Juggernaut Index, No. 6: The New Orleans Saints

The Juggernaut Index is our annual ranking and review of NFL teams for fantasy purposes — repeat: FANTASY PURPOSES. Here we concern ourselves with a franchise’s likely contributions to the fantasy player pool. We are not concerned with projected wins and losses. Instead, we’re focused on yards and points. As always, we’re beginning with the league’s least useful teams, working our way toward the elite fantasy juggernauts.

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To date, the decade-long collaboration between Sean Payton and Drew Brees has produced five playoff appearances, three division crowns and one Super Bowl title. New Orleans has led the NFL in total yards in five of the past 10 seasons, and the team has never finished outside the top six. Brees has been named to eight Pro Bowls, he’s delivered five of history’s top-10 yardage seasons, and he’s thrown at least 32 touchdown passes in eight straight years. His career passer rating with the Saints is 99.0. Brees is the only quarterback to reach the 5000-yard plateau in multiple seasons; he’s done it four times with the Saints.

I won’t try to convince you that Payton and Brees have formed the greatest coach-quarterback partnership of all-time, but they certainly belong in the conversation. And if we’re strictly talking fantasy, this pair is the best we’ve ever seen. Receivers come and go, and Brees keeps rolling. He’s led the league in passing yards in four of the past five years, including last season (4870).

If there’s a weakness in Brees’ fantasy profile, you’ll find it in his home vs. road splits. Here’s a look at the key data over the past three seasons:

Brees at home, 2013-15 – 8178 yards, 66 TDs, 17 INTs
Brees on road, 2013-15 – 6806 yards, 38 TDs, 23 INTs

So while he’s been playable away from New Orleans, he’s been an unstoppable fantasy terror in the dome. As great as Brees has been — and, again, he’s been historically great — it’s not as if he’s unbenchable in our game.

But still, we’re only talking about a small number of treacherous road matchups — maybe at KC in October, then at Arizona in December. Otherwise, Brees gets the green light. He’s fantastic. It’s isn’t difficult to construct an argument for him as the No. 1 fantasy QB, and he should never fall outside the top five.

Brandin Cooks was tremendous last year, particularly in the second-half of the fantasy season. In Weeks 9-16, Cooks delivered eight touchdowns while averaging 5.5 catches and 84.0 receiving yards per game. He finished as the No. 12 receiver in standard fantasy leagues, and he needs to be selected in the same neighborhood this year. He’s a burner, a creative runner capable of turning short routes into field-flipping plays. And of course it helps that he’s tied to a deadly accurate QB who gets to throw the ball 600-plus times per season. I’ll take all the Cooks shares I can get.

Willie Snead delivered an exceptional season (69-984-3), quickly emerging as a circle-of-trust receiver for Brees. An oddly light touchdown total prevented Snead from cracking the top-30 at his position for fantasy purposes, but he was plenty useful in PPR. Many early fantasy drafters were bullish on Ohio State rookie Michael Thomas (understandably), but I’ll be surprised if a healthy Snead doesn’t outproduce him.

Nothing against Thomas, just to be clear. He’s a serious talent, a guy with excellent size (6-foot-3, 210) who seems well-suited to do Marques Colston things in this offense. Brees spread plenty of sunshine about the rookie during the offseason, too. It’s not tough to imagine Thomas carving out an early red-zone role, even if he finishes no higher than fourth on the team in targets in his first year.

The Saints threw money at tight end Coby Fleener in the offseason ($36M/5Y), a curious decision by the team, but one that puts the player in the best possible fantasy situation. Fleener’s flaws are well known — catching thrown objects is an issue, unfortunately — but he’s in line for a huge target total. Remember, this offense produced a career-year for Benjamin Watson (74-825-6) in his twelfth NFL season. Last year, Saints tight ends saw 155 targets. The season before, with Jimmy Graham in the mix, it was 175. If Fleener can simply remain healthy for 13 or more games, he’s going to rank top-five at his position in terms of workload. I’m buying. It won’t always be a clinic with Coby — the reviews from camp have been mixed — but volume won’t be a problem.

Mark Ingram returns as the presumptive lead runner in this team’s backfield, having averaged 4.5 YPC over the past three seasons. New Orleans managed to unlock Ingram’s receiving ability last year, as he caught 50 balls for 405 yards on 60 targets. So he’s fully approved for use in all fantasy formats, a reasonable pick in the late second or early third round. The big issue for Ingram, as everyone knows, is durability; he’s missed a dozen games since 2013. But he’s healthy right now, which is more than we can say for a couple dudes being drafted ahead of him (Charles, Jordy). C.J. Spiller is expected to have a somewhat larger role than he did last season (because a smaller role would be next to impossible), but fantasy playoff hero TIm Hightower is probably the closest thing this team has to an Ingram handcuff. Hightower and the newly acquired John Kuhn could poach a goal-line carry or two, though Ingram should still see most of the inside-the-5 work.

The Saints defense was blindingly poor last season, ranking dead-last in the league in points allowed (29.8 PPG) and next-to-last against both the run (129.4 YPG) and pass (284.0 YPG). First-round DT Sheldon Rankins was supposed to be a big part of this team’s defensive turnaround, but he could miss as much as half the season due to a broken fibula. Bottom line, you really don’t want anything to do with this D in fantasy leagues of any size. Stay away. We appreciate this group only because they require Brees to put the ball in the air 40 times per game.

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2015 Offensive Stats & Ranks
Points per game – 25.5 (8)
Pass YPG – 310.6 (1)
Rush YPG – 93.2 (24)
Yards per play – 5.9 (4)
Plays per game – 68.5 (4)

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Previous Juggernaut Index entries: 32) Cleveland, 31) San Francisco, 30) Philadelphia, 29) Baltimore, 28) Tennessee, 27) Los Angeles, 26) Miami, 25) Detroit, 24) Chicago, 23) San Diego, 22) Minnesota, 21) Tampa Bay, 20) Atlanta, 19) Washington, 18) Buffalo, 17) Kansas City, 16) Oakland, 15) NY Giants, 14) Indianapolis, 13) Jacksonville, 12) Houston, 11) Denver, 10) NY Jets, 9) Dallas, 8) Cincinnati, 7) New England 6) New Orleans