By MV February 28th, 2015
Everyone wants to find the next Mike Evans and Odell Beckham Jr. The performances those 2 put together was unreal. It will be interesting to see how high ODB is drafted. My prediction is that we could see him in some of the High Stakes Events in Vegas drafted within the top 3 picks. He scored 297.2 through 17 weeks last year while missing the first 4 games. If you extrapolate his average through the entire season he would be 2nd only to Antonio Brown’s lights out performance. Mike Evans averaged 21.7 between weeks 8-14 then hurt some owners with an underwhelming 15-16. Evans still posted a 245 point PPR rookie campaign.
Then there were guys like Kelvin Benjamin who locked in early with Cam. Jordan Matthews and Sammy Watkins while not consistent each had some really big games. Jarvis Landry, Brandin Cooks, Martavis Bryant, Allen Hurns all made a fantasy relevant splash in 2014.
So what; Calvin Johnson’s rookie campaign was 48 catches for 756 yards and 4 TD’s. Dez Bryant did 45-561-6. The point is that the Wide Receiver position has always been purposely neglected based on simple math and logic. The times have changed. Again, we had 6 rookies in the TOP 30. It is now a different NFL than it was 7 years ago, heck even 3 years ago. The fact is the game has changed. Since I have been in the fantasy world I have seen 2 WR’s explode into the NFL the way multiple WR’s did this year: Randy Moss 69-1313-17 and Anquan Boldin’s 101-1377-8. Julio Jones and AJ Green had decent outputs with 218 and 204 respectively in PPR format which was a complete anomaly. We had 5 rookie wide outs with 200+ point seasons.
While we may never see a rookie season like we did in 2014 it is important for FSC to break down the college game tape and study the combine. Stand-by for our rookie rankings after the NFL Draft.