Fantasy football 2019: Five players to avoid on draft day
By Joe Metz
Fantasy Football Quarterback to Avoid: Cam Newton | CAR
Current ADP: 84.6 (ESPN)
After going through off-season surgery to repair his shoulder, there’s a heap of optimism around whether or not we could see Newton return to fantasy dominance this season. While the potential for this is there, I have a hard time buying into Cam returning to that form this season.
His floor had always been heightened because of his activity on the ground, 2018 was a bit of a different story. He recorded 38 fewer rushing attempts (101) than he did in 2017 (139), resulting in a drop of almost 300 rushing yards (758 in 2017 compared to 488 last season).
The glaring reason for this is the emergence of feature-back Christian McCaffrey. Last season, McCaffrey’s percentage of rushing attempts in the red-zone more than doubled (20.83% to 57.89%), while Newton were just about cut in half (26.39% to 13.16%).
On top of that, he threw his least amount of passes last season (471) since the 2014 season. Having lost a massive red-zone threat in Devin Funchess, it will be interesting to see if the young duo of D.J. Moore and Curtis Samuel can help Newton in the passing game, but growing pains are to be expected.
While I do see Cam being a top-12 quarterback, the uncertainty surrounding how he responds to his should surgery as well as the continued decline in his rushing game have me leaning more towards other QBs around the same price tag on draft day.
Who I’d draft instead: Carson Wentz (ADP of 95.2)