Fantasy Football 2018 - Early WR Rankings Part 2

Is this what you guys believe? Basically. Where do I have like 21? 21's the new 87 when it comes to Larry. My goodness. Alan Robbins. That's in the 20s. Jason. Math checks out. His swan song. All right. Alan Robinson at number 17. This was one of the players when we posted the Tuesday episode. Had a lot of questions about where do we have Alan Robinson. Well, we got him at 17. And we all ranked him right around the same spot. And.

We're expecting Alan Robinson to be, I think, a target monster in Chicago. Whether the offense will be capable of producing, you know, with Nagy and Tribisky and what they have there, I don't know. But I think Robinson's good for, what, 130 targets? That's the hard part about Alan Robinson. This is all speculation and projecting from a season that happened. That's our job. But what I'm saying, like, what's last year's stats?

Nothing. He caught a pass and tore his ACL. What about two years ago? Well, 100% catch rate is what you're saying. Yeah, that's true. But two years ago, it really wasn't that great. Three years ago, it was incredible. Back when Mitchell Trebisky was in diapers. Yeah. So that's why I'm saying it's very hard to rank Alan Robinson because it's just what do you believe?

the player of Alan Robinson is. Here's why I have him ranked the highest, and I'm fine with it, because I'm not necessarily the hugest Mitchell-Trabisky fan. I think he's all right, and hopefully he takes that step forward that he very well could with Matt Nagy and the new offensive system, but there aren't a lot of other pieces here to steal targets. Trey Burton will come in, he'll play that tight-end role, but it's the Alan Robinson show on offense. This was a team that was...

depleted of any and all things resembling wide receiver talent. And now Alan Robinson should have a huge target market share. And, you know, even if Mitchell Trabisky isn't the best, if you've got a young, healthy Alan Robinson out playing the X role where he's getting downfield and he's...

you know, up near that 150 targets, even if it was two years ago, Alan Robinson that we say was down. The only reason that was down is because he was drafted to be a super megastar. You're going to be getting Alan Robinson in that fourth, fifth round, possibly, where two years ago, Alan Robinson, the value's going to pay off. You're going to have to pay off. The nice thing about the Trubisky situation is that Alan Robinson and Brooks pointed this out. He was a stud with Blake the snake. Boom. I got.

What a snake, man. Because people overlook Blake the snake. Uh, yeah, well, sure. What do we say on, uh, on the show? Was it last week about Leonard Fournett facing almost the most stack boxes in the entirely? I just said a lot of people. Yeah, I know. Overlooked Blake Ford. I want to talk about, all the NFL teams. I want to talk about number 18. Josh Gordon. I have him at 16.

Here's what I like about what I saw from the brief return of Josh Gordon last year. When he had his monstrous, incredible, 1, 1646-yard number one season, his yards per catch was 18.9. Last year, yes, he was limited, came back just five games. Yards per catch, 18.6. We were worried about what happened to him in that brief...

pre-injury time in 2014 when he was at 12.6 a catch and didn't look the same. I like the fact that we saw him making the bigger plays and doing what Josh Gordon does. It tells me that Hugh Jackson understands what he has in Josh Gordon. And yes, when you draft Josh Gordon, you are taking a gamble. You're taking a gamble on the team. You're taking a gamble on the player. But I think that you're also.

taking a chance of getting a top six, top seven type of talent. It's going to depend on what quarterback they put in position because this catch percentage is what was down last year compared to that breakout year. And that's what's huge. Josh Gordon is a gamble. Of these guys, you're talking tremendous, tremendous upside. The ceiling can't hold him. But last year, Deshaun Kaiser of quarterbacks in the NFL, he was amongst the top of guys who just, he wanted to go deep.

all the time, which that fed into Josh Gordon's playstyle. Sean Kaiser is gone. And now you have, you have Jarvis Landry as an actual underneath weapon, which maybe you're going to buy the narrative that that's going to open things up for Josh Gordon downfield. But now with Jarvis and Duke Johnson, everything is about what quarterback, what are the tendencies of this quarterback coming in for Cleveland? Because it's going to be tie rod for a few games, which I like that for Josh Gordon.

I like that Tyrod scrambles and then just chucks it deep. But eventually it's going to be the rookie. And which one comes and takes over and how does he play football? You know, the nice thing, though, is by setting up with Tyrod Taylor, if Tyrod Taylor establishes Josh Gordon as the lead dog here, the rookie that's going to come in is probably going to try to continue that. Not completely change everything up. My problem with Josh Gordon. It's probably going to be Josh Allen.

That would fit in. Josh Allen, Sam Darnold. I mean, we'll find out here. Just say it for when we want all those 90-yard passes. Josh Allen's here. We're right there. We're going to find out soon. Cleveland had the second lowest time of possession in the league. When you talk about bringing in a person like Landry or having Taylor, you have to have an offense that moves to give these guys the potential and the ability to do this. So the team has to improve for Josh Gordon to return any type of value.

Yeah, the worry I have, Josh Gordon's great monster year, 159 targets, will he be able to do that with Cory Coleman and with Jarvis Landry and with Duke Johnson and all the other weapons? Because when he did it, the next best receiver on that team was Greg Little. How dare you? How dare you be smirch the name of Greg Little? Yeah. Well, I mean, look at.

I don't think we want to do. I don't think we want to do the next best receiver game on Houston last year. I mean, you can produce, but the team has to be able to move the ball. So he's a gamble. Speaking of gambles, the gamble of gambles. Man, I just realized which bet we should have taken. Oh, yeah, the Des versus. Larry versus this guy. Des Bryant, number 19 on our consensus rankings. I would say that it's my fault.

I'm just going to sigh this whole entire time. I have him at 24. Just sneaking into the top 24. Jason's got him at 14. Mike, you're at 18. Even you. Even you have come to your senses about Des Bryant. Last year, it was as bad as it gets, really. 69 receptions. 32nd most consistent receiver in fantasy football. Zero great games busted 44% of the time.

And so when you buy Bryant in this draft, you are buying the comeback. You are buying the hope that he can return to something resembling the 2014 version, the 2013 version of himself. Not what we've seen the last three years with the injuries and the lack of consistency. Yeah, I agree. I mean, this, Des Bryant might not even be on the Cowboys after the draft. He might.

be irrelevant. He might be a second wide receiver piece. Hopefully he gets moved, you know, into the slot and push his career a little further down the line like Larry Fitzgerald. There's a lot of question marks around Des here. These are early rankings. Later in the year, if, you know,

If Larry is standing up better and Dez is looking bad, a lot of this comes down. What do you believe in Dak Prescott? Because Dak Prescott's had a year and a half of glory and half a year of absolute garbage. We can't discount the fact of how bad Dak was the second half of last year with, you know, you go watch. I mean, I don't know if many people out there have seen the video of showing every single one of Des Bryant's targets. But if you watch that video, you can be kind of convinced that.

This was not all on Des. I mean, these were so many uncatchable balls. But then is that going to get better? Is he going to improve? I tend to think that with Zeke and with the healthy offense of line, DAC is going to be all right. And so I'm kind of seeing that go forward. But Des is a complete, you know, up in the air until after the draft, do they draft another high profile rookie? Do they move him? Do they keep him?

Those are all question marks. If he stays and the offense is back and Zika's back, I think Des is going to be a valuable wide receiver too. That's how I see him. The thing about Des, is you have, this is a, this is a Marky Mark George Clooney situation. Just an absolute perfect storm because the video Jason was talking about, you can check it out and see for yourself. But according to this person's tracking, Des Bryant had 53 untouchable balls thrown at him.

And, well, 79 targets that he could either touch or catch, and he came down with 69 receptions. I don't agree with all of his analysis here. But Jason's right. There are a lot of targets that are credited towards Des Bryant that are absolute garbage. On the other hand, Matt Harmon, one of the veterans that he has done for the reception perception is Des Bryant. The results are staggeringly bad. Just horrific. When you look at success by route.

Below average running the corner, the nine, the post, the dig, the curl, the slant. When you think about those targets in the videos, you said, there has to be a grain of salt there because untouchable targets, not getting separation, not where you're supposed to be. There's something that falls on you. And if you're looking, for those that don't know what reception is, maybe a good chance to introduce it, you're looking at the player running the route independent of the quarterback and the target. You're looking at the player.

getting separation, having success running the route. The thing about Desz is these numbers are very much a departure of his previous years. Two years ago, he was. Whether he's discouraged, frustrated, whatever the case may be, he may have the physical ability to come. Look, if I was having a down year, I'd like to be 6'4 and be able to come back with the body that he has. And, you know, Desk could have a down year and still pull down 12 touchdowns. He's done it a couple times before.

You at least have all of the prototypical aspects of a top receiver, but I tend to believe that does is on the downward trend. And I think Dallas might believe it too. Yeah, I think I might believe it too. I'm going to keep looking. I mean, I've got a note here. I very well might move Des down even in these early ranks because there are a lot of things he needs to overcome, whether it's his routes or whether it is Dak Prescott. You are forced to bank on...

A lot of chips falling the other direction. And it might be just a little bit too much against him. And the other chip that we didn't even bring up was the play calling, the utilization of Des Bryant's. I mean, his highest percentage of routes is really just essentially three routes or so. So as a defense, you know what Des Bryant's going to do. You got to move around. You got to be creative. Will Des acknowledge and take the veteran role of?

It's time to move inside. It's time to move to the slot. I don't think the offensive minds there are creative enough to even do that. Oh. Sorry. What do you think about that, Judge Giamati? Can I get a ruling on Dallas's play calling? It's garbage. Yeah. All right. Okay. The final player on our 11 through 20 list, I'm excited to talk about. I figured out the two wide receivers I want this year on my roster. Wow.

So Stefan Diggs is number 20. I haven't been 17, Jason 18, Mike 23. Stefan Diggs is Sammy Watkins in the sense that I want the better value of the combo. Okay? If I was just checking out ADPs, if I wanted to go running back heavy in a draft, like really running back heavy and go running back, running back, running back, or maybe I want to go running back, value on gronk, running back. I want my two wide outs to be Stefan Diggs and Sammy Watkins. I can get them in the fourth and fifth round.

because both players have a similar situation. I don't think Diggs is any less talented than Thielen. I don't think Watkins is any less talented than Tyreek Hill. Both of them have new quarterbacks, right? Kirk Cousin's coming in. Pat Mahomes coming in. The world doesn't know what those relationships between, you know, what the rapport will be. And so I'm going to take the better value and the talent knowing that the opportunity is going to be there. Diggs, Mike and I, we were looking at this yesterday.

The Thielen Diggs in the red zone thing is crazy. Thielen is bad in the red zone. Fourth worst, I think, on targets in terms of converting him. Yeah, catch percentage. Diggs is 85% in the red zone. He scored eight times last year. He's only six foot. You would think that six three Thielen would get it done. But Diggs got it done last year. And look, for him, he's got to stay healthy. He only played 14 games last year. Never played a full season in the NFL.