Early Top 10 WR Rankings + Disappearing Acts

unbelievably bad. I think he tied for the most interceptions that year despite not playing a large chunk of the season. And he also is the reason. Nine touchdown 17 picks. Go on. Nine touchdown 17 picks. And I don't look, I think you guys are both right. I think Brady's got another season. You didn't see, you know.

You know, I brought up Frank Reich scouting him, liking what he saw in film. But it will. I mean, it is going to happen at some point. And it's going to be intense pain for all of the fantasy owners of all his weapons when it happens. That's all I'm saying. Oh, for sure. You've got to value the risk in your draft. You know, I guess it's very narrativey, which is not where we usually want to live. But I have a hard time believing. Oh, it's a great place to be.

The street is fun. Well, it's certainly fun. It's great shops. But I just have a hard time believing that Tom Brady will change teams and go to a new team and not do everything imaginable to be great at least this year. And it's hard to bet against the goat. You're talking about getting a new birth certificate. I see what you're saying. You know, obviously it will end at some point and it will be bad. Maybe he won't. Tom Brady is now 39 years old.

Right. Something has something has happened. I mean, when when Peyton went bad, he made Brock Osweiler a lot of money. Yeah, he did. Brock looked so good. What's, what's his name again? Brock Osweiler? Okay. All right. I just wanted to hear it again. Just confirming. Just confirming. All right. Number seven. Oh, yeah. So smooth. I find myself falling more and more.

And more in love with Kenny G. Yep. Especially on that note. Oh, isn't that sustained? Last year, Kenny Gallaudet, 65 for 11, 90, and 11, which I believe was tied for the league lead in pass catching touchdowns. There were only two wide receivers with double-digit touchdowns last year. Three pass catchers. It was a very down year for touchdowns. Yeah, well, Mark Andrews, Kenny Galladay, and who was the other receiver?

That is a great question. I believe it is Cooper Cup. I will look that up. I'm Ron Burgundy. I'm Ron Burgundy. I think you might be right. Mike and I have Kenny Gallaudet at 7. Jason has him at 9. Last year he didn't have Matthew Stafford for the entire season. Still finishes the wide receiver 6, which you kind of just shake your head at him overcoming that situation. David Blow? David, yeah. Blah.

With Stafford, he was on a 70 for 1280 and 14 pace. Without Stafford, 60 for 11008. So he really didn't lose much off of it. That's amazing. It just was an offense that didn't get closer to the Red Zone as often. If you remember the specific games, though, when he didn't have Stafford, so much of it, I mean, obviously. Very hit and miss, big play. Obviously, it's skill because these are NFL players, but it was such a lucky bailout of just this crazy roll around scramble and just.

bomb it down and he got a touchdown that bailed out of game, which I mean is great. I don't think a lot of people were playing him for some of those games with Blau. We were terrified. It speaks to your point that if he can get it done with a bad quarterback and Stafford is able to play a full season here with that bad back, shouldn't he be higher? I've got him at nine and I've, you know, I have a hard time moving him higher than that.

But let's just compare him to the aforementioned, you know, the risks with Chris Godwin. And I start to think to myself, well, what's the upside of both of these guys? Whose ceiling is higher? And I think Gallaudet's ceiling is higher. And they both carry a little bit of risk, having been that, you know, I don't, I don't think he's proven it yet. That's where I feel. Whereas, whereas Chris Godwin last year proved it. And I know he finished as a good fantasy asset. What?

Golly. Turn your head to this direction at the same time, Mike, right here. This is where you need to be. And that's what I feel. And so I realize he had 1,100 and 11. And so you say, well, he's done it. He's broken out. For some reason, when, you know, when I watched the specific, you know, the way that it came, I just wasn't bought in. You had Marvin Jones missing a lot of time. Judge Diomadi, Judge DiMadi, you know more than any of us about the burden of proof. Has Kenny Goliday?

provided the burden of proof with a wide receiver six finish with half of Stafford. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Just like a judge would say, oh, yeah. I love Kenny G. So Stafford played through the Oakland game, so eight games. And up to that point, let's see what Kenny Galdet had done. Let's see. We've got four games over 100 yards.

At least one touchdown in six of those games. Like, Kenny Galaday is a beast, man. Just accept that. Let me try to change your mind for a minute. You're blowing my mind that's... Now we're having an argument I can get behind. Like, Chris Godwin. That was the first time we've really seen something from Chris Godwin. We've seen Kenny Gallaudet have multiple good seasons.

I mean, look, what you're saying is factual. It is not wrong. There's something in me that really has a hard time truly believing. You know, obviously, you had three games missed from Marvin Jones. Which he was, by the way, worse without Marvin. He was better with him. I did. I did know that.

I did actually know that. I mean, look, strong arguments. And, you know, when we're talking through this and getting a little deeper on the players, if I was on the board and I'm looking at, you know, Chris Godwin behind Andy and, or Kenny Goladay behind Andy, I'm going to take Kenny Goladay. So I need to adjust my rankings. So when you look at Goliday and you look at Evans and Godwin.

that's what I was going to bring up is kind of confidence levels on taking a Ghaladay alpha secure versus, you know, it's not like Evans wasn't an absolute beast, and we can move on and kind of talk about them together for a second. One last stat I want to remind people about with Kenny Goladay, and we mentioned it in February with the shocking stat show. He had a league high 13 10 zone targets, 3720 plus yard targets. That's...

pretty neat to be featured in the big play capacity and the red zone air yards and end zone targets. I mean, obviously you have to, right? Because he had 116 targets, 65 reception. So that's, it's just why it's, it's a little bit harder to bank on. But now you're talking about a Mike Evans type. So I think it's appropriate to compare those two players. Mike Evans, who has clearly broken out since his rookie year, has never had fewer than a thousand yards, is a red zone monster.

So why is Kenny Goliday better? Is it solely because Brady is there and he's not going to throw the ball deep? I think I'll share my Evans thoughts. And we've just seen Evans kind of transitioning in some capacity. And it's probably the emergence of Godwin or just other targets in general. He's gone from 174 to 136 to 138 to 118 targets.

He hasn't had that double-digit touchdown season that was kind of his calling card to begin his career in I think he's three years, three straight years without doing that. It just seems a little different to me. Wide receiver 18, then wide receiver 8, then wide receiver 12 is Evans, have we seen Evans best? Let me ask you that. Have we seen the best of Mike Evans career now? Last year, 67 for 1157 and 8. Fantasy-wise. I wonder if we have.

I think fantasy-wise, statistically speaking, yeah, I think his best season has been had because going forward, obviously Brady's getting older, then they're going to have to replace him with someone, then he's lost his prime years. If it doesn't happen, say, this year, I don't imagine that Mike Evans is going to beat those massive seasons he's had with 1,312. Mike? We're both very silent. I thought you were going to jump in there. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, I think we've probably seen the best Mike Evans season. I mean, to be fair to him, he is entering what you consider for a wide receiver, that prime age where they're 26 to 28 years old because he's going to be 27 when the season starts. So it's possible that we haven't seen the best of him for fantasy purposes, though. Are you happy with him as your one?

That's another question. Mike Evans? Yeah. Are you happy with Mike Evans as your wide. He's ranked eight. I mean, we say all these things, and obviously he's a top ten by consensus rankings and where he's going to finish. But is this another case of a little bit uncomfortable? You're not, Mike. Well, it doesn't help the way that he went about. It was a weird ping pong ball of the season. He literally had a zero. He had a game where he didn't catch a single pass.

That seems unfathomable. He shouldn't have done that. That was not nice. It was really rude, man. That was not a nice thing to do. But he started the season very, very poorly. Then he had three out of four games where he was a monster and then mixed in that sandwich was the game with no receptions. Then a number one finish, number two finished. And then it was just meh from then on out before the injury derailed the end of the season. So maybe it's just last season.

impressions on me, and I'm trying not to let that be the influencer, but I just, I don't feel comfortable with Evans as my number one wide receiver, no. I don't, I'll speak to this. I don't really like having my number one wide receiver be one of those 65 catch players, whether it's Goliday or Evans. I think the reason I'm, I'm a little bit, you know, over this off season I've talked up Mike Evans is because I don't believe you'll have to draft him.

as that. I think people were burned last year by how his fantasy production came and the fact that he was now the number two on his team and now Brady coming. I think there will be a lot of things that push Mike Evans down where you can draft him as a two. And if I can have Mike Evans as a two, a big blowup potential with a high volume guy as my one, that's a strategy I would prefer. Whereas.

Galaday, I expect Galaday will be drafted ahead of Mike Evans and you'll have to draft him as a one. I, and I'll speak for myself and I don't know how you guys felt. I know we went through and we gave early rankings individually up to probably wide receiver 40 or so when we built out our consensus rankings. I felt like there was even more of a disparity from the very top to the question marks surrounding guys from about five or six on.

Because you're talking about, you know, if Evans is in that variable category with Brady coming on board, you know, Ghaladay, low reception totals, we're going to talk about two more guys today. Amari Cooper, who I know Mike has his questions.

We all have our questions. I mean, that's ridiculous to say just Mike because Cooper went from the wide receiver three in the first 10 weeks, so the wide receiver 43 over the last six weeks. But even DJ Moore sitting at 10 on our consensus rankings, that's where you start to see us individually have a wider range of opinion about these guys. I just feel like I have a little less confidence in the...

in the upper echelon wide receivers this year than I did last year. Am I alone? No, no, I had the exact, you're speaking my thoughts as I went through and ranked these guys. Once you got to 8, 9, 10, it was one of those things where I was looking at wide receiver 16, 17, going, man, who would I take here? You know, a wide range of guys saying this guy could be better than DJ more. But eventually you've got to, you've got to rank them.

Yeah, it's probability. That's what the rankings do. Yeah. So, you know, when we talk about Amari Cooper, you know, everyone wants to know how low does Mike have him ranked? Because Mike is not a believer. But Mike is going to say the 100% right thing. I'll seed the floor as he cedes the argument of where he's got him ranked. I have Amari Cooper at 10 because I, just like last year, I concede the fact that

Mario Cooper will probably, in the final rankings, be a top 10 wide receiver. He might be a little bit higher. But every single gear, I mean, and it was really funny to see another analyst express these thoughts. And then maybe he took it too far on Twitter. I got really, really mad at him. You didn't just call Rex Ryan an analyst, did you? I did. What would you call him?