Corey Davis - Tennessee Titans | WR33, 84th Overall
Davis disappointed once again after much breakout hype clouded his fantasy outlook entering the 2018 season. If you had told me Davis would again see nearly 27% of his team's targets, I'd have bought in. Thankfully, none of y'all are snitches and no one told me that. But that's what happened last year. 27% of the Titan's passes went to Corey Davis - the 8th highest rate in the NFL. Those are elite target share numbers - Those are the OBJ, Julio, Davante Adams type target shares. One problem, he finished as the WR33 in fantasy last year (half PPR PPG - minimum 10 games played). He turned 112 targets into 65 receptions, 895 yards and four touchdowns... and 10 dropped passes.
You can't entirely blame Davis for his lack of success through two NFL seasons after being the 5th overall pick in the Draft. The situation he is in and the quarterback he's catching passes from are some of the worst conditions in fantasy.
We're talking about a really low pass volume offense, that brought in two pass-catchers this season - Adam Humphries & A.J. Brown. With Humphries signing a four-year, $36 million contract with Tennessee for whatever tf reason, he's going to be in the slot full-time. The problem is, if there was somewhere Davis would succeed it was going to be in the slot - we see the Michael Thomas', JuJu's, Thielen, dominate in the slot - seeing huge target totals and being extremely efficient on them. Davis actually started playing a ton in the slot last year, because of Matt LaFleur.
With Humphries here, LaFleur gone, Davis will be outside competing for targets opposite A.J. Brown. If he couldn't get it done last year, don't expect a breakout coming in 2019. Until they find their identity, Mariota stays healthy or they get a new QB, Davis will continue to disappoint in fantasy football.
James Washington - Pittsburgh Steelers | WR49, 121st Overall
Sure, Antonio Brown is gone. But I think the signing of Donte Moncrief and the Diontae Johnson selection speaks a little bit louder. I dove pretty deep into the Pittsburgh situation following the Antonio Brown trade, and I didn't like James Washington then. Add a couple more outside receivers to the mix and there's nothing at all enticing about Washington to me.
There is literally no argument that someone who is backing James Washington has other then he was behind Brown and JuJu. Like there's no positive side to the argument, it's just the attempt to combat the negative. It's like when Daniel Jones was picked in the draft and ESPN was like yeah welllll, his sisters are great athletes.. like nothing about his on-field gameplay. James Washington is the WR version of Daniel Jones.
He played on 525 snaps last year... That's actually like 100 fewer snaps then Calvin Ridley played. It's more than Dante Pettis, the same as Christian Kirk..
Honorable Mentions
I think Chris Godwin might get to the point where it's going to be really hard to draft him. He's someone I love, y'all know that, he was in my sleeper/breakout videos last year, but he's currently the WR20 right now, 48th overall - right behind Kenny Golladay, Robert Woods and Sammy Watkins, and right in front of Cooper Kupp, Tyler Lockett and Mike Williams. I think the guys right behind him, those latter three are definitely in the conversation with Godwin, but seeing the names in front of him, it's hard to even think about taking Godwin in front of a Golladay or Watkins who have ridiculous upside, and Woods whose floor is might be similar to Godwin's but we've seen Woods do it now for a couple of years, we haven't actually seen it from Godwin. I like what I'm hearing from Bruce Arians and from Bucs camp in terms of using Godwin from the slot, but there are still a lot of mouths to feed in an offense that while, and how sure are we that it's going to be prolific? I like Arians, but does he really bring that much more to their passing game, statistically speaking then Dirk Koetter and Todd Monken who throw the ball 98 times/game? Tampa has not been, and you can fact check this I looked, a top-10 scoring offense in the NFL since the year 2000 - admittedly, they were number 11 last year, but they also had a historically bad offense and some unbelievable numbers thrown up by Ryan Fitzpatrick. That was only the second time over the 20 years or so they were top 12 in scoring.
I want nothing to do with Emmanuel Sanders in 2019. 31, coming off of a torn achilles. Case Keenum, who targets the slot more than any QB in the world is gone. Clearly, they've moved on to younger weapons (Sutton, Hamilton, Patrick, Fant, his time as a top-30 fantasy WR are done). They owe him too much to cut him so they might as well keep him around to be a locker room presence and mentor the young guys.
I personally won't be drafting A.J. Green. He's probably a little less injury-prone in reality than I peg him in my mind, but he's missed some notable time over the last few years, also coming off of a serious foot injury, he'll be 31 soon, in an offense that we have no idea how they'll be under a new HC and OC that neither have experience leading an offense let alone a team. What do we get from Andy Dalton as the QB? He's ranked 18th and 34th in deep accuracy (per PFF) over the last two seasons. He's one of the worst QBs under pressure, ranking 31st, 17th, 28th over the L3 years and yeah while their line is improved, he's still gonna be under pressure a good amount. He's been serviceable, but would rather draft a fantasy WR at the end of the 3rd, early 4th attached to a QB and/or offense that we know is good.
I put this question out on Twitter, just asking who you guys are avoiding at wideout this year in fantasy, for the most part just got a lot of entire team answers. Nearly everyone is avoiding Buffalo, Miami, Washington and Baltimore WR groups lol ***INSERT TWEETS***. You can probably throw the Jets in there too. I like Robby Anderson, but his price is a bit steep (WR30, 78 Overall) - he's in the Alshon Jeffery, Tyler Boyd, Will Fuller range. With Crowder and Le'Veon here, there's a lot of mouths to feed.
We got a lot of Allen Robinson and he was on this list when I made this video for the first time about two months ago - you can check it out here. At the time I made that video he was the 22nd WR off the board, around pick 50. He's dropped pretty significantly since then, he's now WR27, around pick 65 - so more than a full round. I get the situation, being with Mitch Trubiksy who is not a consistent outside passer at all, and a lot of mouths to feed for sure. Robinson definitely isn't someone I'm targeting, but if he keeps dropping I'm okay grabbing him in the 6th 7th round for sure. He's going around guys like Tyler Lockett, D.J. Moore, which I think are fine.
Lots of Antonio Brown in the comments too. He's another guy who's stock has dropped pretty far as well, he's at the end of the 2nd round, might be early 3rd by the time real drafts come around. I probably won't take him within my first two picks either.
I'm not sure why T.Y. Hilton was mentioned so many times. Why is he someone that people are avoiding? Him and Luck have like 4 years of good chemistry - Funchess is a complimentary RZ piece, Hilton isn't a RZ threat anyways so you're not banking on those fantasy points. Parris Campbell sure, but he's a rookie, he won't get more than like 50 targets, if that, for 2019 he's a much better real-life player to spread defenses out then fantasy threat to T.Y. Give me the WR1 in one of the NFL's top 3 offenses... Hilton definitely isn't a guy I'm avoiding.
Please, please don't waste a draft pick on Josh Gordon.