I can’t tell you I’ve always been right when doling out fantasy football advice or that my home office is full of trophies from brilliant prognostications of the past.

But I can tell you I’ve been watching Cleveland Browns tight end David Njoku for his entire career, and I’ve never seen a better or more confident version of Njoku than what I’ve witnessed in this year’s training camp.

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Like the ice cream stand down the street from the Browns’ training facility, Njoku has been open all summer. He’s caught almost everything that’s come his way, too.

The Browns are all in on this season. Deshaun Watson is fully eligible, the roster has been constructed with the help of more than $300 million in cash spending — the most of any team in the league — and all involved think the biggest problems of the last two seasons were quarterback-related and have been fixed. Watson clearly trusts Njoku, and Njoku’s situation fits the Browns’ urgency and all-in thinking. The team has made multiple commitments to Njoku since drafting him 29th overall in 2017, and he got a multiyear deal in 2022 after being franchise tagged because Cleveland believes Watson will help Njoku reach the level the team has continued to bet Njoku would eventually reach.

“Do I feel like I have another level? Yes, I do,” Njoku said last month. “God willing, we find out (what that looks like) this year (and) I stay healthy. So we’ll see. Working hard every day and praying for good things.”

Njoku had 17 receptions in five games with Watson last season. He only had one catch in Week 17 against Washington, but that was one of Waston’s best throws, a 21-yarder through traffic that set up a touchdown. Njoku had seven catches on nine targets and scored a touchdown in a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, and he also scored on one of his four targets in the season-ending loss at Pittsburgh. For the season, Njoku tied a career high with four touchdowns; his 58 catches in 14 games were a career high, and his 628 receiving yards were his most since 2018.

The passing game has had its ups and downs over the course of the Browns’ extended training camp, but Njoku has been the most consistent performer on throws made to the intermediate level. The only time the defense in camp has even come close to stopping him is when he crashed into the kicking net behind the goal post during one of the Browns’ early camp practices at the Greenbrier. He needed help to untangle himself, and later in that practice caught another pass of 25 yards or so over the middle.

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He’s always been fast enough to run past linebackers. He’s been a little inconsistent with actually catching it — and his drop versus the New Orleans Saints in Week 16 killed a Browns rally — but he’s improved his consistency over the past two seasons. Pro Football Focus (PFF) graded Njoku as having just four drops last season and just six over the last two seasons. Considering Njoku’s PFF drop rate was 28.6 percent in 2019 and 13.6 in 2020, that’s a marked improvement.

If you want to say he’s seemed more likely to secure catches with a high degree of difficulty than relatively simpler ones over the course of his career, that would make for an interesting discussion. But from a fantasy standpoint, Njoku is a player who’s clearly on the uptick, should get better — and at the very least, more stable — quarterback play than he has for much of his career, and a player who’s capable of making big plays and compiling big fantasy-point weeks. In 2021, he had seven catches for 149 yards in a wild loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, highlighted by a 71-yard catch-and-run touchdown.

There aren’t a lot of tight ends who can run like Njoku. Watson knows this. Browns head coach and play caller Kevin Stefanski knows this, too. Cleveland looks forward to a full season of Watson, meaning more chances to move Njoku around the formation and take advantage of his athletic ability on simple, short throws to give him an opportunity to chew up yards after the catch.

Again, we’re just going off four weeks of training camp. But Njoku has absolutely racked up a lot of August practice yards.

“It’s just the next step for David,” Stefanski said. “He’s doing everything he’s supposed to do in the run game and the pass game. I think Deshaun and David have a good rapport and will always continue to build off of that.”

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I recently took my belief that Njoku’s been open all summer to Browns tight ends coach T.C. McCartney.

Did he agree?

“All summer? Did David (himself) say that?” McCartney asked. “I agree with that. I’ll give him that one. He’s put a lot of work in. He’s big, he’s fast. He has multiple years in this offense. I think he understands what we’re trying to do. So it’s been good. It’s been good. He’s been getting better and better. So I love to see that.”

Njoku is noticeably bigger than he was last year, too. He’s never been small — he’s listed at 6-foot-4, 247 pounds — but he added some mass in the offseason, and that does not appear to have slowed him down a bit. Njoku acknowledged the extra muscle but didn’t talk details.

“I think that he just works out really hard,” McCartney said. “We didn’t talk about him getting bigger at all. But his weight is right where he needed to be, and he’s still fast. So as big as you can be and as fast as you can be, that’s what I like to see.”

The esteemed Jake Ciely, our resident fantasy expert at The Athletic, ranks Njoku as his No. 12 tight end in both full and half-point PPR formats. Njoku is at the bottom of Ciely’s fourth tier of tight ends.

GO DEEPER

Jake Ciely's 2023 fantasy football rankings, tiers, positional ranks

I’m no Jake Ciely. And I’m also not saying Njoku is suddenly going to start putting up Travis Kelce or Mark Andrews-like numbers. But the Browns have continued to bet on Njoku’s future, and it finally feels like the time is here. Even if the inconsistencies pop back up, he has physical gifts that most tight ends don’t — and certainly gifts that 11 others can’t match.

Fantasy players should bet on his upside. On his ceiling games. On the fact that he’s always been tantalizing but has never shown this gear, even if it is just August. The Browns have been waiting on Njoku’s best for a long time — and you shouldn’t wait too long to draft him.

(Top photo: Nick Cammett / Diamond Images via Getty Images)