Denzel Mims - Fantasy Football Rookie Spotlight

May 31, 2020

Justin Carter's 2020 fantasy football value analysis of New York Jets rookie wide receiver Denzel Mims. Is he a 2020 fantasy football draft sleeper and top dynasty WR target?

In an extremely deep rookie wide receiver class, one name that seemed to consistently fly under the radar was Baylor's Denzel Mims. A three-year starter for the Bears, Mims put up strong numbers during his college career, but his name wasn't mentioned among the best of the best in the 2020 draft class but instead as someone a tier below those guys.

Now, Mims is a member of the New York Jets after being taken in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft. What does Mims' immediately future hold? Will he quickly grab a prominent role on the Jets, or will this season be a bit of a learning curve for him?

Here's the 2020 fantasy profile for rookie wide receiver Denzel Mims.

Profile

Team: New York Jets
College: Baylor
Height/Weight: 6' 3”, 207 lb
2020 NFL Draft: Round 2, Pick 59

What Mims Did With the Baylor Bears

While working on this piece, I decided to reach out to an expert to help us understand Mims, so I got in touch with Shehan Jeyarajah, the college football insider at Dave Campbell's Texas Football, as Jeyarajah watched as much of Denzel Mims as anyone in the country outside of the city of Waco probably did, and I thought his insights could help us create a fuller picture of Mims.

Mims is coming off his best collegiate season, catching 66 passes for 1020 yards and 12 touchdowns. It was Mims's second 1000-yard season with the Bears, and it came on the heels of a disappointing 2018 campaign where Miks had just 794 yards, though he did catch eight touchdowns that season.

One things that Mims gets dinged for is the drops that plagued him that season, but Jeyarajah says drops "were not a major issue" aside from that year, adding that Mims "claimed to have a hand injury" in 2018. That seems to explain the production drop pretty well; a healthy Mims was a 1000-yard receiver, while an injured Mims was still a productive player who had a few too many drops.

Speed is also a big part of Mims game. A state champion in high school in the 200-meter, Jeyarajah says Mims has "untapped potential at the next level as a burner." Considering that Jets moved on from their old burner guy Robby Anderson, it seems like Mims will get a chance to fill that kind of role in New York.

His athletic profile is really impressive. Here are his workout metrics via Player Profiler:

Mims struggled to create separation last year though, and only had 2.8 yards after the catch per reception. That's a concern; a guy as fast as Mims should have been able to create major separation against Big 12 opponents, right? Something to keep an eye on in the NFL.

Another potential concern is the association of the Baylor name with a certain kind of offensive system that creates offense and thus inflates stats, but Jeyarajah cautioned against that reading of the team's schemes. This isn't the Art Briles era, and Baylor "had a pro-style route tree and complex offensive under Matt Rhule." Don't look at Mims numbers and think about the Corey Colemans of the world. He succeeded in a system that much more closely reflects what he'll play in in the NFL than what you might think when you're typecasting Big 12 offensive players.

Competition For Targets In New York

So, who is Mims competing with for targets with the Jets?

Well...not a ton of guys, it turns out. The projected three-receiver lineup for the Jets seems to be Mims, Breshad Perriman, and Jamison Crowder, plus running back Le'Veon Bell and tight end Chris Herndon IV.

Let's ignore Bell for now and focus on the other three names.

Perriman is a former first round pick who the Jets signed this offseason. After doing virtually nothing throughout the first three years of his NFL career, Perriman ended up in Tampa last year, and got to play a lot down the stretch because of injuries. Perriman caught a career-high 36 catches for 645 yards and six touchdowns last year, ending the season with three straight 100-yard games, but let's take his production with a grain of salt, as it came in the high-flying Bruce Arians offense that Tampa employs.

Perriman gives the Jets a solid outside receiver, but this team won't be pushing the ball down the field as much as the Bucs did. What I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't try to take Perriman's production at the end of 2019 and extrapolate too much from it, because he's in a significantly worse situation now.

Crowder is the player who'll likely lead the Jets in targets. His 122 targets last year ranked 16th among all receivers, and he'll play primarily out of the slot and be the underneath guy for Darnold. Crowder only had eight deep targets last year, a number that ranked 81st among wide receivers, so Crowder doesn't directly threaten Mims in terms of deep targets like Perriman does, though Darnold's probably going to defer to the shorter Crowder routes a little more than a successful NFL offense should defer to the shorter routes. Crowder's not some world beater, though, and a lot of his success has been because he's been the best option on some receiver-needy teams during his NFL career.

Herndon might be the most interesting player here. He played in just one game last year, catching a seven-yard pass, but back in 2018, the then-rookie tight end had 39 catches for 502 yards and four touchdowns. If healthy and not suspended -- two things that hampered his 2019 season -- Herndon becomes a key part of what the Jets will want to do.

Back in 2018, Herndon had the best true catch rate of any tight end, with an average target distance that was fifth at the position and production premium that led tight ends as well. He can be a multi-level threat for Darnold, someone who takes opportunities away from both Mims and Perriman down the field. But having Herndon on the field can also open things up for the Jets.

Do We Trust Sam Darnold?

Darnold's 2019 campaign was interrupted by him getting mono, so it's tough to get a great read on what his second NFL season meant. But he did start 13 games in each of the past two years, which makes it easy to put some numbers side-by-side and see how things changed.

So, there was improvement! But Darnold's numbers when stacked up to other quarterbacks weren't so encouraging.

Among quarterbacks, he rated 24th in true completion percentage and 28th in accuracy rating. He really struggled in the red zone, completing just 50.9 percent of his red zone attempts. His deep ball numbers -- 27.3 completion percentage, which ranked 32nd -- were bad too.

Darnold should take more steps forward in his third season. Continuity with the offense. More weapons. Just, like, the natural progression we see from young quarterbacks.

But am I really confident in Darnold making a leap? No way, and that makes it harder for me to put trust into Mims as a rookie.

2020 Outlook

So, what should we expect off the bat from Mims?

Maybe not too much, which isn't a knock against Denzel Mims at all. I like Denzel Mims. I think he has the potential to stick around the NFL for a long time. But rookie wide receivers don't always get up to speed quickly and Darnold just isn't the kind of quarterback who makes an outside receiver have a strong fantasy output.

But maybe Darnold takes that step forward. Maybe Mims outplays Breshad Perriman and is the main downfield weapon for the Jets by midseason.

It's not super likely though. The Adam Gase-coached Jets are one of those teams that just feels like a dead zone for offensive production, and for that reason Mims isn't someone to bet on in 2020. He's not someone to just ignore and he has the talent to be an intriguing pickup down the stretch once he gets some kind of relationship going with Darnold, but I wouldn't put him among the top receivers in this class right now, mostly because situation > talent in this league.

Dynasty Outlook

Mims didn't see his dynasty ADP change much with his second-round selection by the Jets. Before the NFL Draft, Mims was the eighth WR taken on average. In May rookie drafts, he is typically going seventh at the position near the lower end of the second tier. His immediate impact won't change the trajectory of a fantasy team like CeeDee Lamb or Jerry Jeudy might, yet he has the chance to ascend as his team's WR1 as soon as 2020.

While the ceiling is high based on physical talent and opportunity, there is also tangible risk. The fact that Mims slipped past receivers like Chase Claypool and Van Jefferson could raise concerns that NFL teams see potential weaknesses in his game and don't view him as a target hog. His presence in an Adam Gase-coached team doesn't inspire much confidence either.

That said, Mims should be viewed in higher regard for fantasy purposes because he could outperform several of the receivers taken before him. Even Jeudy and Lamb won't function as the top receiver on their respective teams, while the door is wide open for Mims. Consider him a risk worth taking slightly higher than his current draft value, as early as the 12th pick in a rookie draft.

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