myfantasyleague.com) in redraft leagues is a little outrageous.

A Poor Passing Attack

The quarterback play in Minnesota left much to be desired in 2013. Three (mediocre) players threw passes for the Vikings in 2013, and none of them performed very well at all. As a group, they accounted for an Adjusted Passing NEP of -30.54, the 24th-highest total in the league. For those new to numberFire, Net Expected Points (NEP) is our signature metric that measures how many points a player is adding to his team's point total through the plays he makes on the field (see more on NEP in our glossary).

A team’s Adjusted Passing NEP is the number of points a team has performed above or below expectation on passing plays. In other words, it's the difference between how a team performs versus how another team would have done in a similar situation, adjusted for strength of schedule. In the Vikings’ case, they performed just over 30 points worse than an average team through the air. Over the course of a full season, they lost just under two points per game relative to an average team through passing. That’s not good.

Their Passing NEP on a per pass basis fared even worse compared to the rest of the league. The Vikings had a -0.05 Adjusted Passing NEP per drop back, finishing 26th overall in that category.

Clearly the quarterbacks who played in Minnesota last season were a wildly unimpressive bunch when lumped together, but what’s equally important is to look at how the passing game may perform in 2014. For that, we can ignore Freeman's numbers, and look at how Cassel (the presumed starter heading into 2014) and Ponder (who will only play due to some sort of injury in all likelihood) performed in 2013.

Here is how they, individually, ranked in terms of Total NEP, Passing NEP per drop back, and Success Rate compared to the 39 quarterbacks who dropped back at least 200 times in 2013:

These rankings aren't exactly awe-inspiring, but that’s natural considering the quarterback group as a whole graded out poorly in 2013. Cassel will likely take over the starting quarterback position to start 2014, but if he struggles, rookie MyFantasyLeague.com, Patterson is being selected over players like FantasyFootballCalculator.com, he's being selected as a middle-of-the-road WR2.

This is the same Cordarrelle Patterson who didn’t reach 500 yards receiving last year, and finished as a team's WR3 despite scoring more touchdowns than perhaps can be expected of him in 2014. He's the same Patterson who will be subject to the same poor quarterbacking, and will be nothing more than second-fiddle to Adrian Peterson in the Vikings’ offense.

According to our early rankings, the algorithms expect Patterson to be another WR3 this season in fantasy football. Keep in mind that his confidence internal, which can be found in our projections table, varies more than most wide receivers on the list. In fact, the high-end of his confidence interval shows nearly 152 fantasy points, which would make him a low-end WR2.

But that's still not enough given his cost in most fantasy drafts. At his current price, it's safe to stay away. And it's also possible that Cordarrelle Patterson will be the most overrated fantasy asset of 2014.