The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy WRs + Goat Goodbyes - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/2

with Tua, where he's flying down the field and he gets underthrown a deep ball, but he's so open that it doesn't matter. He could just come back for it, grab it because you've got to watch Jalen Waddle underneath. So Tyree Kill, not much to say about him other than make sure he's a top tier first-round draft pick next year. Jailen Waddle was number one in yards per reception. 18.1 yards per reception. He's got juice. Like if he didn't have Tyree Kill's shadow cast upon him, You would say he's the next Tyree Kill. That's the funny thing about Jalen Wattle. Yeah, the only reason he was like the back of the fourth round for ADP this year was because of the Tyree Kill trade. All right. At number three, Devante Adams. All right. 53% good, 41% great, 18% bust, a stellar year for him. Seventh in consistency.

I don't think I said the consistency ranks for Waddle, but he's at 15. Tyreek was at 2, which is where he finished. But Devante Adams at 7 inconsistency. It was worse over the last part of the year. Really the last five games of the season kind of muddied that. I mean, it would have been much higher. Yeah, through the fantasy playoffs, he let you down more often than not. Unless you had them in San Francisco in championship weeks. Yes. If you got to the championship game with Devante Adams, Mike, I think you did. I certainly did. Oh, yeah. We did against the Borg. And that was great because Devante Adams was great. But a lot of people didn't get there because weeks 14, 15, 16 were disappointing. And that was Nathan Peterman against San Francisco. Is that Peterman? Yeah. Zach Siddem. Oh, I'm sorry. They're the same. I was going to say that. That's what was missing. You had those three games.

Before the explosion, it was the decline clearly of Derek Carr, as the Raiders thought. And they got to get good. Did you call him Zach? No. Jared. Jared. Oh, he said, Jared. I do know a Zach Stidham. Did you say Zach? Yep. You know what Zach Stiddle? I do. You want to give a shout out to old Zachie? Gets a shout out. Nathan Peterman. Everybody gets a shout out today. I know what Nathan? Yeah, I mean, Adams was awesome. This was one of those. This surprised me. We got a lot right. We got a lot wrong. This was one spot where I had Adams at three in my preseason rankings, and the heat was on for this. Because you didn't see how can it be as good for Adams in Las Vegas? And it wasn't as good, I guess, but 1,500 yards and 14 touchdowns. That's still pretty good. Like the Tyreek Hill one, I was nervous about what could Tua do with Tyreek Hill. And that was, I mean.

Clearly wrong. That one made more sense to me as the, like, Tyre Kill is still fully in his prime, still has his full speed. But it's like, can the translation of Devante Adams, who's not an elite athlete, so he's still good, but he wins with just his skill as a wide receiver. And he was doing the vanishing, the Houdini, where he just appears wide open all the time. He had more of those plays than anybody else. Like defenses just forget that Devante Adams is on the field. It makes. No sense, but his season, I think, was far more surprising to me than all the other wide receivers that move. A lot of times you don't see on broadcast, you have to look at the all 22, and then you see he's got an invisibility cloak. And you're like, oh, I see him take it off. Now he's wide open. They're playing with 10 guys. Oh, no, there he is. Gotcha. 58, 48, 48, 25, 38, 48, 31, 34, 31, 45, 60.

It's a lot of numbers. Those were the distances for his touchdowns. Oh, man. Most of them. Big play. I mean, big place. So, yeah, that cloak works well. Stefan Diggs comes in at number four. Consistency rank of seven. Honestly, I thought he had like top three on lockdown until the end of the year. 1400 yards, 11 touchdowns, 59% good, 24% great, just 18% bust rate, which is outstanding. But it was a really, really, really horrible fantasy football playoffs because it was 58 at the position, 42, 66, and then deleted game. Right, yeah, your championship week, that game against the Bengals didn't get to happen. And depending on how your league handled that, I mean, Stefan Diggs was everything you wanted him to be the entire season until.

it mattered the most and then he let you down. But the truth on the season as a whole is he is the dude. I don't think there was anything at the end of the year that looked like he slowed down. Those were the happenstance of those games. If those games were spread out throughout the season, you wouldn't have felt it. You wouldn't have felt that collapse quite the same way. Totally agree. And he's got enough pedigree where no one's going to hold that against him. Like if it was an up and coming wide receiver that had. not proven themselves. I think you look at that and say, oh, no, what's happening next year? None of us have that doubt with Fondakes. Correct. And he's got Josh Allen. Yeah, he'll have, I have no doubt that the Buffalo Bills are going to try to bring in another good wide receiver to replace Gabriel Davis as someone that can really be that Emmanuel Sanders. Did we mention the blurb that came out that said Gabe Davis was playing hurt all year? I didn't even see that. Yeah, they said, I,

Was it a high ankle sprain? I can't remember, but it just came out. I think you're making it up. Totally made up. Someone go ahead and back. Sorry, everybody. Totally made up. The problem with playing through injury on the high ankle sprain is he's still got targets that hit him in the hand. And so it's like, okay, you, you ran down the field fine enough to get the ball. Do you have a little, I'm sensing a little Gabe Davis bitterness. I definitely have a little bit of Gabe. Some burns. Davis bitterness because everything that, you know, he was a my guy this last year, someone that he had, he had his big games helped you win some weeks. He wasn't a complete and utter bust. But everything that I loved about his situation came true. The opportunities were there for him. His red zone opportunities, his target share, his.

Targets from Josh, they were all there. He just, he himself wasn't good enough to capitalize on the opportunity given him. Which was the hope, obviously, that he could do that. So, um, all right. Let's, Mike, did you confirm your made up injury or? No, it's, it's in there there that he, he heard it week one, but just people, people just kind of like whispers. I'm obviously, whispers and rumors on Twitter. Obviously very serious about you making up this injury. That's fun. A.J. Brown. I'm just trying to give Jason an out. Thank you. I take it. Take it. He's played injured. It would have been great. Escape hatch. The escape hatch is great when it lets you double down next year. AJ Brown, Devante Smith. They finished at 5 and 10. What a finish to the year for Devante Smith and AJ Brown. But consistency-wise, A.J. Brown, the wide receiver, or I'm sorry, five inconsistency. Devante Smith, 12 inconsistency. So that's awesome.

There are some overarching wide receiver things to remember truths from this year that we need to not forget going forward, which is when a true superstar wide receiver is changing teams. And there's going to be all sorts of question marks, their quarterback situation. They come through. And then the other one is when you've got a great young wide receiver who's on his way up and his situation looks worse, I mean, the value of Jalen Waddle and Devante Smith in drafts might have been worth more than the value you got on A.J. Brown and Devante Adams, even though they were great and better. But the fact that Jalen Waddle and Devante Smith fell in drafts because of those situations, because of the wide receivers added, they are just great wide receivers. It might be one of the better lessons we learned because we saw it with, look, yes, T. Higgins did it, right? Jamar Chase has added T. Higgins is still great.

But you had the backbone of Joe Burrow. And so you can say, oh, it's because Joe Burroughs great. Well, Tua wasn't great. I mean, you know, the expectation wasn't Tua being great. Waddle still did it, right? And then now you have Devante Smith where, look, some of it was, A.J. Brown was drafted as the wide receiver 10 for a reason. Devante Smith, the wide receiver 36 for a reason. There were fears about is J. Helens going to make that leap. And then fears of is A.J. Brown going to take all that, you know. Target share, and neither of those things, you know, like you said, talent won out. And there are other situations that I was in debate over on Twitter where you have to decide is that guy elite, right? T. Higgins, you have to decide, do you watch with your eyeballs and say, that guy's amazing? Devante Smith, same thing. You know, the name Rashop Bateman came up because I said, I think, you know, you saw that target share in Baltimore. I'm like, they are adding a big name in Baltimore. That is happening.

Through trade, I don't know if it's Hopkins. I don't know if it's a draft. Baltimore's adding a wide receiver. And everybody else, they threw Devante Smith's name and Jalen Waddle's name and T. Higgins name at me. So you have to decide as Rashad Bateman, that guy. Or not. Versus... Because if he is, then you prove that he can do it. Right. There's been a lot of links to the New York Jets adding another wide receiver as well. I saw a draft where Jackson Smith and Jigba went there. If they were to try to make a splash, even though they've got Garrett Wilson, he looks great. But that's a perfect example. Like if they add someone and Garrett Wilson, we know he's a stud. We know he's great. Just draft him like he's great. The irony is, of course, that Elijah Moore...

If you had made that judgment call on Elijah Moore last year with Garrett Wilson being added, you would have been wrong. The fall of Elijah Moore is still dumbfounding of what he put on tape, his draft capital, like everything that he should have been. And then this year, it still makes not a ton of sense. Do you guys make anything, though, for Devonzi Smith, who overall had an incredible year, but the real run where he was consistently great, That showed up when Dallas Goddard got hurt. Like Dallas Goddard missed weeks 11 through 15 and it was 13 through 17 where Smith dominated. And he was a turning to a league winning player because he was incredible during the playoffs. But it was just, it was a little bit rocky to start the year and then Goddard missed time and Smith gets more acclimated in. Yeah, I mean, you look at the first 12 weeks of the season and.

If you just look at those 12 weeks, you only had kind of... You have three finishes inside the top 24. Right. Yeah, so how do you feel about that? You're somebody who had them on his roster, Jason. Yeah, there's certainly truth to the fact that when Dallas got it, a great option is gone, that the target share is going to go more heavily to the other players. But I'm not worried about that long term. I don't think that there's, I mean, we saw, you know, a playoff game where... 10 targets, six receptions, 60 plus yards and a touchdown for DeVant Smith. That was with, you know, with Goddard on the field. So I think Smith has leveled up and proven he is an awesome wide receiver. I don't think that his numbers go down next year. I would be curious. Obviously, Waddle finished slightly ahead of him. Do you look at that situation and prefer Waddle in a redraft league where, you know, Waddle had a tougher end of the season?

Smith had a better end of the season. It was kind of inverse in the front half. Who's the quarterback? It's Tua. Who, by the way, cleared protocol. Oh, he did? He did. He cleared protocol today. But, yeah, I think it's, I think it's, too, especially with Brady rumors gone. Yeah, that's a great question. Who do you prefer Devons and Smith or Jalen Waddle next year? I think I lean Waddle, but it's pretty close. I think it would be based on, you know, where do you think that these teams are headed? I mean, you could be coming back with a. defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles team. And Devante Smith is great. Yeah, man. I love both of these players. They were my number one and number three wide receivers coming out of that draft class that year. Did you have Smith at one? I had Smith at one, yeah. I'd probably lean Smith. Maybe it's just confirmation bias of that. He also just won you a title. Yeah, he's pretty good. Yeah, you got the warm fuzzies right now. C.D. Lamb came in at six.

His consistency rank was 11. It was a breakout year for C.D. Lamb, 1,559 yards, 9 touchdowns, 59% good games, 12% great, 24% bust. He was much better the second half of the year. If you look at the first half versus second half breakdown, the first half of the year, his consistency rank was 23. He wasn't that good. He felt like a bad draft pick. He felt like, man, I took this guy at the 1-2 turn, and he's letting me down. Now, Obviously, a lot of those games in the first half of the year were without Dak. Dak went down. Two through six. So, you know, it's like that being said, he had two top eight finishes without Dak. So you can't really blame it entirely on that. But the second half of the season, I think is where you saw him truly break out with Dak. He was extremely consistent. He was the wide receiver for inconsistency from that point on. And.

He'll be a tough draft pick next year. Yes. New OC. Yeah. New wide receiver somewhere. Mm-hmm. And, you know, he had 156 targets. I mean, you spent a lot of time in the offseason kind of reminding us that like when, when there are other options in Dallas, DAC has spread the ball around. He didn't have other options this year. No, no, he didn't. So it'll be an interesting debate. I. What is nice on the pro C.D. Lamb's side is that he showed himself to have the alpha in him. He is capable of being the wide receiver one and being a dominant wide receiver one for the team. We know that for a fact now. So we can't take that away. But the situation could change where his targets go down because there's another great option to throw the ball to. We'll have TBD on that. But I think the truth of.

who C.D. Lamb is he is capable of being a great fantasy player. Number four in consistency over the second half of the year, that stretch that you were talking about. Here's a player I'm completely confused about. Someone help me, unless you're confused as well. But Amunrah St. Brown at 8 is genuinely a little bit confusing to me. He's super confusing. He was drafted as the wide receiver 25, so he was an amazing value for fantasy players. His consistency rank, though, was 22, right? Finished at 8, 22 in consistency. He busted 25% of the time. He was only good 31% of the time and great 19% of the time. You look at these stretches of the season. And they're like, you know, they're okay. There were weeks where he was okay. And there were weeks where he looked like one of the best players in football. But I just feel like the storyline for Alman Ra is going to, it's going to mimic that stuff we were talking about where, look, James and William is an unbelievable player, in my opinion.

And those players, and I know he barely got on the field, they genuinely, you know, they turn into superstars. Yeah. He's there, Jemar Chase, no question. So you go into next year, Amman Ra is a 146 target player. Does that make him Tyler Boyd? Yeah, I have the. Or does it make him Elijah Moore? Yeah, does it make it the bad version is the Boyd and the Moore? Well, yeah, I'm saying, but is he the T. Higgins. Like Tyler Boyd. Tyler Boyd was turning into what looked like a great fantasy football player. And then over time, they added Higgins and Jamar Chase. And then Boyd got relegated to just a huge spike week every once in a while, nothing consistent. No, I will be all in on Amina Ra, St. Brown next year. I think that he... You're on Team Sun God? I am on Team Sun God. Ra, rah, rah.

Uh, the, the, the situation that he found himself in. Is that cheerleader or lady gawk? I was trying to figure that out myself. Uh, that was cheerleader. Uh, that was, wrong, ro, blah, blah. Um, that was, that was pom-poms. Um, it was pretty pathetic if it was cheerleader. No offense. What we need to remember is he got injured in week four. Yeah. Out with an ankle injury. Um, he tried to come back. and really couldn't. The next two games where he played, he kind of didn't play. 32% of snaps, 17% of snaps. So those are active in his, if you take those games. Those were part of his score. If I take those two games out, which is fair to, you know, we're trying to find what's the truth of the player?

He would have had the consistency score of number 12. He would have had one of the lowest bust rates in the entire league and a pretty good finish 21% of his games at the great level. I think he will be someone to me that I see more as a T. Higgins where the situation is going to look worse for him. He's not going to be crazy, highly drafted because there will be question marks. I think the talent, we've seen enough stretches of him being a... Really dominant first read where a possession moving guy, you know, a Michael Thomas type of I just take this ball and I snap it and I throw it right to him because I know where he's going to be. He's going to be there on time. He's strong. He's going to break a tackle every now and then and make a special play happen. I wonder if his career arc is the Landry-esque type of career though. It's a good comp. Where you have like he scored six times this year. He had 106 catches, so PPR, hallelujah.

But I do wonder if the touchdowns will be so, you know, five to six range for his career that, like, he finished at eight. I want to give him all the credit in the world, but would you project him as a top 12 next year? Or would you just enjoy those delicious PPR numbers as a wide receiver two if you can get it there? I will, I mean, obviously we're going to get in after the NFL draft to get all the numbers done. No, final answer. Final answer. My initial rankings, I would expect that he'll be. Probably right around wide receiver 12. I think he'll be in my top 12. Amari Cooper rounds out our list today. Amari Cooper against all odds with various quarterbacks, finishes at nine. Well, really with Jacoby. Yeah, I mean, but how long was, what do you got, four or five weeks with? Six, I think. Valdi? Five or six, I'll check that. It was six. Okay. It gets a decent run. I mean, six and then four of those were terrible.

Yeah, he was not good with Voldemort. The standard for success, though, for Amari Cooper was very low. He was drafted as the wide receiver 31. His consistency rate was 17. His second half rank was 35, which was really bad. 41% busts, better at home, dealt with the quarterback situation. I, you know, I think what we saw in the truth of Amari Cooper. is that if you kind of wade through the numbers and you just rely on what you saw in the field, is he still Amari Cooper. I think that's the biggest message to me. That's a fair question. Amari Cooper is still Amari Cooper. And he was able to make elite plays on a regular basis. He was clearly the best receiver that they had on this team. We were looking back at the rookie drafts, the rookie mock drafts before last season. And David Bell had, he was showing up on a lot of them.

because we didn't know how much Omari Cooper had left. And we didn't know where Donovan People's Jones was going to fit into that. And David Bell made no impact in his first season. So, Omari Cooper at least this year was a value. And he doesn't seem like the kind of player is going to be a highly drafted commodity next year. Yeah, a lot of that will come down to what fantasy managers think of Baltimore, whether they believe he will get better next season. And they think Deshaun Watson bounces back. He gets to practice. He gets an offseason, all of that. Is there a wizard?

spot on rosters? Yeah. It's like a flex. If you believe that Deshaun Watson's going to be better, I could see Amari Cooper getting a lot of buzz, getting drafted a little bit higher because of how good he was on the season and the fact that his quarterback situation, hey guys, his quarterback situation is going to be way better this year than it was last year. But that's probably not true. I just did the math. I wanted to see, because we got the first half of the second half, but I wanted to look pure and simple. Who was he with Brissette and who was he with Deshaun Watson? And if you take those two situations, our consistency metric, he was the wide receiver 10 with Jacoby Brissette. Very consistent, very good. And in the games with Voldemort, he was the wide receiver 45. So I will not be, you know, I will not be in the camp of thinking that Voldemort's going to become a good guy.

Yeah, I mean, he'll be 29, too, when the season starts. The identity of this team has still been Nick Chubb. So I think that there will be a lot of doubters in the Amari Cooper camp. But, you know, we know the teams that even when they have that identity, there is that alpha. There is that player that they need to turn to. This is not the 1980s. Cooper will be, what, do you think, like a late fourth, fifth round? I would imagine probably fourth round, yeah. Yeah, maybe fifth. If there's some rookies in good situations that people might take them ahead of Amari Cooper. And, you know, that first five, six weeks of the year, he might be going, oh, gosh, I should have taken Amari Cooper again. He could become the Frank Gore of the wide receiver position very soon. He could be eternal. He's been doing this so long. It's just always surprising because he was drafted so young and was good right off the bat that he's still 28 years old. You know, we're talking about guys that feel you.

You know, he just feels so old, but he's really not. Yeah, like me. Yeah, maybe, right? Yeah, sure. Get out there. As I limp in here after a pickleball match. Fellow young kids. Fellow young. All right, well, I think that's it, Brooksie. Any surprises in the news category? No, sir. Nothing. How, how, are you comfortable sitting next to Papa Josh? I know close proximity. I wish I had my glasses. Yeah, yeah. Sunglasses. Yeah, no, I hear it. Yeah. All right, that is going to do it. We're done. We're going to have a second episode about wide receivers, though, and dig into some of those very important names. Find out the truth. Jason's going to do some research. Step out of the gosh and blur. Bring it. I'll be here in real life next time. Yeah, yeah. Promises, promises. Take care, Glenn. Goodbye.

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