The TRUTH About Fantasy WRs in 2018, Part 2

on the extension. But 57 receptions. I just don't know what that says, under 1,000 yards, 57 receptions. If he doesn't score, you're in trouble. That's all that is. And they don't throw the ball enough. And he scored 10 touchdowns this season on only 57 receptions. That's anomalous. That's not something that's usually going to repeat. 511, 170. You had Doug Baldwin.

miss a ton of the year and when he was out there was not really himself for a lot of the year and like you just mentioned andy this team clearly went a completely 180 they went away from russell wilson the passer they ran the ball they got back to the good old 1970s and said shotenheimer yeah we're going to run the ball smash mouth and there's not enough volume to trust here and i'm not trusting the touchdowns because look

Every player we've talked about, every wide receiver on last episode and this episode, you want to know what they could do for you. They could be a dominant one to go out there and win your week. They can go out there and have a monster game. Tyler Lockett never did that. He literally did not have one game over 22 points. I mean, his high. His peak was 17.9. No, 19. He had a 19 week. Yeah, it was 19. Most of the time what would happen is he'd go out, have a mediocre game, catch one touchdown. So he was fine. Oh, great. Yeah.

But around, when you're talking about top 15 wide receiver, finishing ahead of other players who could go out there and dominate some games, in hindsight, Tyler Locker was a good play all year. But you just can't trust that. You can't project that. Tyler Lockett's a darling because of where you drafted him and what he performed, you know, based on that drafting. So for me, his consistency ranking was 21. He finished his 15. I'd put him right around 21. 21, 22. I'm comfortable there.

Where's Baldwin? Baldwin is behind him. No. No. No. For real. Yeah, because Lockett earned that. Lockett earned that. And he earned, you know, the dynamic there with Russell Wilson and what that offense is doing and what he performed, you know, how he performed all year. I feel like Lockett earned that. And Baldwin has to earn it back. I think Baldwin dealt with so many injuries this season. Yes, he did. What a great point.

Well, I'm saying I don't think Lockett earned it away from Doug Baldwin. I think Doug Baldwin was not available to be that number one wide receiver this year. I think you're making too many excuses for Doug Baldwin because, yes, he was banged up. But this is a guy who played in what? He played in a majority of the games during the season. So banged up or not, he wasn't himself in a lot of these games where he'd come out and say, I'm 100%. I can do everything on the field. I just wonder if...

That's a little bit of denial on Doug Baldwin's part. I just looked up Baldwin's age. 30. I think he's 30. He is 60, but that is...

That is Alec Baldwin. He is 30. You are correct. Is that why you were laughing? Did you type Alec Baldwin's name? I just said Baldwin age. And I got Alec Baldwin, who is 60 years old. Doug Baldwin is 30. So he's still not over the hill. He has three golden globes? Yeah. I'm surprised. So wait, two Tyler Lockett equals one, Alec Baldwin. Is that what we? Two Doug Baldwin equals one. Oh, to Doug Baldwin. Oh, okay. You get like two and a half Tyler Lockett's. Look, again, I feel like this is a.

a very negatively framed discussion about locking. And it's just because those numbers, you don't generally see them. Like his volume needs to go up. And for him to be here. So you think you'll draft him around the 20th wide receiver. Yes. I would be surprised if he's that high in my rankings. I mean, I'll probably have him projected for seven touchdowns next year. You got to put him ahead of Tyler Boyd? No. No.

I would put Tyler Lockett ahead of Tyler Boyd. I would not. AJ Green. I love Boyd. Well, I like Boyd, too. But he missed AJ Green for a part of the season. Are you talking about weeks 1 through 8 when Tyler Boyd was a top 12 wide receiver? I know. That's what I was going to bring up is that when AJ was there, Tyler Boyd was dominating. And I think their offense is going to get better with the coaching changes. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah, we'll talk about Boyd in a minute.

Let's talk about Odell Beckham Jr. who gets to be discussed here at number 16 due to the injury and the missed games from weeks 14 on. His consistency ranking when he played was 6th. He had zero bust game. So if he played, he did everything you wanted, pretty much, especially on an offense that was not good for the majority of the season. It was the Odell Beckham Jr. and Saquan show, regardless of how many points they scored as a team, the Giants.

When Beckham was out there, 77 for 1052 and 6 on 124 targets, and that's despite missing what? Four games? Mm-hmm. He threw a couple of touchdown passes to inflate those stats. Of course. He had 67% of his games were good and 25% were great. He was actually down a bit against top 16 defenses, five and a half points less against them, which is interesting. But the question for Odell and confidence levels in him is,

You take everything he's ever done, which is he's always a top three guy if he's on the field. But then you take his quarterback situation, and you have to ask yourself, are you confident going into next year making him a top five pick? Yeah, I am fine, making him a top five wide receiver option next year. You've got year two of Pat Schumer coming over. You could just tell the difference. I mean, look at the first half giants versus the second half giants. The first few weeks, it looked like the Giants.

were going to be as bad as any team in the national football league. They were putrid on both sides of the ball. They were making moves that appeared like they're selling, right? They traded out way. Snacks Harrison for draft picks. They're playing for the future. But they've got capital. They've got ammunition in the draft. I think they'll be able to improve their team. Now, Eli's not going to be any better. I think that's the problem. But even with the decrepit Eli Manning, they'll take a quarterback at seven. That's what I think.

I doubt it. I think Haskins could go to them at seven. I mean, I wouldn't blame them for doing that at all. If that happens... Are they before or after the Jigs? I would... I thought they were one pick before the Jax. Ooh. I feel like I would downgrade Odell with a rookie quarterback. Hmm. Well, what you want is at least somebody in the wings. I wasn't saying that that rookie quarterback's going to start next year. But the situation of tumult and wondering what's next?

Certainly it's great for dynasty. Yeah, the Giants are picking six and the Jaguars are seven. There you go. So I would not be surprised. But we'll find out. There's so much time. Combine. Got to see how players perform. I think Beckham, it won't shock me to see him be overlooked. And not necessarily overlooked that. He's going to be outside of the top five wide receivers, but he may be treated like Julio's been treated in the past. Yeah. I think there's going to be an injury.

discount for Odell. Well, should there be, though? I mean, should we be worried about the injuries of Odell? I'm not. I'm, no. Why aren't you? I just, I don't know. I get that there's, it was the past two years, but they just seem like, I don't know, just anomalous injuries. You're injured until you're not. So I'm not going to buy that Odell Beckham is an injury prone player. And if, I would say, you know, if this was like a non-contact thing,

that's happened. But, you know, when he, when he rolled up his ankle on that play where, you know, it just got kind of trapped and tackled wrong. And that's one of those. I would rather it happened that way in sort of a little bit more of a freak accident than just his body failing him. Tyler Boyd is number 17, so we can talk about him now. A surprise season for Tyler Boyd, fantasy-wise? Yes. The breakout was.

Very, very large. I mean, to finish at the wide receiver 17 for a guy that was given very little optimism for the season. John Ross was supposed to be the two coming into the season. Tyler Boyd was not on hardly anybody's radar. Did you love him or hate him coming out? I loved him coming out. That was the one where Matt Harmon and I disagreed on. I thought coming out of college, Tyler Boyd was an amazing wide receiver. Harmon did not. And so I say.

Vindicated Harmon. Well, you took that play at the end of the year last year where they eliminated Baltimore and jettisoned himself into a different tier of fantasy wide receiver. Now, he did bust 29% of the time. It's a pretty high number, but we're moving towards that number at this point with the where guys finished. Weeks 1 through 8, and he was the wide receiver 12. Weeks 10 through 15, he was wide receiver 20. I would put him at that...

You know, consistency ranked 22. Sure, I'll put him a spot behind Tyler Lockett. I'll put him at 22 with Lockett at 21. All right. Better at home plus 4.7, 2 points at home. And look, 21% of his games were great games. So he would win you a week, and it surprised the heck out of fantasy owners in week 3 and 6 because you probably didn't expect Tyler Boyd to do that for your team. Yeah, that's the difference here for Tyler Boyd. Yeah, the 29% bust percentage.

That's high, but we are in the range of guys where that's going to just keep getting higher and higher. But the range that will not continue going up is a percentage of great games at 21%. So the fact that Boyd has that ability, and you don't have to draft him to be a great player. You just have to draft him to be an auxiliary piece to your team. Yeah, and he was the new Eric Decker.

Sure. I like that. And Eric Decker was great on your fantasy team. Yeah, and I think the Bengals offense takes a significant step forward this next year. They've got the pieces there with AJ Green. I still think Dalton is better. He was over four points a game better with Dalton than when Dalton wasn't there, which makes sense. As much as we like saying Driscoll. He's not a good quarterback. Well, and this could have, you know.

very well happened. Well, no, this show's coming out on Thursday, so it won't have yet. But Zach Taylor looks lined up to be the next head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals coming over as the quarterback's coach from Sean McVeigh's Rams. And so an offensive-minded coach, we'll see what happens. He's, you know, another one of the, the sunglasses-wearing Cliff Kingsbury style. That's fine because Bengals, I've been dealing with some kind of archaic stuff there for a while.

Blue blockers. Very cramagony. Yes. So, yeah, Boyd will be another interesting case next year to see how, you know, how does AJ Green come back? What other weapons do they get in the draft? Do they give up on, you know, turning John Ross into one of their main targets? Yes. What do they have at the tied-in position next year? So what do they do with their offensive line? Yeah. That's the biggest thing for me. All right. Let's talk about Amari. Oh, let's hang. Amari. Oh, this one's gross.

Well, what's gross is that he's wide receiver 18 and his consistency rank is 37. Well, part of that is because... Sounds about right. Of how bad he was when he was a raider. I mean, when he was a raider, he had one and a half good games. No, no. He had two good games. Okay, two. Well, I'm looking at it. He did the same thing.

But his bad games were not... His bad games weren't as bad in... I'm saying his bad games with Amari Cooper are disappearing acts. They're completely gone. Zero points, one and a half, two points, two points. Yes, in Oakland. Yes. But less so in Dallas. Right.

I'm saying that his consistency rating is because of what happened. Four points in week 16, 3.6 in week 17, so much better than those two-point games. But the frequency, the frequency of those bad games were nowhere near what they have been for the last year and a half in Oakland. Yeah, I think he's in a much, much better situation with Dak. But where do you do with Cooper next year? He had arguably.

what, like five bad games and four good games with Dallas? I mean, this is the problem, 53% bus rate. I mean, that's horrific. And I know he made the transition, and he's a good, he's a good enough player to where this shouldn't be happening. Yes. This is like, we need to file reports because this shouldn't be the case anymore. And I agree he's, he should be stabilized. But even in Dallas, you know, five point, six, four, three. I mean, he, end of the year.

without a game over 6.3 points. Yeah, you can't take Week 17 where he scored 3.6 points, but they basically bench. Yes, I can. No, they, no, he played. The only person who didn't play Week 17 was Zeke. I know he started. Did he play the whole game? I'll pull up his snapkin. I feel like they, Mike, let him have Week 17. The previous three years of Amari Cooper are what I'm talking about. And I just don't know what, like I am gritted teeth blindfold.