Photo by Scott Taetsch-USA TODAY Sports

Welcome to the ninth article of my “Dynasty Breakdowns” series where I use statistics and data analytics to find disparities between my evaluation of a player and the general consensus to gain advantages in dynasty fantasy football. At the end of this article, I’ll discuss whether it’s best to buy, sell, or somewhere in between as well as consider this player’s rookie pick value. Today, I’ll be discussing my thoughts on Washington Commanders receiver, Jahan Dotson.

The former Penn State Nittany Lion will be entering his third NFL season in 2024 as the team’s likely wide receiver two. However, as I’ll discuss later on, he really hasn’t been used as such. Drafted with the 16th overall pick of the 2022 NFL Draft, Dotson was selected to ignite a talent-deprived team whose opening day quarterback was the ghost of Carson Wentz.

Jahan Dotson began his rookie campaign with a bang, posting an average of 13.05 PPR fantasy points in his first four games, before straining his hamstring in the fourth game and subsequently missing the next five games. He didn’t truly get back to 100% until Week 13 when he played 79% of snaps – his highest since Week 3. He would play the remaining five games of his rookie season injury-free with PPR finishes of 16.4, 20.5, 19.6, 6.7, and 10.2. Though injuries may have prevented a true early breakout, Jahan Dotson showed fantasy owners all they needed to draft him highly in 2024. As a result of this, he was commonly held as a great value, eager to break out in his second season. According to Fantasy Pros, Dotson was drafted as the WR 35 in 2023, up from WR 58 in his rookie season. As many of his fantasy shareholders in 2023 would find out, however, drafting Dotson was a major mistake.

Jahan Dotson’s second season opened up with a new sheriff in town – Sam Howell. The second-year quarterback out of North Carolina was drafted in the fifth round of the 2022 Draft, though only played one game in 2022. In 2023 arose the unlikely opportunity to quarterback an NFL franchise. Of course Howell must have been thrilled, but for Dotson (and his fantasy owners), this wasn’t the best of news. In 2023, Dotson became an afterthought in the Howell-lead Commanders offense. Though he played at least 70% of snaps of every game on a team that’s failures would lead it to a pass-heavy game script, Dotson simply couldn’t seem to get the production he deserved. What exactly happened? As we’ll discuss further into this article, there wasn’t a Dotson problem, but rather a environment problem.

Here’s a look at Jahan Dotson’s dynasty value over time per KeepTradeCut, a site that crowdsources public data on player value.

Dotson got a huge boost in September of his rookie season due to his surge of fantasy points, but fell shortly after because of his injury. However, he quickly regained his value after a strong finish to the year. This value rose over the offseason between his freshman and sophomore seasons, but ultimately nosedived due to an unsuccessful year with Howell.

Opportunity

Dotson exceeded his moderate expectations in his first season, especially after becoming fully healthy. I graphed his actual vs expected fantasy points below. Make sure to disregard the negative trend of both actual and expected fantasy points from weeks four to 10 in 2022, as this is because he didn’t play in weeks five through nine.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

In 2023, it was very clear that Jahan Dotson didn’t have the expected fantasy points (and therefore opportunity) to succeed. Especially after week 12, Dotson really was hung out to dry in terms of opportunity, not reaching an expected fantasy point total higher than five.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

In 2023,  Jahan Dotson’s target rate (derived from targets per route run) was 13.3%, down from 17.5% in 2022. So what changed from 2022?

The Good, the Bad, and the Sam Howell

The following data visualizations show quarterback efficiency in 2022 (first) and 2023 (second). Sam Howell wasn’t a great quarterback in his first year of holding a starting position, but he was definitely a downgrade from Taylor Heinicke who held the starting role for the majority of the 2022 season.

Data Viz by rbsdm: Ben Baldwin (@benbbaldwin) and Sebastian Carl (@mrcaseb)

Data Viz by rbsdm: Ben Baldwin (@benbbaldwin) and Sebastian Carl (@mrcaseb)

If Howell was such a downgrade, however, wouldn’t that affect all of the team’s receivers equally?

Below are two graphs, each examining quarterback EPA per dropback based on the targeted receiver. This basically examines how efficient a quarterback is with his passes based on the receiver of those passes. It is important to remember that QB EPA isn’t solely based on quarterback play, but it gives us a decent idea. The first graph is of Taylor Heinicke in 2022, while the second is of Sam Howell in 2023.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

Heinicke had an EPA per dropback of over 0.5 points when targeting Jahan Dotson in 2022, while it seems as if Sam Howell had a personal agenda against him in 2023. Additionally, the Commanders found substantially better QB EPA per dropback in all three wide receivers when Heinicke was under center. Interestingly, the primary running backs and tight end in the Commanders offense all found much higher QB EPA per dropback with Sam Howell. My first thought when discovering this trend had to do with quarterback time in the pocket. This is because when quarterbacks spend a long time reading defenses before throwing the ball, they can end up passing up the opportunity to throw to a first or second read (such as the primary wide receivers), instead eventually passing to a tight end or running back out of structure.

If you watched Sam Howell in 2023, the first part of his game that may come to mind is how he spent an incredibly long amount of time to throw the ball, and took a lot of sacks because of this.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

The above data visualization shows average pocket time versus sacks per dropback in 2023. Sam Howell took a large quantity of sacks relative to the time he had in the pocket. Unlike many of the other quarterbacks with similar pocket time and far lower sacks per dropback, Howell was unable to extend plays, and took many more sacks resultantly.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

The graph above simply reinforces the prior idea that better, more efficient quarterbacks take less sacks, furthering the notion that sacks are a quarterback stat. If you need more convincing, I made a couple other graphs that support the same idea, comparing sacks per dropback to different PFF grades in the following tweet.

Thankfully for the sake of Jahan Dotson, Sam Howell has parted ways this offseason which opens up the opportunity for the receiving core. However, the wide receiver room will look a little bit different in 2024.

Curtis Samuel

After spending three years in Washington, Curtis Samuel is finally leaving. The former Panther recently signed a three-year, $24 million contract with the Buffalo Bills. The graph below shows the consistent target share Samuel commanded (no pun intended) in Dotson’s two years with the team.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

As mentioned before, Dotson was drafted to be the team’s number two receiver, but Samuel got a lot more attention than him in year two (Dotson’s year one targets are substantially lower because of his injury).

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

The visualization above shows the Commanders receiving leaders’ fantasy points versus expected fantasy points in 2023. As can be seen, Samuel slightly outperformed his expected total while Dotson slightly underperformed.

Coaching

Both the Commanders’ 2023 offensive coordinator, Eric Bieniemy, and head coach, Ron Rivera, will no longer be with the team in 2024. This could be good news for Jahan Dotson and the Commanders’ wide receiver room in general.

Kingsbury, who head coached the Cardinals from 2019-2022, seemed to favor an offense in which his wide receivers got the ball a lot as the graph below shows.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

Except for an outlier year in 2021, receivers got approximately 72% of targets among pass catchers during Kingsbury’s tenure in Arizona. Considering the same graph from the last two years of the Commanders offense (pictured below), receivers got the ball at a much lower rate.

Data Viz by @JackJReinhart

Because new Commanders head coach, Dan Quinn, is a defensive-minded guy, it seems as if Kingsbury will get to have his way with how the offense is run. This likely means a sharp increase in targets to wide receivers.

One quick parting point I wanted to make before moving on is that Sam Howell, Eric Bieniemy, and Ron Rivera were all on the hot seat in 2023. Because of this, they played last season with the sole goal in mind of winning games. For example, it didn’t matter that Sam Howell was prioritizing Curtis Samuel and Logan Thomas in the Commanders offense, but instead the production of the offense as a whole. However, this meant the disregard for the development of a young asset like Jahan Dotson, who was a large investment for the team only two years ago.

Rookie QB

The elephant in the room when considering the future of the Commanders offense is the current vacancy at the quarterback position. Sam Howell was recently shipped off to Seattle in a trade, and the Commanders have the second overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. While it is unclear on who the Commanders will select, it is nearly certain this player will be a quarterback.

Data Viz by @SumerSports

The market currently has the Commanders slated to take one of either Jayden Daniels or Drake Maye. While I believe Drake Maye is the better option for Dotson and the Commanders, it is expected that whoever they take at number two overall will be the best quarterback this team has had in a long time.

Jahan Dotson

It seems like Jahan Dotson will have all the opportunity in the world to grow and flourish in a new, fresh situation. So how will Jahan Dotson perform? Well, he certainly passes the eye test of a talented NFL wide receiver.

In 2023, Dotson had a true catch rate of 87.5%. In other words, he caught seven of every eight catchable passes. This was 65th best in the league. He was also strong on contested targets, catching 41.7%. In the majority of other individual stats, Jahan Dotson floated around top-50 to top-80 in the league. While these numbers might not be very eye-popping, it is very possible that his growth was somewhat stunted from a lack of targets.

Buy or Sell?

When it comes to Jahan Dotson, his potential surge in value is not due to his incredible traits or some hidden stat that says he’s going to be a top-20 receiver next year, but rather it is founded on the immense opportunity he is soon to encounter. Buying into Dotson means buying into the quarterback and play-calling upside combined with the absence of Curtis Samuel.

Now, if you were one of the people that bought into his talent last year, you should absolutely pursue Dotson in 2024. In 2023, he’ll be everything he was last year talent-wise, combined with incredible opportunity and being more than a year removed from his rookie season injury.

Personally, I believe Jahan Dotson is an extremely talented player and I think he will perform much better in 2024 given the opportunity.

One question I have is how will new general manager, Adam Peters, view Jahan Dotson? Of course after being drafted with the 16th overall pick, the sunk cost fallacy can come into play when considering Dotson’s future. However, this has been known to taper off when a new front office comes in because it’s simply not a player its members drafted. In a loaded receiver class like 2024’s, Peters could very well draft a wide receiver like Xavier Legette with the 36th overall pick. A receiver of his caliber could be even more of a pain to Jahan Dotson’s target share than Curtis Samuel.

Nevertheless, I still think now is a great time to buy Jahan Dotson. Buying Dotson now means acquiring him before all the draft buzz of Drake Maye / Jayden Daniels sweeps the fantasy airways. Regardless of whether you choose to carry his talents into the 2024 regular season, it is expected you will at least manage a slim profit if you bought now and sold later this offseason.

On KeepTradeCut, he’s currently valued at the equivalent of pick 2.09 in SF rookie drafts and pick 2.07 in 1QB. I believe this is a solid value for him. An early 2024 second could be pushing it for sure, but I believe he’s already guaranteed to be in a good situation unlike the currently undrafted rookies of the 2024 Draft.

Jahan Dotson will have the perfect set of circumstances in 2024; the question is, will he seize the moment?

Check out other Dynasty Breakdowns here and check me out on twitter @JackJReinhart