Who is your top wide receiver on a different team in 2020? Are you targeting this player in a normal redraft league? Do you think they might be underrated by most of the fantasy community?
Chad Parsons
I have always been a defender of Brandin Cooks. Despite changing teams during his career has top-24 PPR PPG seasons in 5-of-6 years with only a lost 2019 season his outlier. Concussions are piling up for Cooks but overall durability and missing games have not been an issue for the receiver still in his prime window for peak production. Cooks will have every opportunity to be the WR1 for Deshaun Watson in 2020 and crush his ancillary-level ADP this season.
Jason Wood
This is very much a discussion of draft value. If we were just positing which receiver has the best year, it would be DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins, who produced high-end WR1 numbers in Houston every season, joins a team even more pass-happy with a good supporting cast but no one talented enough to take his lofty target volume away.
As we pivot to value, I like Chad's choice of Cooks. I'll admit, seeing Cooks change teams again gives me pause, even though I firmly bought into him after the trades to New England and Los Angeles. How do we explain why a player, who has been a borderline top-10 receiver in most of his seasons, can be deemed expendable by Sean Payton, Bill Belichick, and Sean McVay? If we believe in the greater fool theory, is Bill O'Brien the one left holding the bag?
Worries aside, I do believe Cooks steps into a ready-made situation for fantasy success. He won't approximately Hopkins' numbers, but I see him as the No. 1 option for DeShaun Watson. That has value and puts him as a high upside fantasy No. 2, at worst.
Another player I see as a value is Robby Anderson. Anderson was inconsistent in New York, but he's landed in a perfect situation in Carolina. Panthers head coach Matt Rhule was Anderson's college coach at Temple and fought hard to keep Anderson on track and eligible, which led to his breakout year and eventual NFL success. Anderson thinks of Rhule as a father figure, and he'll not only play hard for him, but he'll be playing with the person who most understands his strengths and weaknesses.
Jeff Pasquino
There are some big names to consider for this category, starting at or near the top with DeAndre Hopkins moving from Houston to Arizona. Stefon Diggs' departure from the Vikings for Buffalo is also a strong option. Both of these guys are going to go at or near their respective values (Hopkins near WR5, Diggs around WR20-30 overall), so the value pick in either for their new team is arguable. Both should perform well, but there is better value plays further down the list.
My pick for this category is Robby Anderson, who moves from the Jets to Carolina this year. Anderson could arguably be considered rather undervalued right now, for two main reasons. First, he reunites with his former coach Matt Rhule, and second is that he signed a starter-type contract ($20M over two years). Anderson averaged over 750 yards and six scores over the past three seasons, putting him in the Top 36 at wide receiver. As long as Anderson sees starter snaps and is a part of the new passing game, he should push again for fantasy WR3 numbers, making him a solid value pickup at his current ranking outside of the Top 40-50 wide receivers.
Ryan Hester
Jeff's value pick approach with Anderson is a good one. But perhaps a better value is the player moving into Anderson's old spot with the Jets, Breshad Perriman. After flaming out in Baltimore as an ambitious first-round pick, Perriman has right the ship over the last two seasons. A 10-game season in Cleveland yielded 340 yards with a 21.3-yard average despite inconsistent playing time. And last season, he emerged in Tampa Bay. Perriman had no fewer than 70 yards in any of his last five games and went over 100 in each of the final three weeks. He also scored five touchdowns in the final four weeks.
This season, Perriman will join a Jets team with slot man Jamison Crowder as the only more accomplished player in the receiving corps. Rookie Denzel Mims was an exciting pick, but asking him to adjust to the NFL in time to crack the lineup consistently is a tall order, particularly with the offseason likely to be unorthodox due to COVID-19.
Perriman doesn't have to set the world ablaze to return value on his current ADP. He simply needs to stay on the field and hope that his offense doesn't implode. Last season, 800 yards and 4 touchdowns earned Larry Fitzgerald the WR35 end-of-season fantasy finish. Those numbers are well within the range of outcomes for Perriman.
Phil Alexander
Yes!
Jordan McNamara
Since 2015, nine wide receivers have produced four or more top-24 seasons: Antonio Brown, Davante Adams, Amari Cooper, DeAndre Hopkins, Michael Thomas, Jarvis Landry, Julio Jones, Mike Evans, and Brandin Cooks. Outside of Brown, who has behaved himself out of the league, Brandin Cooks is the cheapest. Labeled as injury prone and boom-bust, Cooks has only missed six games in his six-year career and produced in every stop of his career. He enters a Houston receiving corp with Will Fuller, Kenny Stills, and Randall Cobb who are far from proven at this point in their career. With no established tight end options and a question about what David Johnson can offer after a down year, Cooks is the most proven part of the offense. Cooks should slot in as the leading target in the Houston offense and push for 120+ targets necessary to be a top-15 finisher in a 2020 rebound campaign.
Bob Henry
I agree with the choices put forth already. DeAndre Hopkins is the easy choice here if we're focusing on the wide receiver most likely to score the most fantasy points this year. Similarly, there are plenty of other value plays. While I've had plenty of Brandin Cooks shares over his travels, my primary concern with him is the cumulative impact of concussions, although he does have a clear path to target volume and a motivated coach to make sure that happens.
The player whose name has not come up yet that I love in terms of value and opportunity, particularly filtering that down to target quality (and possibly quantity) is Emmanuel Sanders. I project him to finish with more catches, yards, and touchdowns than Cooks even though his ADP and staff ranking is five to ten spots lower. Give me a cheaper Sanders backed by the quality and accuracy of Drew Brees targets all day long.
The arbitrage play that could prove to be the better pick by year's end is targeting Randall Cobb later in the draft and letting others that Cooks.
Another option for end-of-game draft strategy is taking a shot on Devin Funchess. Sure, he's flawed, but it's hard to say he's not already the second most talented receiver on the Packers roster. If he can stay healthy he carries WR3 upside with essentially zero acquisition cost.
Jeff Haseley
We've touched on several key wide receivers who are changing teams for the 2020 season. DeAndre Hopkins, Brandin Cooks, and Robby Anderson being the three most notable players in this discussion. How about Emmanuel Sanders in New Orleans? The Saints haven't had much production from the #2 WR in the Michael Thomas era, but they also haven't had someone with the caliber of Sanders either. Sanders in New Orleans with Brees (and Jameis Winston/ Taysom Hill as understudies) has an absolute low floor of 40 receptions and 4 touchdowns, but that could stretch to 60 and 6 if Sanders is utilized as a true WR2. Sanders is a well-conditioned 33-year-old who has always taken pride in staying fit and being professional with his ability to learn and pick up offenses with Pittsburgh, Denver, and San Francisco. In redraft leagues, he can be a good WR4 or flex option capable of producing consistently decent numbers on a weekly basis with touchdowns sprinkled into his weekly outcomes.
Jeff Pasquino
Dropping Emmanuel Sanders' name is a good one, and he compares well to Robby Anderson. I always like to follow the money, and both signed similar contracts (two years each, Sanders $16-19M, Anderson $20M). Sanders gets to be the WR2 in New Orleans, a no-mans land in recent years with a lack of talent for the Saints after Michael Thomas. New Orleans threw for 36 touchdowns last season, with most going to Thomas (9) and tight end Jared Cook (9). Only seven touchdowns went to wideouts not named Michael Thomas as Taysom Hill absconded six more. Sanders could change that dynamic, so the upside is there. Both Sanders (ADP of Round 12 in most 12-team leagues, going as a fantasy WR5) and Anderson (Round 14 as a WR5) offer solid value in the later rounds for this coming season.
Phil Alexander
Robby Anderson?
Yuck.
You guys do realize he fits with Teddy Bridgewater about as well as squirrels fit with traffic, right?
Bridgewater threw deep on just 7.1% of his attempts last season, which ranked third-lowest among qualifying quarterbacks. He thrives in the short-to-intermediate areas of the field where the Panthers already have D.J. Moore, Christian McCaffrey, Curtis Samuel, and Ian Thomas to hog targets. Coaching narratives are oftentimes just that. Anderson's value to the Panthers is tactical. He's in Carolina to open things up underneath for their YAC-friendly skill players and is destined to be an afterthought as a fantasy option on his new team.
I'm with Ryan (despite his flagrant UCF fanboy-ism). What's stopping Perriman from a 20% target share and low-end WR2 numbers? Not Jamison Crowder's minuscule average target depth and probably not Denzel Mims' raw route-running in year-one.
A non-zero chance exists Perriman has always been good. His raw athleticism never translated in Baltimore, where injuries caused him to fall out of favor. But he helped make Baker Mayfield look good in Cleveland down the stretch in 2018 and he was a straight-up baller last year as Tampa's WR1 after injuries sidelined Mike Evans and Chris Godwin.
At the very least, Perriman (4.3 speed coming out of college) can approximate Anderson's role as a deep threat and he brings more after-the-catch. As long as he can gel with the live-armed Sam Darnold, Perriman will have plenty of opportunities to blow past the value his current ADP implies.
Ryan Hester
#UCFKnights
Justin Howe
Can we just marvel at the fact that Cobb got by far the most guaranteed money of any of these names? He was given 50% more than Anderson was and triple Perriman. Sheesh.
I also still love Cooks, who virtually always produces. He bounces from one high-octane offense to the next, and as much as I adore Will Fuller, I think he's the marginal 1A for much of the season. That makes for a sizzling WR2 ceiling for Cooks; 80-1,200-9 is well within reach here. He's really being hammered in fantasy drafts () for the fact that all of his teams have quickly thrown him away, and I guess that's fair. But he brings big, obvious value anywhere he goes. You can't convince me he won't be a centerpiece on an offense that, again, was so desperate for slot help it gave Randall Cobb $18 million. There's no way I'm taking guys like Marquise Brown or Julian Edelman over Cooks.
Overall, I didn't like a lot of these landing spots and still don't. Anderson looks like a novelty third option in Carolina, Diggs may struggle to catch 75 balls for the run-dominant Bills, and Sanders is impossible to project behind Michael Thomas. Hopkins should be just fine - as Bob pointed out, he'll of course lead this group by a country mile - but I'm sure we've seen his statistical peak. The Cardinals aren't any more fast-paced than the Texans, so I'm not sure we see Hopkins climb any. I'll throw another hat into the ring for Perriman, who has the look of a late bloomer. He can absolutely get downfield, replicating Anderson's role with, perhaps, some still-untapped potential. How much of a burner has Perriman become? Last year, he completed 83% of the air yardage Anderson did with the Jets - on 27 fewer targets.
Andy Hicks
There isn’t much to add from what has already been discussed, although there has been a lack of positivity on Stefon Diggs. If John Brown can be a solid WR2, then a better result is surely possible from Diggs who was a top-end WR2 for the last three years in Minnesota.
Ultimately, there is no doubt that the answer here is DeAndre Hopkins, so rather than recycle the previous discussion, I will bring up a name that hasn’t been mentioned in Devin Funchess in Green Bay. He could end up as anything from being cut to ending up as the WR2 for Aaron Rodgers. He looked to be on an upward trajectory after his third season when he ranked 20th and for the early part of his 2018 season. Then D.J Moore became the number one guy in Carolina. You can forgive one injury-ravaged season such was the case when he signed with Indianapolis for 2019.
If he is fully fit and clicks with Rodgers then the competition from Allen Lazard, Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Jake Kumerow won’t be a big threat to playing time. With Davante Adams dominating coverage there is a real opportunity to correct his current career trajectory.
Andrew Davenport
The guys have done a great job breaking this down, but I'd like to see more love for Breshad Perriman. While I love Emmanuel Sanders the player, I can't envision him becoming a fantasy force in the role he steps into in New Orleans. I think the signing is great for New Orleans, Drew Brees, and Michael Thomas, but not sure it's going to yield a ton of fantasy points for Sanders. Similarly, Stefon Diggs has always been a favorite of mine, but I'm not buying that the situation in Buffalo is going to do much for him. John Brown was productive because nobody else was there to challenge him for the top job. With Diggs in town, there just aren't enough balls to go around for both of them to be very attractive.
Instead, I like Perriman. Ryan makes a great case that Perriman doesn't need to explode to be valuable and that's really where I'm focusing. His current ADP means that you don't have to spend the draft capital on a guy who was very, very good down the stretch for Tampa Bay last year. The interesting thing is that we aren't trying to tout a guy who is an undrafted free agent, or some cast-off who doesn't have the skills to be a legitimate NFL wide receiver. He's a former first-round selection and as soon as he got out from under the quarterbacking of Joe Flacco we started to see what he could do. I was a bit worried last year how he would do once Mike Evans and Chris Godwin weren't in the picture anymore, but he thrived rather than failing to step up when he was the top guy. In New York, he has competent players to keep defenses honest, and a quarterback who is still young but continues to improve. All the ingredients are there for him to show out over a full season when given the chance.
Matt Waldman
If you don't want Sanders, Andrew, I'll gladly take him. The Saints generated over 4,400 passing yards with three different quarterbacks last year. Brees averaged 0.8 yards per attempt more than Teddy Bridgewater and if you extrapolate his totals from 10.5 games to a full season and there were at least 100-150 yards left on the field for a passing game that should have generated 4,500 yards.
Add to the equation that Alvin Kamara missed significant playing time and this offense wasn't at full strength last year and it leaned HARD on Michael Thomas because let's face it, Tedd Ginn and TreQuan Smith as offensive kindling for a fire that is the equivalent of water-logged wood soaked in a monsoon.
The most productive passing offenses have at least three high-powered fantasy producers at receiver, tight end, and/or runner. The odds are against Thomas repeating his career-best production from 2019 before we even factor the addition of Sanders to the equation because 1,725 receiving yards is hard for any player to come close to attaining in consecutive years.
Sanders is the 9th-most productive receiver in the NFL between 2010-19 according to Pro Football Reference and the 11th most productive passing game weapon during that span when counting tight ends. He's a consummate route runner who can get open at every range of the field. Brees has broken passing records with lower quality weaponry at wide receiver.
I have Brees earning 4,561 passing yards, which is essentially what he was on pace for attaining last year. Sanders earns 1,210 yards and 8 scores in that equation and still gives us room for Thomas to be a 1,300-yard receiver. There's also enough room in the fantasy starter pool for Cook and Kamara as receivers.
Give me Sanders all day, every day in June, July, and August.