Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Top 10 WR, Sleepers, News, Mailbag

Wide receiver in fantasy, 82, 1,300 yards, 9 touchdowns. That was 20 receptions and 200 yards higher than his second best year 2014. Jeremy Macklin finished 9th on a line of 85, 1,300 yards, 10 touchdowns. That was 15 receptions, 350 yards higher than his best year that he had in his career thus far. That's why I like Jordan Matthews. Is there any chance he's not the guy?

That would be the only question because he hasn't done it. So is there a chance he's not? Here's what I got for you. Josh Huff, Riley Cooper, Miles Austin. You think that you think they're going to be the guy? I definitely think they'll draft somebody, but I guess whoever's coming in is probably not going to. They traded up to draft, you know, Matthews the last year. Right, yeah, yeah. And so I firmly believe Jordan. You have to take a leap on somebody in that offense. That's a great guy to take a leap on. And that's why I'm willing to be wrong on Jordan Matthews.

I don't think I will be. Somebody is going to hit that 1,300 yard mark and be a fantasy beast. Another side note, because some people might be scared of San Bradford. I took a look at accuracy of quarterbacks before, and then when they got into Chip Kelly's offense. Nick Foles was a 60% completion, jumped up to 64. Mark Sanchez was a 55% career passer. That was his completion percentage. In Chip Kelly's offense, 64%.

He increased 9% moving into the power smoothie offense. The power smoothie offense. I like that. That's a new hashtag. So I am completely on board with Jordan Matthews being a beast. Well, we'll hop back and get one of your maybe sleeper picks a little bit later. Let's move on to number nine in our wide receiver rankings. Number 10 was Randall Cobb. Number nine is ODB. O'Dell Beckham Jr.

Burst onto the scene. If you want to see a very granular look at his first year in the league, you can hop onto the website, the fantasy fieldballers.com. We've got a really good article that shows the target distribution for Odell Beckham as the year went on and as the trust with Eli Manning was building. Odell Beckham's sitting here at number nine. I like this spot for him myself. I think people who have him in their top five, which is, I think the majority were a little bit lower on him than a lot of other websites or experts.

But I think this is the right spot for him when you consider risk. Yeah. So in my top 10, I've got two guys lower than I think everybody else would say. And that would be Calvin Johnson and Odell Beckham, which are eight and nine respectively. And so the way that I see it is that both of those guys can finish number one this year. Odell Beckham can finish number one. I have...

If that happens, I don't think anybody in the league would be surprised. But he has a lot of question marks because he was new to the scene. I call them C.J. Andersons, but go ahead. So we'll see how low you rank him.

Andy, when you get around to your rankings. And so he burst onto the scene, coming in late off of the injury, so people weren't game planning for him yet. Then he was just a monster. And his stats, when I look him up, especially catch rates and the rating of the quarterback when throwing to Odell Beckham, his targets, they're all just...

marvelous, marvelous numbers. And I think that there is definitely the ability to finish ahead of, say, the seven people that I've got ahead of him. But there's also a lot of issues that you don't know in a second year wide receiver. You don't know what Victor Cruz is going to do to the offense. You don't know what defenses are going to do to key in on Odell Beckham. And so I just think there's the guys that I have above him. I am just so in love with.

I have no questions of. I won't want any of them on my team. And I think they all have every bit as high a ceiling as O'Dell Beckham. But O'Dell Beckham, to me, has the possibility of a slightly lower floor. And not to mention, we have to keep in mind that he was injured. There's a reason that he started the year slow. And so injuries have to factor in there. Yeah, the injuries is my first point. He missed four games with a hamstring injury. It came out at the end of the season. He said he was playing with two hurt hamstrings by the end of the year.

That has to be a concern because guys with the hamstring injuries, those things tend to be recurring throughout the career. Then my second point is why he is a bit lower than what other people have him. It's not because of talent. The guy's a monster. Yeah, you have him at seven. It's because of targets where Beckham's pace, if you extrapolate it out, he was on pace for 173 targets.

That's very, very high-level stuff. I went and I took a look at Eli Manning because people, oh, Eli Manning, he locks in on one receiver. So here are the top targets from his previous years. Yes. Okay. Going through. 2013, Cruz, 12 was Cruz. That was his highest? That was the most on the team. Okay, okay. I got you. In 2012, Cruz, 143.

Nix, 133, and I'm going back in time. So in 2010, Nix, 128. Here's the outlier, 2009. Steve Smith, remember the other Steve? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 157 targets. So it's not in that 180 Demeris Thomas Echelon. So he hasn't locked on a guy to that Demerius Thomas level of targets where I don't see Odell Beckham getting that.

Those kind of targets, again. Do you think those targets could change because of McAdoo and the offensive system being more passive? And the talent of, I think Beckham might be better than any that they ever have. Yes, and those play a part in it. But those are things and maybes for. Right. Yeah. So Eli Manning has shown that he doesn't just completely lock on to a guy. The McAdoo system. He didn't have a choice at the end of last year. There was no one else. I mean, it was Randall and Danelle.

Right. I'm just saying he didn't have Cruz in the mix. Right. And who knows if Cruz is going to be back or not? The Patelotentin injury is extremely hard to come back from. So I'm still on board with Beckham. I'm just trying to temper my level of desire. Based on where we have him ranked, he's the guy that you let other people fall in love with so you can get one of the guys that we have ranked higher pretty much. So let's move on to number eight on our list here. This one surprises me.

I guess I should say when I say our list, I haven't compiled my wide receiver rankings yet. So this is the consensus rankings of Jason and the fantasy hitman here. So number eight is Alshan Jeffrey. Alshan Jeffrey. So a couple bullet points I can throw out there before I let you guys kind of talk about him. He's going to be missing Brandon Marshall for the first time in his career. Precisely.

And Mark Trussman is gone now from that offense. And so Alshan Jeffries, he's an awesome talent. I love the guy. I don't know if I would have him this high myself. So break it down for me, one of you guys. Jay Cutler is still in Chicago. Jay Cutler is the opposite of what I was just talking about. Jay Cutler locks into one guy. That guy gets the absolute lion's share of the targets.

Real quickly, I'll go through them. Brandon Marshall's targets in 2013, 164, 2012, 192, 2005, 154, 181, 170. Brandon Marshall got every single pass that Jay Cutler threw. Now, this previous year, he, sorry, Alshon Jeffrey finished 11th.

with only 145 targets. In the games where Brandon Marshall was not playing, or I'm sorry, when Brandon Marshall was in, he averaged nine targets a week. When Brandon Marshall was out, he bumped up to 11. He averaged double-digit targets. So with those targets, Alshund Jeffrey has the talent to be a fantasy beast. Big body, touchdown guy. Anything, you have them about the same place, Jason. You have them at number nine on your list. Mike, you have them at eight. So you both have them in that top.

10. For the same reason. I mean, Alshan Jeffrey will get all of the first looks. Every single play, he will get all of the first looks. And he is a good enough talent. Like, that's the worry, right? Some guys, when they lose that number one guy, that number two wide receiver, he can't take the step to be a number one wide receiver. You lose the star and you have big hopes, but Alshan Jeffrey is a beast. He's 6'3, what, 215, 220. He is

he has proven when Brandon Marshall was out of the game that he is a go-to non-stop wide receiver 1. So I see no possibility of him not being able to replicate what Brandon Marshall did when Brandon Marshall was higher up in his career. I love Al-Shan Jeffrey this year. I was worried. I wanted to go back and look at how did he perform when Brandon Marshall was out, and he just ate it up. He soaked it up and was a star. And so Al-Shon Jeffrey is going to be an absolute wide receiver 1 next year.

Yeah, I think that that could definitely happen. I think that it's hard to say as superior. I mean, we all agree DeAndre Hopkins is talented, right? He has talent. So him stepping into Andre Johnson's role does mean obviously that he's going to put up Andre Johnson numbers. They're different guys. I like Jeffrey a lot. I just don't know what that offense is. I'd probably have him about the same spot. So not too bad. The question is they've gone, they're all in on Cutler. His money for next year.

is guaranteed. When the bullet starts flying and the game starts going, you think Jay Kotler is going to give a crap what the play is called? No. Because he's smoking Jake Cutty. He does what he wants. And he's going to... Don't sleep on Martel's Bennett. That's all I'm saying. I still like Bennett. But even with Bennett there, Alshan Jeffrey, like Jason said, he's going to be the first look. Third down, the ball's going to Jeffrey. He's going to somewhere where he trusts...

Yeah, absolutely. Number seven on our list, moving on from Alshon Jeffrey. So we went Cobb, Beckham, Jeffrey. Number seven is the tried and true, AJ Green. Yes. AJ Green, the man with infinite talent and... A bad quarterback. Yeah, finit quarterback play. The man with a red rocket problem. Yeah. So where is he going to be this year? Because he's a guy who's finishing that top three before. He has all the talent in the world. He's a big body. He's a downfield threat. He's going to score touchdowns.

He was the name that when I was done statting all the guys that surprised me the most on the upside. I was really surprised to see how high I was on A.J. Green just based on, I looked back, you know, watched some tape and looked at his stats from the past. And while nobody likes Andy Dalton, and we wish he had a better quarterback because, you know, Sky would be the limit. He's always had Andy Dalton.

He's finished number two before, and his years in the past have been incredible. And a couple years ago, I remember A.J. Green was almost the love affair that O'Dell Beckham is getting now. And he had the same quarterback then that he has now. And I think we forget how injured A.J. Green was last year. How hobbled he was coming in, how hobbled he was throughout the year. And, you know, being that hobbled, he still had a pretty darn good year. So I don't forget.

I think that's why people would sleep on it. I remember he was injured. Never forget. No, he was beat up last year, and he was beat up the kind of beat up where you play through it or keep trying to play through it and then you give up eventually. A toe or something. I mean, look at his last two years prior to this past year. Just to remember, he basically had 100 receptions each year. He had 13 or 1,400 yards and 11 touchdowns each year. And that was still with Andy Dalton. So I see no reason. And now they're going to have a better running game with your boy, Jeremy Hill.

And he's going to be healthy. I really, I love where you're going to get him because I do think people are a little sour on him and there's no reason to be. You've got to look at AJ Green how you did before this last injured year. And I think the best job we can do for the listeners is to frame these guys in the context of their situation so that they can make decisions based on that. Because the difference between.

Green or Jeffrey or Green and Johnson, who we're about to get to, it's going to be pretty negligible at the top of this list. And so providing them the context for how to draft these guys, what their opportunities are, reminding them what they were before they were injured, I think is important. In a couple months, we're going to be going through tiers. And that's really what you, when it comes down to prepping for draft time, the tears. Like no Sean Moreno size.

Yeah, huge teardrops. Teardrop tattoos. But when we tier and rank these players, that is what's important because in my top six guys, my top six guys, the way that I've got their points finishing on the season, guess what the point spread, Andy, is between my first and my sixth? I'm going to guess it's not a lot. Ten points? Yeah, it's...