Fantasy Football: Will Darnell Mooney have a full breakout in 2022?

WR Darnell Mooney (CHI)

2021 Stats: 81 receptions, 1,055 yards, 4 TD; 32 rushing yards, 1 TD

At a glance, 2021 looks like it was the breakout campaign for Darnell Mooney-a jump from WR55 as a rookie in 2020 (standard fantasy scoring) to WR22 says as much.

But the Bears lost Allen Robinson in free agency, and have not replaced him with anything close to equal talent (Byron Pringle, Velus Jones, Equanimeous St. Brown, Dante Pettis, Tajae Sharpe). So among receiving options for quarterback Justin Fields, Mooney and tight end Cole Kmet stand atop the pecking order.

Fields started and finished nine games last season. In those games Mooney had 31 receptions for 440 yards and two touchdowns on 56 targets. Shift to the five games Robinson missed, and Mooney had 25 catches for 391 yards on 47 targets with one touchdown in those. He had no less than seven targets in any of the games Robinson missed, with exactly five receptions (an 85-catch pace over 17 games) in each and over 55 yards four times (over 120 yards twice). 

Week 17 and 18 last season, when he totaled 19 receptions for 195 yards on 29 targets, served to skew Mooney’s final numbers some. But it could also be seen as something of a pre-cursor for 2022, as he’ll now be the Bears’ unquestioned No. 1 wide receiver.

The Bears are projected to be among the worst teams in the league this year. That means negative game scripts, and for better or worse plenty of passing, in some games.

After a top-24 (WR2) finish in 2021, the biggest questions are if Mooney qualifies as a breakout candidate for 2022 and where that bar should be set. Mooney’s ADP on Fantasy Football Calculator right now, in early June, has him at WR32 across the board (standard scoring, 0.5 PPR, full PPR). If that holds, he can be drafted right in the range of a WR3 floor based on the target share he’s lined up to have.

Ultimately, it’s hard for me to project Mooney for a whole lot more than he had in 2021. So even setting the 2022 breakout bar at a top-20 fantasy finish, in standard scoring or otherwise, it’s residually difficult to get there.

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Darnell Mooney 2022 Projection: 85 receptions for 1,107 yards, 6 TD

Breakout Confidence Level: 23%

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