Top 10 WR Rankings + Bust Possibilities, Yardage Leaders

All right, Odell Beckham Jr. comes in as our number four consensus wide receiver. I got him at three, Jason at six. Mike at four. Right now he's being drafted as the fifth wide receiver off the board. We got him a spot higher. Obviously, he's one of the players that falls into the category. Look, new coach, new team, new quarterback. But same old Odell Beckham Jr. at least in the way we're projecting him. He's also another one of those players that has he's eight to one to lead the league in.

receiving yardage. So he's in that top four guys that Vegas projects to be in that category. Talk to me about Beckham. What can go right? What can go wrong here? I'll talk about what can go wrong since I'm the lowest on him. And, you know, I love Odell Beckham. I believe he's the most talented wide receiver in the National Football League. And

He has a pretty darn good quarterback, not necessarily as good as the other three wide receivers ahead of him in our rankings here. That being said, he also has the best competition for targets around him. The best, you know, with Jarvis Landry and in Joku, I think that there's, you know, there's going to be a difficulty to get Odell Beckham up in the 170 targets. It's not saying it can happen. But the biggest red flag for Odell Beckham,

And you have to realize it. You have to talk about it because for some reason, a lot of times his talent has totally taken away the injury-prone label. We know he's been injured before, but he doesn't get classified and lumped in with those players who have the prone label. You know, Sammy Watkins, who out there thinks Sammy Watkins is playing 16 games? About nobody. But these two guys were drafted in the exact. Approximately nobody. Approximately nobody.

These two guys were both drafted in the 2014 draft class. Same year. Sammy Watkins has played more NFL games than Odell Beckham. That's what? I had to double check that. You better triple check that. No, I did. I had to double check because I didn't believe it. Odell Beckham has missed more games than Sammy Watkins in his NFL career. So is he great? 100%. But is there a worry for either of you guys for injury? Because to me, I do have a little bit.

Well, I don't, really. And I think the reason that stat looks the way it does is because Beckham had the catastrophic injury and missed, you know, all but four games in one season. Watkins has the, you know, he's played. Every year. Yeah, it's every year a few games, so you just kind of get fatigued. There's not the fatigue there because you lost Beckham. And then you, you know, obviously last year you had, you had issues two, 12 games played. But it was more to me, when I think about interpreting kind of the.

the feeling that I have is it's just that catastrophic injury. And what I like for Odo Beckham for his upside, one, I mean, he makes his quarterback better. Eli Manning was three percentage points better to his completion percentage when Odo Beckham's on the field. And he's playing with Baker, who last year as a rookie thrown into, I would think we can all agree that it was a very tumultuous situation in Cleveland.

Head coaching chains right in the middle of the year. Baker starting in week three. Baker was up against it and he still succeeded. Baker had the second best pass rating in the red zone behind only Drew Brees. You know who else is great in the red zone? O'Dell Beckham. I mean, this is a perfect match when it comes to scoring touchdowns. All right, number five on our list, Tyreek Hill out of Kansas City. Last year he finished the season as the wide receiver won.

In half point. In half point. We've got him at Jason at four. I'm at five. Mike's at six. When it came out that he was going to be active and playing, I think there's a lot of people that said, hey, how does he not just end up a little bit higher on your ranks? He was incredible last year. He did bust about 20% of the time because he had these monstrous games. You know, if you had him in weeks 10 and 11, he was the number one wide receiver.

But he had games in the single digits a handful of times. What are we expecting from Tyreek Hill in year two with Patrick Mahomes? 15th most consistent but finished at number one. So maybe this is preferential on the type of guy you want at the top of your board.

Certainly. I mean, Tyree Kill is going to have the bigger monster games, and then sometimes if it's Travis Kelsey having the monster game and they don't need Tyreek, you're going to see that sometimes. But the expectation for Tyree Kill is simply that he is a number one wide receiver on the number one offense in the league who finished as the number one in fantasy. You should expect a superstar week in, week out. He's going to be a great draft pick. But he does carry...

The whole offseason problems and everything that went, you carry risk with that. Any event, any stupid thing that happens out in the world, there carries a little bit of higher risk with a player like that. So I don't think you're, you know, I don't expect that to happen, but you can't just be ignorant to the possibility that something could happen that way. 27.

20 plus yard receptions last year. That was number one in football. If he's healthy, off the field, is there any world where he can't finish in a top 10? No. Outside of the top 10? Yeah. Is there any way that he doesn't finish as a top 10? No. I mean, worst case scenario, assuming he's playing all 16 games would be that 9-10 range. He just happens to have fewer touchdowns. Have fewer of the monster games and disappoints a little bit.

If he's your number one, wide out, you end up with him. Do you conscientiously pair him with a more consistent type of player? I think that's a wise choice. Like, I mean, I imagine Tyree Kill Julian Edelman stacks will exist all over the place. I would be happy with that stack. I don't think you have to. I mean, last year he had those games where he disappeared. So did Michael Thomas. Two seasons ago, Michael Thomas was the most consistent.

player you can't really predict those games he's he's great and i think you you just take him as what he is and draft the best player available i don't think you have to he like he's not a marie cooper where you're going i'm worried that half of my points on the season are coming from uh you know half of his game or half of his points come from half his games be pretty consistent really um but if half of his points come from a handful of games i mean we talk about a 19% bust rate which

based on these other guys sounds terrible. Yes, it does. But as a wide receiver, 19 bustrate is well among the top as far as fewest in fantasy. All right. Number six, Juju, Smith, Schuster. Had a heck of a year last year, 111 receptions, 1426 yards, seven touchdowns on 166 targets. Mike, you brought up at the live show. Look, he's in the elite.

unprecedented category of production at the wide receiver position to start a career. Yes. One thing that will help that is playing in today's NFL and being a recipient of 689 pass attempts from the Pittsburgh Steelers offense last year, led the league, was kind of out of bounds for anything we've ever seen from Big Ben in his career.

but this is an interesting, this is where you start to get into more interesting names in general. Obviously, we know that guys at the top are great. Jason, you have them at five. Mike, you have Juju at five. I have him at six. He's one of the players that I... Are you saying your own ranking is too low? I'm saying my own ranking of five is way too low. Way too low. It's not just too low. There's only four spots. Two things about that, Jason. Number one.

You have full autonomy over your own rankings. So you have no one to blame but yourself if you believe that. Number two, there are more risks to juju than other players, in my opinion. I know you guys don't share that opinion. But you lose Antonio Brown. I don't expect him to throw as much as they did last year. They certainly will not. And I think that it's presumptuous to just say, I know that there's room margin wise for him to go up in touchdowns.

That's obvious. He had seven last year on 166 targets. But there's also room to go down in terms of total receptions and total yardage. I mean, you're not generally going to have, you know, 1,226 yards is a lot. So last year he was the wide receiver 9 with that stat line. 11, 1426, and 7. Tell me why you think he's more invulnerable than I believe.

I think he's more invulnerable than you believe because you have – I mean, you don't believe that the Steelers are going to be as great an offense as they have been in the past. I think that they will be one of the top eight offenses in the league. He's already established himself as a world-class wide receiver, and now you're going and pairing him with a quarterback who will hyper-target a –

a world-class wide receiver to the end of the world. I mean, some of the targets that Antonio Brown got, I know it's difficult for Juju to go up in targets, but it can still happen. But the other and I think the more important factor is the touchdowns. You had several plays last year where Juju was tackled inside the two-yard line. I call that Calvin. Yes, that one Calvin Johnson year. You had Antonio Brown with 15 touchdowns.

gone from the team. And it's, it's, you know, look, the, the team, the city, they have rallied around Juju Smith-Schuster as their future star. Is it going to be easy for him? No, this is going to be the first introduction to double and triple coverage. You know, he's had the luxury of playing with Antonio Brown. But in the small sample size of games without Antonio Brown, he has been Antonio Brown levels. So.

What I see is a player who could very well end up as the wide receiver won in fantasy football because if he ends up with double digit touchdowns, which... It's certainly plausible. It's very plausible. His target number is going to be high. His yardage. He's the alpha for this team. So it's just a matter of can he get the job done or not. And I think he can't.

In reception, he finished below the third percentile and success rate versus press coverage in both of his first two seasons. Obviously, it didn't hinder his fantasy production to this point. But without Brown, it'll be interesting to see what he does on the outside against those coverages, which he struggled with from a success rate, not from a fantasy perspective. Mike, did you want to say anything about Juju? No, I completely side with Jason that I think he has proven himself to be.

one of the top wide receivers. And there will be growing pains, but by the end of the year, I believe he will be easily in the top eight with a ceiling of number one. He's, you know, he's 22 years old right now, which is insane to think that this guy coming into his third season. I've never heard of that age before. You're right. I mean, players at this age that have scored more fantasy points than Juju Smith-Schuster.

Is Larry Fitzgerald, end of list? Yeah, no doubt. Michael Thomas comes in at number seven on our list. It comes in with his Rolls Royce. That is $100 million. Last year, 125 receptions, 1,405 yards, nine touchdowns. Money Thomas? Yes, Money Thomas. Just got paid. Did all that on 147 targets. So put up over 1,400 yards with about $1,000.

20 less targets than Juju did. For some reason, people don't want to crown Thomas as anything kind of inside that top five range. And I guess I'm curious as to why we can't get a Michael Thomas season in the 11, 12 touchdown category.

That's not within the realm of possibility. He finished 7th, 6th, and 6th in his three NFL seasons. Obviously, bummed people out at the end of last year, weeks 15 and 17. Really disappointing years, so you're burned by it. But obviously they paid him. He's the highest paid wide receiver in football. So they believe something about him being an alpha as well. When you said there's something, you know, that stops people from really putting him up at the, you know, in the conversation for the wide receiver one.

All that comes in my head is there is something. What is it? Like, I can't wrestle with. He's always been a top fantasy option. He is the clear one for his team. Drew Breezes his quarterback. There's nothing not to love about Michael Thomas. If I have to pick my argument and say, okay, well, then why when I stat him out? Does he never really compete with those tip-top players?