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Wide receiver John Ross signed as a free agent with the New York Giants in the 2021 offseason. Bruce Matson evaluates Ross for fantasy football purposes to decide if he has late-round value at WR.
After losing Golden Tate and making a heavy pursuit for Kenny Golladay, the Giants signed John Ross to a one-year $2.5 million deal on Tuesday. He will provide much-needed depth to a depleted wide receiver corps. Since it’s a one-year deal, the Giants will have limited risk invested into Ross. It could be easy to forget about Ross after he appeared in just three games and caught all of two passes in 2020. Could he become a sneaky late-round pick in 2021 fantasy football drafts or is this a move to ignore?
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Speed Kills
What makes Ross exciting is his deep speed. At the combine in 2017, Ross displayed elite-level speed by running a 4.22 40-yard dash. If he can gain a rapport with Daniel Jones, then he could be the team’s field stretcher. The deeper targets would allow him to produce easily on splash plays.
Per PFF, Jones completed 46.5 percent of his deep targets (20 Yards or more), ranking seventh among all quarterbacks with at least 20 deep pass attempts. On the contrary, he ranked 20th in the league among quarterbacks with 350 pass attempts or more with an 8.0 average depth of target. To be fair, injuries plagued the Giants’ wide receiver unit, preventing Jones from being able to successfully sling the ball all over the yard.
Courtesy of RotoViz
It’s never recommended to react off of a small sample. However, we only have small samples to use from Ross’s tenure in Cincinnati. Before injuring his collarbone in 2019, he was trending to be a key contributor to the Bengals’ passing game. If healthy and playing to his true potential, it’s not outside the realm of possibilities that he could have a Will Fuller-like ascension.
Courtesy of Pro-Football-Reference
It’s great to talk about Ross’ speed and the potential upside he brings to the team and for fantasy managers. In real life though, he has only played in 27 games in his four-year career. Injuries have played a big part in him not being able to gain a foothold as a reliable option in the Bengals’ offense. He only has one season with over 500 yards receiving.
Butterfly Effect
The odds of him turning things around is highly unlikely. We rarely see wide receivers breakout during their year-five season. Ross does not have a track record of success for fantasy gamers to bank on. With the amount of injures that he has endured during his stay in Cincinnati, it’s hard to say that he still has the blazing fast track speed that he possessed during his college days.
Darius Slayton, Sterling Shepard, and Evan Engram will be his main competition for targets. Slayton is also a deep ball specialist who will command a large portion of the air yards. In 2020, he led the team with a 33 percent share of the air yards while also accumulating a 19 percent target share. Those numbers are a little bit deflated considering he played through shoulder and foot injuries.
Shepard played 31.4 percent of his snaps out of the slot last year. With Tate out of the mix, we should see him operate in the slot more in 2021. In the 12 games that he started, Shepard owned a 23 percent target share. He has an established role in the offense and his ownership of the workload should remain consistent.
The Giants are one of the few teams in the league where the tight end eats a large share of the targets. Engram caught 63 passes for 654 yards and one touchdown last year along with seeing 22 percent of the targets and 20 percent of the air yards. 2020 was a boom or bust season for Engram, he produced six TE1 weeks but ultimately finished the year as the TE18 in PRR.
One thing we much consider is Saquon Barkley. In his injury-riddled 2019 season, he owned a 15 percent share of the passing targets. He’s heavily used as a check-down option in the flat. In this role, he managed to accumulate 768 yards after the catch during his rookie season in 2018. When he’s healthy one of the best receiving backs in the league. The fact that he’s siphoning a good chunk of the targets is not good for Ross’s future fantasy output.
The NFL Draft is stacked with wide receiver talent and there’s always a chance the Giants pull the trigger on a wide receiver somewhere in the draft. We know from their actions already, by signing Ross and having extensive conversations with Kenny Golladay, that they are looking to add talent to the wide receiver position. The last thing we should do is bet against this team adding another wide receiver to the depth chart.
2021 Outlook
Ross needs to establish himself as a reliable option for Jones for him to be successful. He has homerun hitting speed which sets him apart from the rest of the wide receivers on the roster. Injuries have been a problem in the past and he needs to figure out how to remain healthy. Availability will be his best ability. If he can’t stay on the field, then it will be the same dance.
Everything is according to price when we are talking about prospects for fantasy. Ross will easily fall to the double-digit rounds in redraft leagues. Most likely he will be found on the waiver wire. If anything, he will be a candidate to keep on your watch list throughout the season. Things to monitor would be his target share and air yards. If he’s seeing a lot of deep targets then he will be worth plucking off of waivers as a spot-starter, because all it will take is him converting one of those deep balls into a long touchdown for him to be a fantasy-relevant option for the week.
Ross is a wait-and-see type of prospect. There’s a chance that he doesn’t get enough snaps to be productive. On the flip side, he could be the Giants' main deep threat. We won’t fully know until we get to the regular season.
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