WR Rankings Part Two + Buy/Sell, Sam Bowie'd - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/12

I don't think Baker can be any worse than he was last year. So if he gets better because his O'L is better, and then if O'Dell is healthy, all of a sudden, you know, he turns 130 targets into 12, 13, 1,400 yards and 10 touchdowns. T.Y. Hilton at 19, Juju Smith, Schuster at 20 in our consensus ranks. Hilton is still my favorite pick.

in all fantasy drafts. He is being drafted as the wide receiver 24 in the back of the fifth round, which means I get T.Y. Hilton as my wide receiver two in any league I want. And I feel good about that because his historical, look. Can I tell you something? Sure. We did a mock draft last night for our league of record, me and my co-owner. Guess what wide receiver you got?

T.Y. Hill. You're darn right. Yeah, that makes sense. I haven't at 17. I mean, when he's played football, he's been a top 25 wide receiver. So he's being drafted at his absolute basement with a better quarterback coming into this year. The question mark, yes, you could say it's all struggle with the injuries last year. Historically speaking, he's played the majority of the time, sometimes hurt. But fantasy finishes have been inside the top 25 every single season that he's played.

outside of last year when he played 10 games. And he was activated. There was a little bit of a, when T.Y. Hilton was not ready for camp. You don't, you never like to see that. But he has been activated. Three of his first five games last year, he was a top 15 wide receiver. So he was on, he was on track to get it done. And here are the, the differences between Jacoby Brissette and Philip Rivers. Jacobi only went deep 43 times.

35% of his passes were catchable. Rivers 79 times went deep and nearly 42% of his deep attempts were catchable. Philip Rivers is a 65% completion percent passer. Jacoby was 60% last year. You're getting higher fantasy point targets from Philip Rivers and you're getting more accurate targets from Philip Rivers. I worry.

You worry about the player's body? I worry about the player's body. If you could guarantee me, T.Y. Hilton is healthy as a horse the whole season. He would fly up my rankings. Like a colt. Oh, healthy as a colt all season. Well done. But the reality is it was soft tissue issues last year. It's a soft tissue issue this year. He's over 30. And there's no preseason.

There's no trade. I mean, there's, you know, there's, there's medical analysis that talk about worry for injuries, not having the same level of ramp up that these guys usually have. So I just have, I have a, uh, the, uh, you didn't pull out your tape recorder and press play on your AJ Green argument, did you? No, I mean, I put him right in that boat. Seven straight years of being a dominant player. And for me, it's, it's the film as much as it is, a fantasy finished consistency.

He's one of the best wide receivers in all of football, one of the most refined, one of the most regularly winning downfield intermediate routes, just needs a quarterback. I think he'll have one, not that worried about the injury. Maybe you miss a game or two, but historically speaking, he's played the majority of them. Last year, 44% snap percentage in the games he played. So he was playing hurt. Last year was almost a lost season for T.Y. Heldon altogether.

I just can't pass on the draft position. If you told all these arguments, I'm passing on T.Y. Hilton, if he's costing me a third rounder. Yeah, I mean, this is like back of the fifth round. I'm going to have him in every single league. There is upside there, a little bit of risk, but that's baked into the ADP. So I think that is a fair argument. Juju Smith-Schuster, big disparities in our rankings here. He comes in at 20 on our consensus wide receiver ranks, but Jason's got him at 13, Mike, at 25.

Warm's my heart. I have him at 28. You fools. And his current ADP is very high. It's wide receiver 11. So even Jason just made a face because he didn't realize he was below ADP. He assumed based on the environment he's in that he was below ADP, but he's not. That's a lot of money you're showing out for a guy that had a lot of seasons. You are asking him, you're kind of, you're boxed in. You're starting juju.

If you draft him where he's going right now, he's in your lineup, no matter what, are you going to be happy? That's the real question. He, last year was a mess through and through. Yeah. He was not great on the field. We've talked about his struggles on the outside. He is a slot receiver. He is a slot wide receiver, yes. Now, Big Ben can fix a lot of things really, really fast. And he knows how to utilize Juju in that slot receiver position.

Ideal. That's the nice scenario. You might end up with that number nine finish. You got back in 2018 when he had 166 targets. That's a lot. I don't think you're going to get that from Juju Smith-Schuster. And I think you have to pay too much. I am surprised that his ADP is still this high, that people are still on him. But I am still on him. Because here's why. He's a great wide receiver.

If you're going to tell me that last year, if you're going to tell me that last year and the fact that he was not good and that Deontay Johnson was, you know, better and what are you trying to say? Are you trying to say juju is somehow not a great wide receiver? You watch his rookie year. You watch his sophomore year. He's a dominant beast of a man, a great route runner, great hands, great rapport with Big Ben, putting up.

fantastic fantasy numbers for two seasons. And then last year, the Steelers just were, I mean, we have to throw that season out from an offensive perspective. They scrapped and clawed and did whatever they could to manufacture wins. But now Big Ben is back and Juju is still a great wide receiver. You look at, you know, DeAndre Hopkins comes out and, you know, he's the number five.

guy in, you know, whatever it was. Fantasy? I don't know where you're going. Yeah, so in 2015. Okay. He was the number four. He was great. His third year after a great sophomore year. And then he falls, you know, in 2016 has, you know, pretty much a lost season, stinks with the backup quarterback. And people are like, well, he's not good. He's not great. It was just targets. That was the narrative with Hopkins. Oh, yeah. But Hopkins was great. Yeah, but this is not DeAndre Hopkins. No, it's not. It's juju and he's great.

Well, I'll make the identical argument I made going into last year when I told everybody not to draft Juju Smith-Schuster. He had 166 targets. That's a lot. Coming into last year, I said, is you going to get more targets than 166 when he finished at number nine? No, there's no chance he is. He was being drafted ahead of number nine. There was no chance the volume was going up. If his peak season that we've seen is number nine overall fantasy finish, and you have to count on a bounce back, and he's being drafted as wide receiver 11,

He's being drafted at his ceiling. Well, you can't say that was his peak season because this touchdown number was low. I can say it statistically on his peak season. He's got the, that's his highest season ever. You're saying that that is presently his highest fantasy season. No, but that's not what you were saying. You were saying that that is his absolute peak. 166 targets is the most he'll ever get in his career. Sure. Peak targets, but the touchdowns were down that year. That was the argument of why he was being drafted. But he's never had him up.

Right? Have we ever seen him? That's all I'm saying. Like we've never seen him. It's not like a bounce back. It's not like Mike Evans had a down touchdown year. Juju is a slot wide receiver, which by extension, a lot of the times that doesn't translate to touchdown totals in general. It does for Cooper Cup. It does for Cooper Cup, but that's an outlier, not a norm. I believe that he can put up more than the, his touchdown number can increase from what he put up.

I don't know if he'll get the 166 targets. And the questions of, can Juju thrive without Antonio Brown being there to be Batman on the field? Unanswered still. It's still unanswered. But for the people who are saying, well, anyone could succeed with Antonio Brown on the field, they didn't. It was the Antonio Brown show until Juju showed up. Juju was rookie year. That was the most.

receiving yardage that the number two option had ever seen for Pittsburgh while Antonio Brown was the number one guy. And he did that as rookie year. I'm with Jason that I think he is a great player. But I also have, I'm not drafting him at wide receiver 11. I will say this. I'm not that in. I believe in him. I think if you drafted him at wider receiver 11, you could very well end up happy. That being said, his risk is not baked in here.

at that draft cost. I was surprised. Early in the offseason, I said that he would be appropriately valued due to fantasy owners being wiser. I don't think he is being appropriately valued because the risk is not baked into his ADP, the risk to me being Big Ben. Big Ben's timeline of recovery and his age and having to come back. If we knew Big Ben was Big Ben from two years ago fully healthy, well, sure, but that's not the Big Ben coming into camp this year. And that's not baked in. So, you know, I do have a worry there.

And for me, we've had these situations where, like, Deonti Johnson and Juju, Deonti Johnson is being drafted as the wide receiver 43. Juju is being drafted as the wide receiver 11. I don't see a gap of 30 fantasy finishes, you know, spots between them. So for me, he's just not going to end up on my team. If he was wide receiver 20, 25, and you got the upside of Big Ben coming back, I'd be like, it's kind of like the Odell.

It's just like the Odell upside. Yeah, if he was at Water Shriver 18, I would be all about that. I'd say who has that chance of the top five finish? He does. It's just confidence. I don't have enough confidence to take him at 12. Yeah. Devante Parker at 21, Cortland Sutton at 22. Tyler Lockett at 23, AJ Green at 24. Talked about AJ Green on the fire and ice episode. Jason talked about Lockett on the fire and ice episode. I will have one final comment here before he close the showdown.

22, Cortland Sutton, starting to question my own questioning of Cortland Sutton, if that makes sense. I did that as well, and I moved him up. You moved up? Yeah, you have them the highest at 21. I'm starting to think that it might be a little bit rosier than I have believed before for Corlin Sutton. He's just, if you put him in that place where he's unequivocally the number one on the team, which I think is the right thing to do, then.

Wide receiver 25 looks like maybe a value. I mean, last year there was struggles on offense. Denver struggled. Drew Locke came on at the end of the year. No, we didn't see the sample size that we wanted to see of Sutton plus Locke equals fantasy production. But it was a small four-game stretch when you didn't see that. I'm going off of that. He's so talented. What I've watched Cortland Sutton do, great wide receiver. And historically, like I said, my argument for Michael Gallup, sophomore wide receivers that cross the 1,100 yard mark,

Historically, it is just a great hit rate saying that this player is going to emerge and be excellent for years. So this is like how Jason is talking about, he's just betting on juju, even though you're in this mist where you can't see two feet in front of your face. I do feel that way about Cortland Sud, but I'm just, I'm willing to bet on that player compared to his historical comps.

All right, if you want to see all of our rankings, what are we doing next, Brooks? Are we on to quarterbacks or tight ends? Quarterback rankings. Quarterback. So if you want to see all of our rankings, all of our in-depth player-by-player projections, each of us independently, we go through. We sat out, we adjust, we modify players, every wide receiver, every running back, one by one. And we are always tweaking and modifying and making adjustments based on the information that we have.

And those things are all in proportion to how those quarterbacks are going to produce for those teams and the offenses year to year. And all that stuff's in the Ultimate Draft Kit, along with the video player profiles. If there's a player we didn't mention at Wide Receiver today that you wanted to hear us talk about, like maybe Marquis Hollywood Brown. You can go listen to the player profile on the Ultimate Draft Kit at Ultimate DraftKit.com. That'll do it today for this episode of the Fantasy Footballers, and we will be back with you tomorrow. It's a long ways from now.

We'll see you then. Goodbye. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Join our fantasy football community on join thefoot.com. And follow us on Twitter at the FFF Ballers. Fidelity active ETFs have the flexibility to shift and transform as markets do the same. So instead of just riding an index, they can seek to outperform it by adapting to market conditions and pursuing new opportunities as they emerge.

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