Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - The TRUTH About Fantasy WR's in 2015, Part 2

But trending-wise, I mean, Jason makes a good point. It's not, I don't think it's going to be better. It's easy. I mean, you can say, okay, if Brock's back and they all figure it out, but it's hard for me to make that kind of a leap when I'm drafting somebody. Yeah, that's very, that's a very valid point. So maybe, maybe after this discussion, I would go back to Macklin over Sanders. All right, well, how about this next guy? Number 19, I got a, I'm going to go from my guy to not my guy here.

I was dead wrong on Michael Crabtree, who really impressed me on the field and in fantasy, 16 games, nine touchdowns, didn't quite get to 1,000 yards, but was really a valuable fantasy receiver. He had some inconsistency, definitely towards the second half of the year. So I'm not excited about him for next year. But...

When you play 16 games and you put up 85 receptions, PPR leagues, an offense that seems to be getting better with a young quarterback. There's a lot to like about him at the right value. Yeah, I like it. He just got paid. He's finally healthy. He's on a team with a growing quarterback in Derek Carr who's getting, we saw a. Yeah, he's almost seven foot now.

Yeah, it's like the jolly green giant. He must be eating. He'll be eight foot by the time next season starts. If he keeps up with the green beans and the broccoli, he'll get there for sure. But my mom told me. I like Crabtree moving into next year. I think that he can actually improve upon these numbers. The yardage. Maybe the touchdowns he had nine touchdowns that's tied his career high. That's probably going to be right around the same range.

plus or minus a couple. But I think the yardage can definitely go up with the improvement of Amari Cooper as well. I think that the way that team is built and with Latavius Murray being a capable threat out of the backfield. I like Crabtree moving forward to finish again as a wide receiver too. He was somebody who three times did not finish as even a wide receiver four this year.

He had one top five performance. He was 31st in consistency. It's an interesting discussion. I don't, you know, we talked about Brandon Marshall and Decker yesterday and how you can't really, you know, you can't over cover Marshall because Decker will eat you alive, right? Because his talent levels up there. This is kind of like, I think, on both sides, Crabtree and Cooper kind of like junior, right? Like,

Yeah, Marshall Jr. That's fair. Decker Jr. where some of that, I mean, you see the consistency against the top 16 and bottom 16 defenses about the same amount of points per game, which is what you saw from Hearns. You know, the second receiver just kind of gets his target. Yeah, he's going to do what he does regardless of the matchup. And the problem with me is I just don't think Michael Crabtree does enough.

Because while maybe the yards per catch can go up, that is actually kind of his role. You know, he is much more of the possession type. They're not going to expand that with Cooper ascending. And generally, that role doesn't find nine touchdowns. So for me, I like Cooper, but he gives me a Crabtree. He's okay. I would not.

probably draft him to finish even where he did this year personally. I would not finish. I don't think he'd finish. It gives me a little bit of hope for Victor Cruz. Just from, you know, Crabtree sucked for a long time coming off of more serious. But it was a serious injury in the legs that kind of took years to come back from. Victor Cruz, having been out this whole year, maybe he can come back and be relevant. So it's so interesting when these names, I mean, formerly fantasy superstar, Victor Cruz. Wait, who is that again? It's like, he's gone.

All right, so number 20 is a name. If I could consult a soothsayer, Mike. Sure. I'd love to know what in the world is in store for Jordan Matthews. Because Jordan Matthews finished 20th, somehow, but that is well, well below projections for him. Absolutely. He was somebody who people thought was a bona fide Chip Kelly. Look, the discussion all offseason was, you know, he always produces a wide receiver one.

except for the year he gets fired. Yeah, and Jordan Matthews, he was in consideration, consideration for my breakout, or way too early breakout. I still like the player, Jordan Matthews. I think there is a lot of talent there, and there's already talk of moving him to the outside, which is where I thought he should have been, this whole slot versus outsider, or outside receiver.

He's six three. Yeah, and I don't believe there was a player in the league over a certain amount of receptions that played in a higher percentage in the slot. It was like 96.3. He was a slot guy. So moving him to the outside definitely can be better. You know, he had some serious hands issues this year. That was my next point, too. Well, so you're saying that they could just go away? Not necessarily that they're going to go away, but I think that he just,

After it was week one, I mean, he had that huge drop. And you have to factor in the humanity of it. I think it really, really got in his head, which allowed another one to happen. So it just was this downward spiral, gets a fresh reset off season, new coaching staff, a chance to start. Frank Reich and Peterson. Brand new. And I just, I still believe in Jordan Matthews, the talent.

Yeah. Oh, sorry. Looking at his game log and seeing how his numbers came about. Now, we know from the fact that he won, he did win the footie for this, right? The Garbage Man of the Year award. So having won the Garbage Man, we know a lot of it came in that time. But after his week eight by, he was much better the rest of the year, much, much better. The beginning part of the year from weeks three through seven.

He never once finished with double digits. Nelson Aguilar, does he get more involved next year in the West Coast scheme and take away from Matthews, or is he a better fantasy value than Matthews? I don't think Nelson Aguilar is a good wide receiver. That's ridiculous. Oh, that's a hot take. I just don't think he's that. You haven't seen anything. This is a Devante Freeman alert. Well, it could be. Let me hear it. No, I just. Nelson.

Aguilar? I'm not going to say he stinks. Good, because he doesn't. He's a great player. I think he's a very good player. So you expect big things from him next year? I expect Nelson Aguilar to be a better draft value than Jordan Matthews. Oh, really? There's no way to put that on the board, but absolutely I do. Well, the way, let's, let's break that down just a little bit. Matthews is going to plummet, right? Why would he plummet? Well, compared to where he was drafted last year. Oh, draft wise, yeah. Yeah, I think he'll be a...

six, seventh round pick? Around there, would you guess? Or would he go higher? I mean, he did finish 20. He would probably go higher because he's the one on that team. The perception, right? Your ones go. Your ones go earlier. But where's Aguilar going to go? Aguilar had so many opportunities this year. He played... I disagree completely. I could not more vehemently disagree with you. How did he have a million opportunities this year? He played the whole year on the outside. No, he did not.

He did not play the whole year on the outside. When a guy has 23 receptions on a season, I don't think he got a lot of opportunity to play. Okay, so we agree, at least on one thing. He had 23 receptions. What I'm saying is he had- On 40 targets. 44 targets. He was in the game enough to have nowhere near those numbers playing snaps, those type of things, and that's where I'm saying he wasn't getting the separation.

He wasn't performing. I mean, I just think for the amount of time he was on the field, he should have had better numbers. I do not doubt that he had a disappointing year. There's not me disagreeing with you that. He does play enough snaps to have done more. For some reason, my point is this. He just didn't seem to be like a part of what the offense was trying to do. If you play that much and you get 44 targets, I mean, you can blame the wide receiver. You can blame Sam Bradford. You can blame Chip Kelly. You can blame the routes he's running.

I think he's a better fit for West Coast. I think that's what you're going to see with Doug Peterson. And so I think his numbers and the potential for him to be a Hearns-like guy are very high. He's a top draft pick. What about a Macklin? I loved him in USC. A Macklin-type guy, because he's getting the Kansas City offensive coordinator. No, not a Macklin-type guy because he's not going to be in that Macklin-type role. He's going to be in a role. I think him in Crabtree could have very comparable numbers next year.

Which is a, I mean, that's a very, no, I'm saying Aguilar. I think Aguilar could be in the, I just think he has the ability and talent. I liked him in college. He didn't get opportunities last year with whatever involvement problems he had. He had a bad year. No doubt about it. Bad, bad year. He's not the only one on that team. Jordan Matthews had a bad, bad year. DeMarco Murray had a bad, bad year.

85 for 997 and 8 touchdowns, I wouldn't call it bad, bad year. I think if you watched him, he was as up and down and terrible as you could be. Just saying his final stats. Yeah, but anybody could do that as the one on any team. Not anybody. What do you mean, not anybody? If you're the one on any team, you're going to put up a thousand yards and he didn't even get there. You don't think so? I mean, find the last team that, I mean...

Other than Kansas City's historical situation, they were breaking the records for the 1,000 yards. Dwayne Boe, how good is Dwayne Boe? That was a completely different office. Did anyone on the Panthers have over 1,000 yards? Who was the number one receiver on the Panthers? I don't know. Okay. It's saying that... No, I don't think anybody there had 1,000 yards. What about... I'm saying it's pretty easy to do.

That's all I'm saying. I don't know how many receivers per year do it, but it's not that hard to do. And he's the number one target. And how much garbage time poured into his statistics? That team was down by a ton. He didn't do a lot of meaningful things on the field. Matthews. Would you agree with me other than dropping the football? How many drops did he actually have? You were talking about drops so much. He talks about drops so much. Philadelphia media talks about drops so much. I'm not disagreeing. He was dropping the ball a lot.

But I think he led the league. Number one wide receivers, I don't think, are guaranteed to have a thousand yards. I mean, Green Bay. Green Bay did not have a thousand yard receiver. They didn't have a leading receiver. They rotated that position throughout the year. Okay. So. So not every team has a number one then. If you give a guy number one in 16 games, I think it's pretty easy. What is that average? 60 yards for their leading receiver? Well, Nelson Aguilar is not going to be a clear cut number one next year.

He's not the number one at all. I know. I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about Jordan Matthews. That's what we've been talking about, Jordan Matthews. I'm just saying that. We were just talking about his numbers. I'm just saying that I don't think. The Eagles led the league in drops. I don't think you're accurate in saying that the number one wide receiver for a team, you know, commonly gets like it's easy to get a thousand. And we'll disagree. I think it's very easy. We'll have to investigate this afterwards. So percentage wise, what is your, what does that statement mean?

The number one, so if you start the air as the number one receiver, how often do you finish with a thousand? Is that what you're saying? I'm saying if you take the league and you look at the 32 teams, we'll have to look and see how many teams didn't have a thousand yard receiver. This is an interesting case study. So I'm looking at drops here. Number one, most drops in the league for wide receiver. Amari Cooper? Amari Cooper. Yeah. Mike Evans, Demaris Thomas, Brandon Marshall, Martavis, Devante Stinky Adams.

Nasty Nate Washington. So, I mean, there's a lot of guys who had more drops than Matthews. Well, I think the reason Matthews. He never dropped the over the top down by four touchdown passes. He had high profile. He had high profile drops. He's come out repeatedly. This is not like a mirage. He's come out repeatedly this year. It's horribly embarrassing about his drops. That's his own words, you know. It's been something we've seen and gone, what? He did have more drops than Leonard Hankerson, though. Which is impressive.

Because Leonard Hey, you're getting into the discussion of drops per target. You know, that's really the number that matters. It's not total drops that matters. It's kind of like the number that matters is how often you're being targeted. Cooper was targeted a lot. You know. Cooper had three more targets than Jordan Matthews. Yeah. Oh, there you go. And a lot more drops. Yep. Amari Cooper stinks. All right. Let's talk about John Brown. Next guy on the list. Getting here close to home in Arizona.

You've got the three-headed wide receiver monster in Larry Fitzgerald, John Brown, and Michael Floyd. This year, John Brown had, excuse me, over 100 targets. Finished with 1,000 yards, right? Andy, seven touchdown, 65 receptions. As far as how he did against the top half and the bottom half, he did a little bit better, performed a little better against the bottom half of passing defenses, about two points per game better.