Miami Dolphins: Jay Cutler’s fantasy football impact
Jay Cutler will be the Miami Dolphins Week 1 quarterback. How will this impact the fantasy value of the team’s skill-position players?
The season-ending injury to Ryan Tannehill’s ACL will undoubtedly effect the Miami Dolphins skill-position players. However, it is a fair question to ask whether or not that impact will be positive or negative. While Cutler has been a perennial disappointment throughout his NFL career, he also has a superior arm compared to both Tannehill and Matt Moore.
Related Story: Miami Dolphins: Why Jay Cutler was the right choice at quarterback
Replacing Tannehill with Cutler certainly isn’t anything that is a season killer for the team or his weapons for fantasy owners. Different players will be impacted differently, though.
We will take a look at the five most relevant fantasy football players on the Phins offense and let you know what to make of them after the quarterback change.
RB Jay Ajayi
You can expect Ajayi to get a bit of a boost early in the season. Although Cutler is familiar with head coach Adam Gase’s system, he still missed most of the summer and needs to become more acclimated with both the system and his pass-catcher. With just a few weeks to do so there will be a learning curve.
Because of this, look for the Dolphins to lean heavily on the rushing attack early in the season. Ajayi will see an abundance of carries while Kenyan Drake and Damien Williams will see a boost in value as well. With that said, look for this to balance out after about four games when the entire offense has gelled and is in full swing.
WR Jarvis Landry
The best case scenario for Juice would have been having Tannehill as a quarterback. Tannehill has a long history of struggling with the deep ball and relied on dump-offs to Landry as his biggest weapon as a passer. Nonetheless, it’s not time to panic and Cutler is a better option for him than Moore would be. Regardless of the fact that losing Tannehill will hurt him a bit, he still has a floor of about 85 receptions, over 1000 yards and a few touchdowns. He will still be PPR gold in 2017.
WR DeVante Parker
This is the best thing that could have possibly happened for Parker. You can now look for him to have a breakout season and perhaps even be the top option in the passing attack in South Beach. Cutler absolutely loves his big-bodied outside receivers. We saw what he did with Alshon Jeffery and Brandon Marshall in Chicago. Parker is basically a more physically gifted version of Jeffery. You can only put so much stock in a preseason premier Week 2, but half of Cutler’s attempts went to Parker and Cutler may target him at an incredible rate this season.
WR Kenny Stills
Stills’ ideal quarterback would have been Moore. Moore just can’t help himself when it comes to hurling the ball downfield to Stills, even at inappropriate times. That may be part of the reason Cutler is the team’s starting quarterback. Still, Cutler is an upgrade over Tannehill for Stills’ fantasy value. As I mentioned before, Tannehill struggles with the deep ball and Cutler is a gunslinger with big arm. This duo will connect on some big plays downfield.
Next: NFL QB Power Rankings 2017: Preseason Week 3
TE Julius Thomas
It doesn’t matter who the quarterback is for Thomas. He will undoubtedly be injured and miserable for the vast majority of the season. His only value is hoping he gets a red zone target every now and then. Any quarterback and try to stick it to his big body from the six yard line. At best he’s a low-end TE2 with Cutler, Moore or even if Tannehill had stayed healthy.