Much of Deebo Samuel’s fantasy production was impacted by the inconsistent quarterback play for the 49ers team. Once Trey Lance got hurt, Jimmy Garoppolo stepped in and performed admirably. The issue is, Deebo Samuel’s fantasy production did not match last year’s numbers. One thing you can almost always count on, is for Deebo to miss a couple of games due to his increased exposure to hits as he takes carries out of the backfield. His usage in the backfield went down quite a bit this season, mostly because of his off-season contract demands. Now that he has that resolved, he receives contraction incentive payouts at certain rushing achievements.
Also, he saw less work in general because the team acquired star running back Christian McCaffrey in a midseason trade. Even at the early season pace, Samuel was on pace to still take a huge step back in yardage and touchdowns from his previous career year. Once Brock Purdy stepped in, he was consistently throwing for more than 200 yards and two scores to finish the season. Unfortunately for Deebo, George Kittle benefited most from Purdy playing with an average of 4.5 catches for 66 yards and 1.75 touchdowns over the last four games of the season.
Deebo Samuel's Fantasy Stats
Samuel’s stats are less than the previous season. He managed only 56 catches for 632 yards and two touchdowns, while also adding 232 rushing yards and three touchdowns. On the rushing side of these stats, it is clear he suffered from touchdown regression. He handled only 17 fewer carries from the previous season while dropping from eight to three touchdowns. He had an unreal 13.55% touchdown rate when he took a handoff in 2021. Those numbers came back down closer to the mean at 7.14%. Other factors played a part in this dropoff, such as the addition of Christian McCaffrey, as we mentioned above. When you acquire a star running back, you have to utilize him out of the backfield as much as possible.
In terms of receiving yardage, there was no issue with targets. He drew at least six targets in all but the final two games of the year. Yes, the quarterback issues held him back quite a bit. for yardage, he eclipsed 100 receiving yards once, and most of it was on an explosive 57-yard screen catch and run against the Rams. In all other games, he failed to reach 80 yards receiving and his next longest catch was 32 yards. Once Brock Purdy took over, he looked to tight end George Kittle a lot more towards the end of the year, resulting in a staggering seven touchdowns for Kittle over the last four weeks of the year. San Francisco has a lot of questions to answer at quarterback, and that will directly affect Deebo moving forward. We will have to wait and see what they do in the coming months with all of the injury recovery going on.
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