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Fantasy Impact of the Brett Favre Trade The Brett Favre
saga is finally over. Favre was traded to the New York Jets last night for a conditional
fourth round pick in 2009 which can increase to a first round pick depending on the number
of snaps Favre plays and the team’s success. After 16 seasons with the Packers, Favre
will now pursue his career in a completely new environment. Favre has not
missed a start in 15 years and has been a top 15 fantasy quarterback in every one of those
years so he obviously has some good fantasy value. There is the argument that he will have
to learn a new system and new terminology but I’m sure that someone who has been
around for 17 years and had five different head coaches won’t have a problem with
that. The Jets quarterbacks attempted 510 passes last season and we’ll assume that
they’ll attempt about the same amount even though it could be more with Favre at
quarterback. Favre has completed 61% of his passes in the past three seasons and an
average of 11.13 yards per completion. That would mean Favre would be looking at about 310
completions for 3,500 yards this season. The Jets only had 15 passing touchdowns last
season but using Favre’s average ratio of 0.037 touchdowns to pass attempt over the
past three seasons, he would throw for 19 this season. Favre did have a very good offense
around him last season but there’s a reason that he had to throw the ball over 600
times in both 2005 and 2006. The Packers had a pretty mediocre running game and Driver was
his only solid receiver until the emergence of Greg Jennings last season. Over the past 10
years, Favre has completed 61.3% of his passes and averaged 11.47 yards per completion and
0.047 touchdowns per pass attempts; those numbers are much more likely for him this
season. It would mean that Favre would have about 3,600 yards and 24 touchdown passes this
season. Those are numbers that I believe are easily reachable for Favre. It is true that
Favre will have to learn a new system but the Jets have an enormous amount of talent.
Since last summer they have upgraded at four positions on offense and three of those
upgrades were by adding players who went to last year’s Pro Bowl: Brett Favre, Alan
Faneca and Tony Richardson. The Jets also have an excellent duo of receivers with Jerricho
Cotchery and Laveranues Coles as well as Thomas Jones who proved he could be a number one
running back with the Bears. The Jets were already the most improved team in the NFL and
now have added a quarterback who has been to nine Pro Bowls. We were already very high on
both Cotchery and Coles so we cannot move them up much more in our rankings but we are now
even more confident about the two of them. It will be interesting to watch whether or not
the Jets pass more often than they did last season in the pre-season because they only
threw 510 passes last year but Favre had averaged 555 in the past 10 seasons. At this
point it is a guessing game so we will have to wait until we see Brett in action in
pre-season but this would increase Brad Smith’s value and possibly lower Thomas
Jones’s slightly. In conclusion, there is no doubt in my mind that the Jets now have
one of the best offenses in the AFC and the limit is sky high for Favre, Coles, Cotchery,
Jones and Washington but they will only have one month to form good chemistry. Find out where we rank all of these players in our Full 2008 Player Rankings and Projections |