after years of Mike Zimmer’s self-defeating, hyper-conservative offensive philosophy. O’Connell led one of the NFL’s most efficient offensive units in his first season, getting the most out of his immobile quarterback and the league’s most unstoppable weapon, Justin Jefferson.

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The Vikings this offseason made three coaching staff changes: Mike Siravo, a Brian Flores acolyte, will take over as inside linebackers coach; Lance Bennett, formerly of the Dolphins, will serve as defensive quality control coach; and Grant Udinski will be Minnesota’s new assistant quarterbacks coach.

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Passing Offense

QB: Kirk Cousins, Nick Mullens
WR: Justin Jefferson, Brandon Powell
WR: Jordan Addison, Jalen Reagor
WR: K.J. Osborn, Jalen Nailor
TE: T.J. Hockenson, Josh Oliver

The Vikings transformed into a pass-first offense in 2022, pleasing fantasy managers who drafted the team’s pass catchers and vexing those who went in on Dalvin Cook, hoping his career decline would be stemmed by a modernized O’Connell offense.

Minnesota had the NFL’s eighth-highest pass rate over expected last season. Curiously, the Vikings were 21st in pass rate over expected on first downs — a telling stat that usually means the team is not putting its quarterback in the best possible position to exploit defenses.

Cousins’ passing profile changed considerably in his first year under O’Connell. His 7.9 average depth of target (aDOT) was a career low, as was his adjusted yards per attempt of 7. He was a bit unlucky, posting a 4.5 percent touchdown rate, below his career rate of 5.3 percent. Importantly, O’Connell — like his former boss, Sean McVay — is committed to passing the ball in the red zone. Cousins was second behind Patrick Mahomes in both attempts inside the 20 and inside the 10. Twenty-three of his 29 touchdown passes came inside the red zone. It paid off nicely for Justin Jefferson, who tied Travis Kelce for the league lead with 19 targets in the green zone — 10 more than he saw in 2021.

A sustained commitment to establishing the pass where it counts the most should keep Cousins’ touchdown floor as sturdy as any QB outside the elite tier. That Cousins provides zero rushing upside makes him more of a QB2 option in 12-team fantasy formats. He’ll once again be a useful (read: safe) Superflex play at the head of a pass-heavy Vikings unit.

Jefferson’s massive 2022 output was fueled by two factors: His otherworldly talent and a change in his usage. Jefferson’s average depth of target plunged to 10.7 last season and his downfield target rate dropped. That might seem like a knock to a wideout’s fantasy prospects, but in the case of a hyper-efficient alpha receiver like Jefferson, it’s a decidedly good change. He got a glut of intermediate targets that helped smooth over his fantasy output in weeks when he didn’t catch a couple of touchdowns or snag a long ball or three. It’s the same phenomenon we saw with Cooper Kupp in 2021. O’Connell promised to use Jefferson like Kupp and he delivered in spades. It’s why Jefferson should be the first player off the board in every fantasy draft this summer. All who dissent — Packers fans, I’m guessing — should be roundly shamed by their league mates.

Jordan Addison, taken by the Vikings in the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft, is widely expected to function as the team’s No. 2 wideout after the departure of Adam Thielen to Carolina. I think it’s presumptuous to assume Addison will be the clear-cut WR2 in the Minnesota offense after he missed offseason workouts and mandatory minicamp with an unspecified injury. There’s also the inconvenient facts that Addison was a complete disaster at the NFL Combine and his production fell off the proverbial cliff in his final collegiate season after transferring from Pitt — where he dominated in 2021 — to USC. There’s a lot working against the rookie.

Enter K.J. Osborn, who came on in the final couple months of the 2022 season and has a year of experience in O’Connell’s system — and seems comfortable in it. Running 60 percent of his pass routes from the slot over the regular season’s final month, Osborn was 19th among NFL receivers in yards per route run and 14th in targets per route run. Only four slot receivers had more receptions than Osborn over the span. He’s likely to work as Cousins’ primary slot guy since Addison was mostly used on the perimeter in college.

O’Connell, meanwhile, has lavished praise on Osborn this offseason — calling him a “real standout” during mandatory minicamp — while Addison has nursed his unknown injury. "[Osborn] is moving around, he's playing multiple spots, taking on a leadership role, which I expected him to do in that room, and it's just been a really cool process to see not only what his ownership of what his role was previously, but you can see it when he breaks the huddle," O'Connell said.

I much prefer Osborn over Addison considering the canyon that lies between their redraft ADPs.

T.J. Hockenson emerged last year as fantasy football’s premier PPR scam after being traded to the Vikings from Detroit at midseason. Hockenson turned into an elite fantasy option in the Zach Ertz mold, with a meager 1.43 yards per route run, ranking 31st among tight ends from Week 9-18. His usage was beautiful for fantasy purposes though. Only Travis Kelce had more targets and receptions than Hockenson over the season’s final nine weeks, and no tight end ran more routes — including 35 percent from the slot — than Hockenson over that stretch. Incredibly, he was fourth among all NFL pass catchers in targets per route run in the season’s final five weeks.

There’s an argument for Hockenson as a top-three (top two?) fantasy tight end in 2023. Pay no mind to the Vikings awarding journeyman TE Josh Oliver with a confounding three-year, $21 million contract this offseason.

Rushing Offense

RB: Alexander Mattison, Dwayne McBride, Ty Chandler
OL (L-R): Christian Darrisaw, Ezra Cleveland, Garrett Bradbury, Ed Ingram, Brian O’Neill

The Vikings releasing Dalvin Cook should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with Cook’s statistical decline over the past two seasons and Kevin O’Connell’s indifference toward establishing the run. The post-Zimmer Vikings are all in on pouring resources into the passing attack and getting by with viable-if-not-spectacular rushers.

That doesn’t mean the Vikings don’t have the foundation for a solid rushing game. Pro Football Focus in 2022 graded Minnesota’s offensive line as the fourth-best run blocking unit, trailing the Eagles, Falcons and Ravens. That should be welcome news to anyone who takes Alexander Mattison in fantasy drafts this summer.

Nothing indicates Mattison is a special rusher by any means. He gets what’s blocked and has been a decent-enough pass catcher out of the backfield when called upon to take Cook’s spot as Minnesota’s every-down back. The team’s coaching staff seems to trust Mattison, a factor that can’t be overlooked as fantasy managers seek ways to overthink the post-Cook Vikings backfield. Mattison makes the most sense for fantasy drafters who go heavy on receivers, tight ends and/or quarterbacks in the opening rounds and later seek volume-based running back options to plug and play. If you take an elite running back or two, there’s no earthly reason to draft Mattison this summer.

Behind Mattison will be rookie RB DeWayne McBride and Ty Chandler, a favorite of Generation Z. McBride is a year removed from leading all college backs with 1,732 rushing yards and 19 rushing touchdowns at UAB. Only Florida State RB Trey Benson had a higher yards after contact per carry than McBride in 2022. Taken by the Vikings in the seventh round of the 2023 draft, McBride, 21, profiles as an early-round grinder who could have some fantasy value if Mattison misses time.

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Chandler, an uber athlete with a 94th percentile speed score, was an explosive if little-used receiving back in college and would likely take over as Minnesota’s primary pass-catching backfield option if Mattison were to get dinged up in 2023. Chandler was active for a mere three games in 2022, seeing six carries. The Vikings’ pass-first ways and a split backfield (if Mattison were temporarily out of the picture) won’t offer much in the way of upside for Chandler or McBride. Given the choice, I’d rather roster McBride as an end-of-bench stash for Zero RB purposes. McBride strikes me as tremendously boring, and I like my boring RBs.

Win Total

MGM Over/Under: 8.5
Pick: Over

Yes, the Vikings were lucky through much of the 2022 season. They somehow won 13 games while being outscored by three points. An over/under of 8.5 strikes me as a dramatic reaction to Minnesota’s good fortune though. An offense that moved the ball through the air at will last year — and key players entering a second season in Kevin O’Connell’s system — should all but guarantee nine wins in 2023, though the Vikings are one Justin Jefferson injury away from being the 2022 Rams.