Free Agency 2021: Hunter Henry's arrival in a crowded New England offense leaves a lot of questions

The tight end's move doesn't figure to be a plus for his Fantasy value

Make all the jokes you want about the Patriots spending spree, but they're going to make things difficult for the defenses they play with all of the new players in their offense.

Unfortunately, they're going to make things difficult for Fantasy football managers too.

The latest signing is tight end Hunter Henry, who has finished as a top 10 Fantasy tight end in PPR points per game in each of his past three seasons. He joins a suddenly robust receiving corps that includes newcomers Jonnu Smith, Nelson Agholor and Kendrick Bourne (along with everyone else the Patriots had already from last year).

All of these pass options in front of, for now, Cam Newton, figure to make New England much more difficult to defend. Got a slow linebacker? Smith will take advantage. Inexperienced defensive backs? Agholor can come up with some plays. Smaller defense? Henry (and Smith) can match up nicely.

The problem is knowing who will do what which week. It's like the Patriots running back carousel, except it's the whole team.

And in theory, it would benefit the quarterback the most, especially one like Newton who picks up a lot of numbers on the ground, but he disappointed as a passer in 2020 despite having an adjusted completion percentage ranked 13th last year (10th in deep passing and 14th in intermediate passing). He was 29th in on-target throws and attempted 24.5 throws per game with eight passing touchdowns.

Where does all this leave Henry? No doubt the Patriots view him as a large, agile, smart player with good blocking skills. Perhaps they think he can do some (or most) of the things Rob Gronkowski used to do. 

But in an offense that might be designed to throw a lot less than the one he came from in California, and especially one that's added receiving talent, it's hard to envision Henry being consistent statistically.

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For instance, let's just say the Patriots decide to throw 20% more than they did in 2020. That would be 528 pass attempts. For Henry to match the 15% target share he had with the Chargers last year, he would need 80 targets. With a career 69% catch rate, that's 55 receptions. With a career 11.8 receiving average, that would mean 649 yards. Henry hasn't had more than five touchdowns since his rookie season and will be playing with a quarterback who loves to take it in himself, so it's hard to see him having much more than that.

A 55-649-5 stat line would have resulted in 150 PPR points, or just about what Mike Gesicki totaled in 2020 as the seventh-best tight end.

That's the optimistic view.

The pessimistic view is that the Patriots don't throw it 20 percent more and Henry doesn't stay as involved, be it because of missing games or because Newton doesn't progress or anything else. Then he'd struggle to even step in as a top-12 tight end.

The right move might be to not just pass on Henry on Draft Day until the late rounds, but on all Patriots players. The organization is doing what it thinks is best to be more competitive on offense, as well as be more unpredictable. That works against everyone involved in Fantasy. Henry won't be on my Draft Day radar until Round 9 at the earliest.