What You Need to Know:

• Patrick posted a 53-734-5 line last year, finishing 43rd among WRs in PPR points, 41st in half-PPR and 41st in non-PPR.
• He led the Broncos with 5 receiving scores.
• Patrick’s 45.9 receiving yards per game were just behind Jerry Jeudy’s 46.7 and ahead of Courtland Sutton’s 45.6.
• Patrick edged both Jeudy and Sutton in Pro Football Focus receiving grade, ranking 47th league-wide among 89 qualifiers. Patrick (1.48) also beat Sutton (1.43) in yards per route run, although he finished well behind Jeudy (1.85).
• In their 10 games together, Patrick saw 50 targets to Jeudy’s 56 and Sutton’s 38.
• The Broncos gave Patrick a 3-year, $34 million extension in November. It makes him the league’s 26th-highest-paid WR and essentially locks him into a top-3 spot on the depth chart.
• Russell Wilson will be a big QB upgrade in 2022. He struggled after suffering a right finger injury last October. But Wilson was excellent before that and had shown no signs of decline the previous few seasons.
• Patrick will play under a new coaching staff this offseason after the Broncos named Nathaniel Hackett their HC.
  • It’s Hackett’s first crack at a HC gig. He has 8 years of NFL OC experience: 2013-2014 with the Bills, 2016-2018 with the Jaguars and 2019-2021 with the Packers.
  • Hackett’s Bills and Jaguars offenses – piloted by E.J. Manuel, Kyle Orton and Blake Bortles – were run leaning. But Hackett went pass heavier when he hooked up with Aaron Rodgers. The Packers ranked 7th, 9th and 11th in situation-neutral pass rate the last 3 seasons.
• With Wilson and Hackett in town, we’re projecting the Broncos to pass at a tangibly higher clip than they did last season.

AUGUST UPDATE: Patrick suffered a season-ending ACL tear in practice. We’ve adjusted projections for all Broncos pass catchers.

Draft Sharks Bottom Line:

Patrick scored as a fantasy WR4 last year and was better than or equal to Jerry Jeudy and Courtland Sutton in many key metrics.

We’re still projecting him to trail those guys in targets this season, but it’s within the realm of possibility that Patrick finishes among the top 2 on the team in targets. He also gets a huge QB upgrade with the arrival of Russell Wilson. And the Broncos figure to throw it more this season than last.

Add it all up and Patrick is an intriguing flier in the double-digit rounds of fantasy drafts.