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Receiving yards are the bread and butter of fantasy football wide receivers. Antonio Losada looks at four WR who could be due for regression in 2020.
While touchdowns are the most coveted play outcome for wide receivers in fantasy football, total receiving yards must be taken into serious consideration when deciding who to draft for the position. It is true that receivers have to work harder to rack up yards, and that they don't have an overly great value at only one point per 10 receiving yards, but the volume of yards per game WRs gain is much higher than the number of touchdowns they score and much more reliable.
It comes down to simple math. Consider Julio Jones. He finished 2019 with 92.9 yards per game. He scored 6 TD in 15 games. So he averaged 9.3 fantasy points per game thanks to receiving yards, and 2.4 fantasy points per game thanks to his TDs. At the end of the season, he had a total of 139.4 points due to receiving yardage, and 36 points due to his touchdowns. So yes, yards account for more than touchdowns in the long run. And that's why we're always on the look for highly-targeted receivers awarded the most possible chances to catch passes and put up as many yards as possible.
Here, I'm taking a look at some of the best wide receivers from the 2019 season due to regress in 2020 in terms of their receiving yards. Don't be fooled by the high numbers they put up last year because a few slumps could be coming!
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John Brown, Buffalo Bills
1,060 yards in 2019
There are many reasons to think Brown's production will go down in 2020. First of all, and perhaps the one impacting his upside the most, is the addition of Stefon Diggs to the Bills receiving corps. Diggs will become the no. 1 receiver of the team from Week 1, no doubts about it, and he should command at least 100 targets over the year. With targets come receptions, and with receptions come yards, so that's the first hit Brown will suffer.
To that it should be added that Brown ranked 13th in Air Yards per Target last season, making him a reasonably deep threat while still getting 26% of the Brown's target share. That percentage of targets going his way ranked as the seventh-highest in the league. You would expect no. 1 receivers to be used all around the field, on both possession- and deep-throws, but Brown buckled that trend. Entering 2020 and given how he's proved to be productive with that long-pass profile, he will be used even more on deep throws with Diggs probably more of a safety valve along with Cole Beasley.
That should help Brown rack up yards, sure, but the problem is that deep throws are harder to catch and doesn't succeed that often. On top of that, Brown only averaged a paltry 2.8 YAC (90th-best), so it's not a sure thing that he'd add many more yards even when he catches the ball. Hardly ever two receivers from the same team reach 1,000+ yards on the same season, and all odds are Diggs will be the one from Buffalo to break that mark over Brown in 2020.
DeVante Parker, Miami Dolphins
1,202 yards in 2019
I've been DeVante Parker's no. 1 stan since the day he was drafted. That being said, I was starting to get a little antsy about his career and production. Last season marked Parker's fifth in the NFL and not once before 2019 had he reached even 750 yards. Be it because of injuries, bad play, bad teammates, or whatever you want to link that to, he just had not played to the level of a former first-round pick (2015's 14th-overall). Then, 2019 happened.
Last season, Parker finally had the career-year we had been waiting for so long. He finished with 1,200+ yards, caught all of 72 passes on 128 targets and scored a monster 9 TDs. He was, simply put, the WR1 we all hoped for since the early days. His 246.2 PPR over the year were x1.6 times his second-best mark (154.4 in 2016) and made him the WR11 of 2019. Now, you know what they say: never draft a player for your fantasy team after he has a career-season. That corolary can be more than true for Parker in 2020.
Miami will feature either a boom/bust QB in Ryan Fitzpatrick (it worked well for Parker last season, though) or a rookie in Tua Tagovailoa. The Dolphins have also added Matt Breida and Jordan Howard to the offense (they should get around 50 targets combined), will have a second-year Preston Williams demanding more targets after a good rookie season in which he missed all of eight games, and they'll also play Mike Gisicki at the TE position (he seems to be on an upward trend too). Even if Parker somehow plays great football again, the slightest regression to the mean would make him a 1,000-yard player at most in the best of cases.
A.J. Brown, Tennessee Titans
1,051 yards in 2019
Brown's rookie season was absolutely insane, pretty much as the Titans' run as a whole. Who would have said that Tennessee would end giving up on Marcus Mariota in favor of veteran Ryan Tannehill and come out on the winning side of things? Before Tannehill took over the starting role at QB, Brown only had one game of 100 yards (Week 1) and five below that mark leading up to Week 7. From Week 7 to Week 17 he racked up monster games breaking the 100-yard mark four times. What I'm saying, trusting Brown to repeat on a 1,000-yard season is to trust Ryan Tannehill elevating him to those heights again.
Not only did Tannehill played an impressive second half of the season, but Brown himself couldn't have been more efficient and make the most of his chances. While Brown was targeted only 84 times, he still was able to reach more than 1,000 yards--and as a rookie, no less. His 20.2 Y/R ranked second only to Mike Williams' 20.4 among WRs targeted at least 75 times. Brown also led the league in Y/Tgt with 12.5 among that same group of players.
The problem with Brown's outcomes, though, is the outlier-nature of them. He averaged 8.9 YAC per reception, obviously no. 1 in the NFL among wideouts and only second to Austin Ekeler (10.2) league-wide. Deebo Samuel finished second with 8.3 but you have to go all the way down to 7.1 YAC/R to find the next pass-catcher (TE Geroge Kittle). While a full season under Tannehill could do Brown well, I'm hesitant he will reach such an impossible level of efficiency once more, thus losing yardage over the 2020 season.
Chris Godwin & Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
1,333 & 1,157 yards in 2019
Let me give you a two-for-one here. These are all WR1-WR2 teammate pairs to reach 1,150+ yards on the same season since 2015: Robert Woods & Brandin Cooks in 2018, Antonio Brown & JuJu Smith Schuster in 2018, and Chris Godwin & Mike Evans in 2019. That's correct, all three of them. And you're telling me our friends Chris and Mike will go on to do it again in 2020? Let's be real for a minute here, folks.
Having two such booming receivers in a single season, at the same time, is just a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. The stars must align for it to happen. You need to have two studs at the position, feed them a lot of targets, pray for an overly-efficient play coming from them and have either a top-tier quarterback on a career year or a booming one (like Jameis Winston) airing the ball out without any remorse.
There is a chance at least one of Godwin or Evans reach 1,300+ yards again, but I'm highly hesitant both will go on to rack up more than 1,100 once more. Tampa has brought Tom Brady to man the QB position and he's nothing close to Winston when it comes to the passing game. The Bucs have also added TE Rob Grownkoiski and he should command tons of targets next season, plus (perhaps) OJ Howard will also be deployed at the tight end position and get some yards himself. The combination of cautious QB + clogged offense + historical performance in 2019 wants to tell me at least one of these two will lose yards in 2020.
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