Bear Down: WR Target Fallers

Antonio Losada looks at wide receivers (WR) poised for a decrease in targets and target share due to changes of team, environments, or teammates during the past year looking forward to the 2020 fantasy football season.

What is a wide receiver without a target? A warm body on a gridiron, that's it. Each and every summer we face the same question because most NFL franchises and also some players themselves decide to go try and test new assets and places. Every time a contract runs out, the possibility of finding a new team arrives for every wide receiver part of the NFL community, and with those changes of teams come changes in usage patterns. Some stud can turn into a dud only because he goes from being a go-to guy to become part of a wider offense in which more than one talented player takes snaps.

This is the most used cliché ever, and the most widely known advice and phrase to keep in mind, but opportunity trumps everything in fantasy football. With no chances to rack up points, well, points won't ever come. It doesn't matter if your favorite receiver logs 100% of the offensive snaps of his team if all he does is look at his quarterback throw the football away from him and to other players. You'd rather watch your man fumble every target that not being targeted at all. The more targets a player is likely to see, the more receptions, yards, and subsequently fantasy points he will accrue.

With that deep knowledge in place, it's time to assess the market of fantasy receivers to come up with some of them poised for a decrease in targets due to different circumstances. Let's get to it.

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Odell Beckham Jr., Cleveland Browns

I've always thought of OBJ as an overvalued player, but the numbers and the offseason don't paint a nice picture for him going forward. There are a lot of factors that can potentially impact a player's target share, and all of them seem to be on the negative side of things for OBJ this upcoming season.

For starters, No. 2 wide receiver Jarvis Landry (who actually out-targeted Beckham last season 138 to 133 already) should see an increase in targets, and if that isn't the case (that's the most probable scenario) at least the share (percentage of targets among players on Cleveland's offense) should go up. Landry played the same games as Beckham but racked up 36 more FP during the season, reeled in nine more receptions, and scored two more touchdowns than Beckham. But OBJ has the fame, while Landry's just a name.

Leaving hypothetical thoughts aside and focusing on hard facts: the Browns will feature Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt full-time. Hunt logged 44 targets in just eight games, so expect that number to go up just due to sheer volume of playing time, keeping some targets off the receiver corps. Also, Cleveland has signed TE Austin Hooper and will have David Njoku back at the position too -- Hooper was terrific for Atlanta catching 75 of 95 targets for 787 yards and six scores, so he will be used. Not a good outlook for Beckham, indeed.

Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

If targets were infinite, you'd like to feed them to both Evans and Goodwin until the day they died from an overdose. Sadly, they're limited goods -- although Jameis Winston made them look the other way leading the league with 626 pass attempts last season. Both Evans and Godwin ranked inside the top-20 in terms of targets with 118 and 121 respectively. Only two other teams put two receivers in that group (Cleveland and the Rams). Evans' targets crashed down in 2019 as he logged the fewest in his six-year career (although he missed three games) while Godwin's went all the way up from 55 and 95 in the prior two seasons (he missed two games).

The most logical thing to happen in 2020, if we look back at both players' careers, is that Evans slightly surpasses Godwin just because he's a proven talent that has excelled for longer than the seemingly-out-of-nowhere phenom Godwin turned into last year. Even with that, though, both players should suffer from the moves Tampa has made this offseason.

The Bucs are now led by Tom Brady, who has attempted an average of 567 passes in his last six seasons. That's a sizable bump down from Winston's 626. Not only that, but the Bucs are also about to feature two (yes, you read it right) heavily-used tight ends this season in Rob Gronkowski and O.J. Howard. That is what I expect, at least, with Brady loving the former and most probably bringing Howard back to life as the QB looks for TEs rather often.

With Godwin now established as a great receiver (favors him, hurts Evans), Evans being the top-tier receiver he his (favors him, hurts Godwin), and the tight ends entering the conversation strongly (favors them, hurts both Evans and Godwin), both Tampa Bay receivers should be losing targets this next season.

DeAndre Hopkins, Arizona Cardinals

While the Cardinals weren't able to put two receivers in the top-24 most-targeted WR group, both Larry Fitzgerald and Christian Kirk ranked just outside of it with 109 and 108 respectively. It is interesting to note, though, that Kirk reached that number while playing just 13 of the 16 season games. Arizona has a gunner in QB Kyler Murray and a system that favors an all-out bombing game and is now bringing stud DeAndre Hopkins to the team. Just so you know, Hopkins racked up all of 104 receptions in 2019 (out of 150 targets) in Houston for 1,165 yards and seven touchdowns. Those numbers were insane, ranked him fifth in targets and second in receptions, and made them the 10th-best receiver in terms of total yards.

That, again, happened in Houston. The Texans' second-most targeted player was Will Fuller with 71 passes thrown his way. Those didn't even account for half of Hopkins' total targets, and the third player in the list was RB Duke Johnson with 62 targets himself. Arizona is already crowded at the wideout position with Fitzgerald returning and Kirk developing in a sharp weapon worth passing to. RB David Johnson is out and no other receiver/tight end looks like a threat to take targets from Hopkins, but the days of racking up 150-plus targets (he's done so for five consecutive seasons going back to 2015) should be over for Nuke. Hopkins is a super-efficient player (70% catch rate) and he better keep it up to retain his value with an expected lower volume in Arizona.

Tyler Boyd, Cincinnati Bengals

As great as Boyd played in 2019, it also must be acknowledged that the Bengals offense was an absolute mess of injuries and problems last season. A.J. Green seemed poised to be featured in September but he was out for the whole year, Auden Tate find a way to become the No. 2 receiver but could only do so for 10 games, and deep-threat John Ross was active in just eight matches himself. The result? A massive 148-target year for Boyd in which the rest of Cincinnati's wideouts could only amount for 80 targets in the best of cases (Auden Tate) and as fewer as 56 in the worst of them (John Ross).

Tyler Boyd has established himself as a top-24, WR2-level player during the past two seasons finishing with 221.1  and 222.9 PPR points in 2018 and 2019. In those two years, he logged 108 and 148 targets, and the former is a much more reasonable number to expect come next season than the latter. Even missing seven games, Green was part of the Bengals offense in 2018 and was targeted 77 times in the other nine games. Ross logged 58 targets himself and Joe Mixon also got targeted 55 times out of the backfield (he was targeted 45 times in 2019). All of that, paired with the addition of rookie-WR Tee Higgins (the 33rd pick, so expect him to play and rack up targets no matter what) will inevitably drag Boyd's targets and fantasy upside down.

Amari Cooper, Dallas Cowboys

If the Cowboys offense is not the strongest in the NFL, it definitely must be up there battling for those bragging rights. It features a great-yet-still-overlooked QB in Dak Prescott, an impossible great RB in Ezekiel Elliott, and three superb wideouts in Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, and rookie CeeDee Lamb. Prescott won't take targets from anyone,but Elliott is more than a capable pass-catcher and the trio of receivers will have to share the load if only because they are all supremely talented.

We don't have pro-stats from Lamb yet, that's correct, but every first-round WR since 2000 to go on and play 16 games logged at least 54 targets as a rookie. Those have to come from someone, and Cooper led the receiver corps of the Cowboys last year with 119 over Gallup's 113. They were super close even though Gallup missed two games, which might mean he could be up for a small bump -- if not in raw numbers, in target share. Randall Cobb is out of Dallas for 2020, and he will leave all of 83 targets open, which could very well align with Lamb's expected number. That being said, though, I'd expect Gallup to take another step forward and improve on his age-23 season (he averaged virtually the same PPG as Cooper) and Lamb to become a prominent part of the offense from day one.

Cooper has already cashed-in and got his check, so there is no need for him to prove anything in a contract year nor Dallas to feed him in order to keep him happy. Not saying he won't be able to replicate his numbers in any scenario, but it looks hard given the rest of the options on offense and his "sealed" long-term future with the Cowboys.

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