RADIO
Welcome back to another article in our fantasy football ADP draft risers and fallers - today we'll be looking at wide receivers. I am going to start this column by introducing the concept of ADP, which I'm pretty sure you know what it is about. Average Draft Position (ADP) indicates the average position where a player is drafted over more than one fantasy football draft. You can consider it as the price you have to pay to draft and get a player on your team. A high ADP (that is actually a low-numbered ADP) means that a player is getting off draft boards early, and thus you'll need to draft him in the first rounds if you truly want him.
Low or high ADP values are not gospel. Each of us fantasy GMs have our strategies and value players differently depending on what we think is the most important for them to have in terms of abilities. No matter what, ADPs are good to know how the "average value" of the "average GM" you'll be drafting against is for each asset (in this case, the players). By now, with free agency and the draft well finalized and just a few players left to be signed, it makes sense to go look at how ADPs are varying during the last month as we get closer to peak draft season.
In this series, I’ll highlight players at each skill position seeing significant fluctuation from mid-June to mid-July using data from FFPC drafts. Today, it's time to look at three wide-receiver fallers.
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Fantasy Football Wide Receiver ADP Fallers
Christian Watson, Green Bay Packers
There is not a clear event happening in the past few weeks that have forced fantasy GMs into fading Watson, and in fact, looking at the chart above you can see how the fall is less pronounced from the end of June until now than it was in the prior weeks to that.
The Packers didn't do anything remarkable in this last four-week span, so things are kind of settled tho the ADP has still somehow dropped more than two full rounds in 12-team leagues. The last impact move in Green Bay was the (expected) re-signing of WR Allen Lazard, but that happened more than a month ago.
Watson, the rookie out of North Dakota State, got drafted earlier than expected and by the most random team considering the history of Green Bay in the draft--an influx of young, drafted talent at WR was very needed, though.
The only thing that might concern fantasy GMs is QB Aaron Rodgers saying that he is excited about Alen Lazard being back as the WR1, but that was expected from the get-go so if that is the main reason under the ADP movement, well, you can entirely forget about it.
I say the only thing even though "Knox News" reported WR Amari Rodgers is trying to get himself a larger role, which I'm sorry but I don't think is something buyable. PFF has Watson projected to just 45 fewer FP than Lazard in PPR-format leagues. FFPC GMs are drafting Lazard with an ADP of 113th to Watson's 131st. You know who to target if the ADP keeps tanking.
Jameson Williams, Detroit Lions
When the Detroit Lions drafted Jameson Williams with a top-half pick in the first round of the draft they already knew that Williams would most probably miss some time--that is, assuming the situation wouldn't reach a point in which he could be entirely shut down for the year.
Then, we arrived at June and all of a sudden there were reports speaking of a potential recovery in time for September football by the rookie, as franchise's beat reporter Tim Twentyman got word from the very receiver saying that he "believes he has a chance to be recovered enough [...] to be ready for training camp in August." Uh, oh, flex on them injuries, don't you!? Even then, though, the most optimistic of reports paint a late-September/early-October debut.
Williams got banged up and injured in the Natty, and it's been a while, but such is a knee-ligament injury. It's probable that Williams starts the season on the PUP list, and that means he would automatically miss the first six games of the season. If there was a chance to have in out there in W1 even limited, he might be worth the hyper-large flier.
That looks less and less of an option each passing day with July reports saying he is not practicing with the team while Lions' OC Benjamin Johnson said that "it is going to be a challenge" to have Williams for the season--at all. Alas, the ADP drop and cratering hopes for Williams to be an impactful fantasy player in re-draft formats.
Draft him high for your dynasty squads, ultra-fade him in any sort of re-draft format, and reserve yourself a WW call for a (hopefully) December/January late debut even if that would probably make no sense to the Lions to risk so late in the year with nothing to win next season but definitely a lot to lose in the event of a re-injury.
Treylon Burks, Tennessee Titans
I'm going to list different headlines that have made their way to the interwebs during the past few weeks, starting on June 1, and including a little summary of the report:
- Treylon Burks (TB) talks about struggles at practice: Burks had issues because of conditioning issues.
- TB dealing with asthma: Asthma issues affecting TB this summer, though it's not clear if those or a bad conditioning is what is affecting his bad practices.
- TB sits a practice on June 7 because of undisclosed reasons.
- TB not practicing at the start of the Titans minicamp on June 14.
- TB misses June 15 practice because of unknown reasons.
- Titans HC Mike Vrabel reports TB is unavailable, that's the reason he's missed the first two days of the minicamp.
- QB Ryan Tannehill shares his thoughts on Burks saying that "[TB] missing offseason practices 'definitely hurts'."
- TB predicted to win no. 2 WR role: Reports from Shaun Calderon (TitansWire) talk about TB getting the WR2 role for the Titans over Nick Westbrook-Ikhine.
That's all we've got from the media around Tennessee in the past (nearly) two months and not a lot of it has to do with good things and with Burks meriting any sort of praise. We have to collectively acknowledge our mistake with labeling Ja'Marr Chase a bust last summer when he dropped a couple of passes only to have a historically great year last season.
It is what it is, though, and Burks has yet to show even the smallest of things to reverse the always-dropping-ADP trend. Fade the man and look elsewhere. Burks is turning into too much of a Mistery Man.
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