Road to WR1: DJ Moore

Despite often battling subpar quarterback play for most of his career, DJ Moore has not finished below WR22 in PPR leagues since his rookie season. Entering 2024, Moore has arguably the best fantasy outlook of his career as he projects to play with potentially the most talented quarterback he has ever had in rookie Caleb Williams.

With six years under his belt, Moore has posted over 1,000 yards in all but two seasons in his career. His durability has also been impressive, missing just two games over his entire run while appearing in all 17 games in each of the last three years.

Moore saw a change of scenery in 2023 when he was traded prior to the season to Chicago and despite the overall inefficiency of Justin Fields, he put together the best season of his career. Moore posted career-high marks across the board including 96 receptions for 1,364 receiving yards and nine total touchdowns.

Moore's inaugural season in the Windy City resulted in a WR6 finish in standard, half-PPR and full-PPR leagues. His usage in Chicago was overwhelmingly positive and his long-term outlook only projects to increase with Williams, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft, expected to bring stability to the team at quarterback for the first time in over a decade.

How DJ Moore can become the fantasy WR1

For Moore to rise the ranks as the overall WR1 in fantasy, his fate will be determined almost entirely by Caleb Williams. It will be a tough situation to predict with a rookie quarterback, even one as highly touted as Williams, but Moore already exceeded all expectations in 2023 with the way he was used on the team.

From a volume perspective, Moore could not have had much more usage than he saw in 2023, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the team's total receiving yards. Behind his team-leading 136 targets on the season, Cole Kmet was a distant second with 90 targets. The team gave up a lot to acquire him in the 2023 offseason and treated him as such.

Although his percentage of the total offense was high, Moore still tied for just 16th in the league in overall targets due to the run-first approach of the offense. Much of that can be tied back to the dreadful arm talent of Justin Fields and Tyson Bagent, who accounted for a mere combined 3,421 passing yards and 19 touchdowns. Through 13 games as the starter, Fields had nearly half as many carries as he did pass attempts.

With Williams under center instead of Fields, Chicago's offense is expected to transform almost entirely with a bigger emphasis on the passing game. With Williams being the best prospect the NFL has touted since Trevor Lawrence, head coach Matt Eberflus brought in Shane Waldron as the new offensive coordinator. Waldron spent the previous three years guiding the career resurgence of Geno Smith in Seattle and was an assistant beneath Sean McVay before that.

Though more reached his ceiling in 2023, that potential will unquestionably be raised in 2024 even with the addition of Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze to the team. At 32 years old, Allen does not project to be much of a threat to Moore's usage at this point in his career, making him still the team's best offensive weapon by a wide margin.

With a WR6 finish most recently in the minds of most fantasy managers, Moore is just within arm's reach of becoming the overall WR1. He is not as big of a star as many of the league's other top targets but has one of the most salivating upsides in the position.