Don't You Sleep on Bengals Wide Receiver Marvin Jones in 2015

You may recall that heading into 2014 there was a considerable amount of hype for Marvin Jones. It was hard not to like Jones coming off a 51-712-10 line highlighted by an 8 catch, 122 yard, 4 touchdown performance against the Jets at the young age of 23. Jones also impressed with 8 receptions for 130 yards in the Bengals lone playoff game that year. All of this was done behind star receiver A.J. Green as well, so it’s easy to see why so many had high hopes for Jones in 2014.

Then everything went wrong. Jones was originally set to miss four games dealing with foot and ankle injuries and then was lost for the season while trying to come back in week five. Fast forward to the 2015 preseason and Jones is once again expected to be the #2 in Cincy. The difference this time is that the hype seems to be non-existent with virtually no expectations for Marvin Jones. His FantasyPros ADP is WR62, more or less undrafted in 12 team leagues.

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It’s hard for me to understand just why Marvin Jones is so completely ignored in fantasy drafts right now. Sure Mohamed Sanu looked good early in the season but he was close to a zero in the second half totaling just 162 yards and a single touchdown over the final 8 games. Sanu simply wasn’t good enough. It’s not like any other wide receiver stepped into the WR2 role during that time either. This makes that WR2 spot open for Marvin Jones to take over again.

Others may point to Andy Dalton’s regression in 2014 under offensive coordinator Hue Jackson. Dalton threw for a stellar 33 touchdowns in 2013 with Jay Gruden as OC but last year that sank to just 19, the lowest total of his career. He also made over 100 fewer attempts in 2014. I would argue this was Hue Jackson wisely adjusting to the players he had at the time since the Bengals were plagued by injuries to their receiving corps. The Bengals lost Jones, A.J. Green, Tyler Eifert and Giovani Bernard for a combined 37 games. At this moment all four of those players have a clean bill of health so you can expect a greater number of pass attempts for the Bengals in 2015.

Looking back again at 2013, Marvin Jones saw 77 targets that year according to Pro Football Focus. That number is especially impressive given that in 2013 Mohamed Sanu (who only saw 73 targets himself) played 200 more snaps. Jones didn’t even play more snaps than Sanu until Week 11, three weeks after his breakout game against the Jets. A.J. Green also had an astounding number of targets in 2013 with 172, 3rd most in the league.

That means 2015 should be the first time we get to see Jones as true #2 receiver. It’s hard to predict how many targets Jones will see knowing that he hasn’t yet played with Hue Jackson as OC and the offense should be very different with all these healthy receivers. That said, Mohamed Sanu’s 97 targets last year seems like a reasonable projection. While Sanu was the WR1 on four different occasions, he was also rarely targeted in the second half because he just wasn’t productive enough. I’m operating under the assumption that Marvin Jones is a considerably better player, something I feel very confident about.

What numbers can Marvin Jones put up with around 97 targets? Although his 2013 touchdown rate was unsustainable, he did have 712 yards on 77 targets and last year Sanu had 790 yards on those 97 targets with just a 57.7% catch rate. Jones had a 66.2% catch rate in 2013 and should be able to exceed that. Using that number we could project a 65-900-5 season for Marvin Jones, equivalent to 120 fantasy points in standard, or the 31st highest scoring WR in 2014. No Bengals WR2 has hit those numbers in the Dalton era but Jones is the best WR2 Dalton has had (previous WR2s include Andrew Hawkins and Jerome Simpson) and by a large margin.

There are certainly a number of assumptions made here including the assumption that Marvin Jones doesn’t have any long-term issues from his foot and ankle injuries but when talking about the minimal investment required for a late round draft pick, I prefer to look at upside and Marvin Jones has a lot of it. Even with a rebound season for A.J. Green, this Bengals passing game should have plenty of room for additional improvement and Marvin Jones will be a major part of that. It’s what makes him one of my favorite picks at the end of a draft.

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