Last season, Cole Kmet shocked a lot of people in the football world as he finished as the eighth-best tight end in fantasy football.
People had low expectations for the third-year tight end. However, by finishing as well as he did in 2022, he far exceeded any expectations people had for him entering the year.
That said, after looking back on the year he had, there seems to be a catalyst for why he broke out in such a big way last season.
Cole Kmet benefitted from Darnell Mooney’s injury
The injury to Darnell Mooney put a damper on the Chicago Bears’ passing attack.
That makes a ton of sense, too. Mooney is the best playmaker in this young receiving corps. He is the top receiver for them, and it showed after the offense became ineffective following his season-ending ankle injury sustained in the Jets game.
After the injury, the Bears averaged 14 points per game. Mooney was the missing piece for the offense down the stretch of the season.
However, there was a beneficiary of this circumstance: Kmet.
After the injury, Kmet enjoyed 32 targets in the final six games of the season. He ended up with 69 targets in 2022. That means the tight end had nearly half of his targets following Mooney’s injury.
Cole Kmet’s outlook when Darnell Mooney returns
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How will the tight end fare when Mooney returns to action in 2023?
Well, Kmet’s placement on the list of regression candidates is not a glowing endorsement. The fact of the matter is, Kmet was largely floundering in the offense with Mooney in the lineup.
the rest of my fantasy team seeing Cole Kmet put up a 0 two weeks in a row pic.twitter.com/A9xyxAGvpA
— Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) September 19, 2022
As mentioned above, the tight end had 69 targets on the season.
With Mooney in the lineup for the first 11 games of the season, Kmet had 37 targets. He caught 26 of these targets for about a 70% catching percentage.
However, things changed for the tight end after that point.
He caught 24 balls on 32 targets (75% catching percentage) in the final six games that the wide receiver missed.
Additionally, Kmet broke five targets just twice with Mooney around. After the injury, he reached that number in five of the six games.
The bottom line is Kmet was a clear beneficiary of the Mooney injury. While the offense struggled as a whole, he thrived under the circumstances.
However, Mooney will return this season.
With how much Kmet struggled to get momentum in the offense before the injury, it would not be far-fetched to believe that happening again.
As a matter of fact, there is another person in the mix.
Chase Claypool’s integration could limit Cole Kmet
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The Bears traded for Chase Claypool at the trade deadline last season to give Justin Fields another target to throw to.
However, he never got fully integrated into the offense. Claypool caught 14 balls for his new team, an average of two per game.
Now he has a full offseason to gel with the offense. Barring the Bears drafting or signing a wide receiver, Claypool figures to be the secondary option at the position.
With a Fields to Claypool connection brewing, that could hamper Kmet’s role in the offense further.
With Claypool getting a full offseason with Fields and Mooney coming back healthy, Kmet could go back to receiving a limited amount of targets, much like the beginning of the 2022 season).
If that is the case, the tight end could be in for a regression year in 2023.
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