Denver Broncos: Predicting Noah Fant’s breakout 2021 season
Denver Broncos tight end Noah Fant is poised to have a monster third season playing within the Broncos young and talented offense.
Denver Broncos tight end Noah Fant is one of the most athletic tight ends in the league, and his first to second-year jump was noticeable.
Fant has received a bit of attention this offseason as a guy who can make a huge third-year jump, and he has the talent to do so.
He isn’t yet in the tier with George Kittle, Darren Waller, and Travis Kelce, but Fant is slowly creeping up toward tight end stardom.
Recently, I wrote an article projecting Jerry Jeudy’s second-year stat line. I used simple averaging calculations using wide receivers who are similar to Jeudy’s game.
The method I used was by no means perfect, but I concluded that Jeudy would catch roughly 70 passes for over 1,100 yards–something perfectly reasonable for the former Alabama product.
I’m going to use the same method to project Noah Fant’s third year. Tight ends usually take a few years to hit their stride in the NFL. They are generally slower to develop to the NFL due to needing to adjust as a blocker and a pass-catcher.
What’s nice about Noah Fant is that he’s already one of the best 7-10 tight ends in the league, and he hasn’t even hit his stride yet.
I’m not sure if Fant will hit the coveted 1,000-yard mark, but yards don’t tell the whole story.
For this scenario, I’m going to use Tony Gonzalez, Mike Gesicki, and Zach Ertz.
Let’s start with Tony Gonzalez. In his second year, Gonzalez 59 passes for 621 yards and 2 touchdowns–very similar to Fant’s second year. In his third year, Gonzalez caught 76 passes for 849 yards and 11 touchdowns.
Gonzalez, from year 2 to year 3 had 28.81% more catches, 36.71% more yards, and 450% more touchdowns.
Now, for Mike Gesicki. In year 2, Gesicki caught 51 passes for 570 yards and 3 touchdowns. In year 3, Gesicki caught 53 passes for 703 yards and 6 touchdowns. Gesicki, from year 2 to year 3 had 3.92% more catches, 23.33 more yards, and 20% more touchdowns.
Finally, Zach Ertz. In year 2, Ertz caught 58 passes for 702 yards and 3 touchdowns. In year 3, Ertz caught 75 passes for 853 yards and 2 touchdowns.
From year 2 to 3, Ertz caught 29.31% more passes, 21.51% more yards, and -33.33% more touchdowns.
Now that we have our percentages, we’re going to average them to find Fant’s projected totals for year 3.
His second-year totals are 62 catches for 673 yards and 3 touchdowns.
The averages of the percentages we just calculated are 20.68% more catches, 27.18% more yards, and 145.56% more touchdowns.
Applying them to Noah Fant’s year 2, we get:
75 catches, 856 yards, and 7 touchdowns.
Like I said. this is by no means a perfect method, but this projected stat line for year 3 appears to be very reasonable for Noah Fant.
Teddy Bridgewater appears to be a good distributor of the football, so Fant should get plenty of attention from his quarterback.