• Jamison Crowder has generated some intense hype lately, and I expect his ADP to rise quite a bit as a result. Much of that hype can be traced to quotes from Jay Gruden, who told the Washington Post that he intends to get Crowder more involved not just as an outside receiver, but even as a ballcarrier. In short, he should see a sizable workload increase from his previous role, which mostly limited him to the slot.
"He's an excellent player, dynamic player. He just continues to prove every day why we like him so much," Gruden said. "He's great on option routes, he can run vertical stems. He can run just about anything you ask him to run."
Crowder is a player that I badly underestimated when he headed into the draft out of Duke in 2015, as I overlooked his brilliant production due to what I took for red flags in his athletic metrics. At the prohibitively small size of 5-foot-8, 185 pounds, Crowder ran just a 4.56-second 40-yard dash at the Combine, adding a mediocre agility score of 11.49. He improved significantly on both marks at the Duke pro day, but I disregard those times because Duke has some of the wackiest pro day times in the country. Still, his production proved a more insightful measure of his potential than his workout times.
Crowder just turned 24 and already has 126 catches for 1,451 yards and nine touchdowns to his credit on 177 targets, good for
• Jamison Crowder has generated some intense hype lately, and I expect his ADP to rise quite a bit as a result. Much of that hype can be traced to quotes from Jay Gruden, who told the Washington Post that he intends to get Crowder more involved not just as an outside receiver, but even as a ballcarrier. In short, he should see a sizable workload increase from his previous role, which mostly limited him to the slot.
"He's an excellent player, dynamic player. He just continues to prove every day why we like him so much," Gruden said. "He's great on option routes, he can run vertical stems. He can run just about anything you ask him to run."
Crowder is a player that I badly underestimated when he headed into the draft out of Duke in 2015, as I overlooked his brilliant production due to what I took for red flags in his athletic metrics. At the prohibitively small size of 5-foot-8, 185 pounds, Crowder ran just a 4.56-second 40-yard dash at the Combine, adding a mediocre agility score of 11.49. He improved significantly on both marks at the Duke pro day, but I disregard those times because Duke has some of the wackiest pro day times in the country. Still, his production proved a more insightful measure of his potential than his workout times.
Crowder just turned 24 and already has 126 catches for 1,451 yards and nine touchdowns to his credit on 177 targets, good for a YPT of 8.2 from the slot. Given Gruden's expressed wishes of playing Crowder outside more often, which allows him to not only play more snaps but also increase his depth of target, it's reasonable to think Crowder could approach 9.0 YPT this year in an offense that should target him well over 100 times.
I'm still leery of the cost, though. I think Crowder is a strong WR3, but I'll probably pass if I need to take him top-25 at the position. I remain very high on second-year player and former first-round pick Josh Doctson, who missed basically all of last year with a persistent Achilles' tendon issue, and I'm not convinced that Crowder's peak is much higher than what he's shown to this point. Exceptions occur – Antonio Brown had similar workout metrics at a similar size – but it's generally difficult for a 5-foot-8, 185-pound wideout with 4.56 speed to push the ceiling much higher than Crowder already has. I mostly see an extremely high floor here.
• The Sacramento Bee recently published an article analyzing the San Francisco tight end situation, with beat writer Matt Barrows reaching the conclusion that Vance McDonald might not make the team. I'll just say right now that, presuming he is healthy and employable, the only way McDonald isn't the team's starting tight end in Week 1 is if he's traded before then.
Such an event surely could occur – McDonald's recent five-year contract extension gives him a bigger cap hit than a rebuilding team needs, and they already tried to trade him during the draft. But the impetus for trading him is different from what it would be for the team to cut him. They reasonably looked into moving him because it was plausible that someone would value him, but if the 49ers can't find someone who values McDonald enough to meet their trade demands, then there's more value in keeping him than cutting him. And if he's kept, he's going to be the best tight end on that roster.
So long as that's the case, I think it makes McDonald a more important fantasy consideration than most would think. He has shaky hands, but in terms of size and athleticism, few can match McDonald's physical tools. Moreover, he's in a Kyle Shanahan offense that funnels red-zone targets to tight ends. McDonald might be the team's second-best pure pass-catching threat after Pierre Garcon, so I think he'll get plenty of work between the 20s, too. McDonald remains one of my favorite TE3 targets in MFL10s.
I do agree with Barrows' statement that rookie fifth-round pick George Kittle is the team's only lock to be on the Week 1 roster at tight end, though, and I generally love Kittle's prospects beginning in Year 3 or so. He's an elite athlete who would have gone much higher in the draft if he had played on a team that knew how to use him (Iowa did not). I consider Kittle a better prospect than former second-round pick Austin Hooper, who Shanahan made quite efficient even as a rookie.
• Speaking of tight ends, the most confusing one for me this year is probably Browns rookie first-round pick David Njoku. Historical data decisively tells us tight ends are unlikely to produce as rookies, but it's possible that the stage is set for him to prove an exception.
After all, it was formerly an unchallenged truism that Rookie Wide Receivers Are Bad, and in recent years we've seen that may have all along been a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy – coaches arbitrarily decided their rookie wideouts weren't good enough to play, so they rarely got the snap or target counts necessary to test the hypothesis.
The tight end position is more complicated – there are likely more formation shifts to learn, and the blocking aspect of the position throws an entirely new variable into whatever complications rookie receivers overcame to break the previous paradigm at their own position, but a similar shift in conventional wisdom could occur with specific regard to the pass-catching role of rookie tight ends. Other than more three-point stances, the job of getting open and catching the ball isn't much different between receivers and tight ends.
As far as pass catching specifically goes, all indications are Njoku has all the necessary tools to emerge a rare talent. He was very productive for his age at Miami (FL) in college, he has an uncommonly big wingspan at 6-foot-4, 246 pounds, and his leaping ability (37.5-inch vertical, 133-inch broad jump) gives him a truly rare catch radius. With mid-4.6 speed to round it out, Njoku has the dimensions of a unique threat both between the 20s and within the red zone. And with the release of Gary Barnidge, it seems like there's room for him to immediately earn targets.
Njoku could fall right on his face if the Browns appoint him the starting tight end, but so long as the Browns don't add a veteran to knock him down the depth chart, I'm generally optimistic about his chances of producing at a TE2 level. I wouldn't initially rely on him as a TE2 in conventional leagues, but I will probably try to snag him as a TE3 in a few MFL10s.
• DeVante Parker has been the subject of considerable fantasy chatter recently, mostly due to emphatic praise from coach Adam Gase, who was previously a vocal critic of Parker's. I'm a full believer in Parker's talent – I think of him as a 90-percent version of A.J. Green – so I only need circumstantial conditions met to buy into him for fantasy purposes.
The question is whether Parker can get enough targets to make his fantasy impact proportionate to his real-life efficiency. It's a legitimate worry that he could average 10-plus yards per target this year and still fall short of 1,000 yards in an offense where Jarvis Landry, Kenny Stills, and Julius Thomas all figure to see significant workloads. I think there are two plausible scenarios in which Parker could overcome this fact to push for top-25 status as a fantasy receiver, and I'm optimistic on both fronts.
The most obvious way is for Parker to simply earn a higher share of the targets at the expense of Landry and Stills. It might seem like a tall task now, but I fully expect this to occur within two years, and I think there's a coin-flip's chance it happens this year. Neither Landry nor Stills were anywhere close to Parker's prospect grade, so they should be expected to lose ground in general as Parker adds experience. Throw in the fact that they didn't have a big lead to begin with – Landry's efficiency has always lacked, and Stills has shown an inability to accumulate volume – and I think we can describe this situation as one where Landry and Stills were only ahead of Parker in the first place by default rather than ideal fit.
The other breakout scenario for Parker is one where the Dolphins simply run more plays in 2017. After finishing last year at the league's slowest tempo with just 57 plays per game, the size of the pie can only get bigger if Tannehill stays healthy. The slow tempo did not appear deliberate – the Dolphins ranked second-to-last in first downs per game, and fifth-to-last in time of possession, so it's not like they were just running out the clock. This leads me to conclude that they would have run more plays if they could have, meaning the progression of all of Tannehill, Parker, Landry, Stills, and Jay Ajayi could create a synergy as their improvements lead to more successful drives, leading to more usage opportunities for everyone. Gase's Peyton Manning offenses were high tempo, after all.
If I had to make a prediction now, I'd say both scenarios will occur to some extent. I don't want to rely on Parker as a WR2, but I will try to acquire him as a max-upside WR3 if I should see the opportunity. To circle back to an earlier thought, I would prefer Parker over Jamison Crowder.
