Fantasy Football 2017 - Top 10 Wide Receivers + Preseason Hype

completely fell off. But there are, same with several others, but there are the opposite. Reggie Wayne, Andre Johnson, who had great age 31 seasons and great age 32. When I look through the list, the most telling factor is their quarterback. I was going to say, Reggie Wayne, was that still Peyton? Exactly. He had Peyton. Wes Welker, he had Brady. If you stay with a great quarterback,

you're a much safer bet. So when I say I'm skeptical on Jordy, it's just because, look, he's 32. Last year, the Packers threw way more than they wanted to and way more than they usually do. So I expect a little bit of regression. That's why personally I don't have him in the same tier. But I do believe he repeats. He is my number four receiver and he should be drafted. So he's the top of your tier two. Yes, absolutely.

All right, AJ Green comes in at number five. I have them at five. Mike, you have them at six, Jason at four. His ADP right now is a spot ahead of Jordy Nelson. And if I'm at the back of the first round and I'm not going running back, I consider myself extremely lucky if I get to draft AJ Green or Jordan Nelson and then turn around and take somebody in an early second round at running back.

How good is AJ Green? You had the injury last year, so all of those season-ending misleading final numbers, you don't have them to throw into the corner of AJ Green. How good is he, though? Highest percentage of 40-plus yard receptions in the league. Targeted 10 times a game, which was the fourth most in football. I'll take it. 96.4 yards a game average. It's number two in football. Do not forget about this man.

Yeah, when he was playing, obviously he missed. Bad man. He missed the last six or seven games. He was pacing to be the top wide receiver. I mean, he's an absolute stud. And I don't know. The sentiment that at least I get the feedback I get from when I'm talking to people on Twitter, they don't consider A.J. Green up.

up there up of these tears like everyone's like well it's clearly i'm going to take my thank you mike evans over a j green and like why why would you do that i like i love mike evans we're about to talk about him but a j green uh had the he had the longest consecutive thousand yards streak coming into last season and he

He would have hit it for sure. He had 964 yards in 10 games. He's an elite wide receiver. He still is an elite wide receiver. Andy Dalton is an underrated quarterback. So AJ Green is a fantastic pick when you're coming into the early second. Absolutely. And we've talked, you know, quarterbacks before. Andy Dalton is one of the.

You know, if you're looking at metrics and the most telling rebounded numbers, Andy Dalton is the leader this year for a return to more touchdowns. I expect Andy Dalton to get back to, you know, his career average touchdown pace, which was very low last year. If that returns to normal, AJ Green, who was already going full beast mode last year, is...

A great option. You're talking about a guy who has three different seasons of double-digit touchdowns. I mean, what more do you want than a guy who has pretty much never been on pace for less than a thousand yards is going to be close to double-digit touchdowns? There are going to be plenty of leagues where he's in the second round. Plenty of leagues. And it's silly. It's like what we were talking about with Antonio Brown.

I mean, Odo Beckham, to start his career, has been sensational. So was A.J. Green, and he continues to be sensational. Yeah, when I say Jordy is the top of tier two, Jordy and AJ Green are identical in my rankings. They're basically, you know, 4A, 4A. That does not compute. That's identical, right? Number six on the wide receiver rankings. Mike Evans, number six, look, he's the.

the special pick this year for a lot of fantasy players, they just won them on their roster. And I get it. The numbers were kind of otherworldly last year. But Mike, break down a little bit of what we saw from the first and second. We talked about the Bucks earlier and their defense and what this team did to succeed in the second half of the year when they went six and two. For Mike Evans, it's eerily, eerily similar to when DeAndre Hopkins was an elite.

wide receiver for fantasy a couple years ago. You saw the Texans who are historically having this great defense. All of a sudden their defense had fallen apart. Hoyers happened to target DeAndre Hopkins like a madman. And he's padding these numbers. And then you saw the second half, the defense returned to form as they should have. And then Hopkins targets went way down. Basically the same exact thing happened to Mike Evans last year. The first half of the season, he was averaging almost 13 targets a game.

That's unsustainable. I mean, that's too much. Like, that's fantastic. Over the second half, the defense improved, the running game got going. He was closer to nine targets a game, which we, I want to say, that's a great number. That's still excellent. We just talked about AJ Green around that. But when you drop from 22 PPR points to 15 PPR points per game, I mean, that's,

that becomes a significant difference. And Mike Evans is just not up in that that AJ Green, Jordan Nelson tier for me. He's still a tremendous wide receiver one. You can't, you can't bring him down too far because the player is just too amazing and will receive targets. But he doesn't belong up in that top tier yet. You hope that Deshaun Jackson opens up.

You know, because there was an adjustment. You have that many targets at the beginning of the year. Teams did roll a lot of double coverage to Mike Evans. He was the only target in town. And he'll have the ability to give you multiple touchdown games, which you love from a wide receiver. I just think we're not all willing to give him what some have given him, which is the tier jump with the big three. Right. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I don't think he's going up.

But I don't necessarily think he's going to, you know, take a huge step backwards either. Even a lot's been made of the fact that, you know, like you just said, the second half of the season was, you know, bad. You know, the way that you could. Not bad, just not as good. But I've seen it painted as bad when they just talk about his top 12 performances. You know, they say, oh, after this week, he only had like one top 12 performance. I think they that he's referring to is me like two shows ago.

Well, I mean, I think I'm they. I have seen it. No, no, no. I've seen it from a lot of different people. No, I'm not just you. I see. I think that was that was even, you know, if you go back a couple months, I think that was a common, a common blurb on Roto World. And it's true. Yeah, I wrote it on Roto World. It's, it's, it's a true statement. But over, you know, from 9 to 17, the last half of the year, he was still the wide receiver five.

So, I mean, that's... Who cares? Yeah, who cares? So what? What is this voice? That's what's the same I lie. Yeah. Oh, look, the problem with summarizing the second half to me as he was still the whatever is he had four weeks outside the top 40 in the last. I mean, he doesn't help you. Well, but I don't care where he in. He had a week three. So he played Seattle. He finished number three. Down the stretch. And then he had three.

Terrible games. And they were juicy. When I got my walking papers from the fantasy playoffs, nobody came over and comforted me by saying, but Mike Evans actually ended up over the second half as a top whatever. That's why that is a... Sure. He did have a few dud games, but... In a row. Yes, in a row. But that, I mean, all wide receivers, Michael Thomas last year was unbelievable, was even ahead of...

you know, of Mike Evans in that stretch, but he had 33 plus percent of his games outside the top 36. It's just even the good ones have that other than Antonio Brown, which is why I was making the point earlier. There's a difference. Fair. Michael Thomas comes in at number seven. I have him at nine. Jason has him at six. The freshly besmirched Michael Thomas. Mike at number eight. Michael Thomas.

Favorite number for Michael Thomas I want to share with the listeners, reception percentage, 76% of his targets he caught. 76%. There's only one player that did better. Who was that, Andy? And that was Beasles. Yeah, you're darn right it was. Cole Beasley caught like 76.5% of his catch. So basically the leads. Win's a win. A wins. That's his motto. Look, he's a go-to guy. One of the other numbers I love to look at when you want to say, who's, who's.

arrived okay and i know he's young but who's arrived uh highest percentage of these third down conversion catches where you see hulio brown and hilton and beckham and oh michael thomas michael thomas is right there because on third down you can go to michael thomas and apparently 76% of the time when you do go he catches the ball and he has one of the highest floors in fantasy football i absolutely love michael thomas

I don't think you can go wrong. I agree. You've said before that he's bustproof. And if your expectation is right, then I think you're exactly right. He's the number one target in an offense that's going to be putting up a ton of points with the Hall of Fame quarterback, you know, 5,000 yards. And a lot's made of, well, he was a rookie now he's going to, with Brandon Cook's gone. Maybe he'll see number one coverage. It's very reminiscent to me of Marquis Colston. When he was with Drew Brees came out, had that.

absolutely excellent rookie year similar to Michael Thomas. And what did he do the next year when he was the focus of the defenders? He still had Drew Breeze, and he went up to 98 receptions, 1,200 yards, and 11 touchdowns. That's very much to me in the realm of realistic and possible for Michael Thomas. I think he's a lock for 90 receptions in a high-powered, high-scoring offense.

as the number one target. So Michael Thomas is a guy. I have on many of my leagues. I'm not afraid to draft him at all. I think his upside is there and his floor is there. Yeah, the difference, I would say a criticism for Thomas of being drafted this high, which he's going very high in fantasy drafts. He's saying, well, his targets will never be what Brown and Beckham and Hulier are getting, whether they're up at 170 plus targets.

Yeah, Michael Thomas is not going to see that, but you have to factor in the quality of one Michael Thomas target coming from the most accurate quarterback in the history of the NFL. It's more valuable than an Eli Manning target. So Michael Thomas is, I think he is very safe. You have Brandon Cooks, he's gone. That's 117 targets, 1,200 yards, 8 touchdowns from the office that is missing. Does that mean it goes all to Michael Thomas? No, but...

Michael Thomas still had 121 targets if he sees. It just solidifies it. If he shifts that up just slightly, I mean, he's even safer that I just, I believe that Michael Thomas is a very safe pick. All right. T.Y. Hilton, T.Y. Hilton, the league leader in yards last year with over 1,400. T.Y. Hilton, I'm at 7, Jason 8. Mike 9, his average draft position for a player with that kind of potential. It's not bad. 2.11.

For T.Y. Hilton. It's all right. Never been a guy that scores a lot of touchdowns. That's been kind of the problem. He'll give you, I think a couple years ago when he had six touchdowns, three of them came in one game, and then you were kind of spreading three more out across the other 15th. His whole career, except for last year, was he would finish fine in the final rankings, but he was really a burst player. And that changed last year. He was far more consistent. It was a wide receiver one or two.

over 56% of the time. And we all love T.Y. Hilton. The only caution with him is T.Y. Hilton was five fantasy points a game better without Dante Moncrief on the field, who all reports Moncrief is having a monster training camp. He's already back from the mild AC sprain. So will Hilton be able to command the target share that he had last year? 155 targets. Can he?

If Moncrief stays on the field, will that be replicated? It's better for the team if those go down a little bit and you do have some other weapons to spread the ball around to. Yeah, it's a little bit worrisome with what T. Y Hilton was able to do last year and the situation he finds himself coming into this year with Moncrief back. And you just said a five points. Five point swing is huge. A five point swing when Moncrief is there versus when he's not. And then you also have.