On Target: No Slowing Down Hopkins

Not that you really need to know how great Julio Jones is, but he is clearly the No. 1 wide receiver in fantasy football this season. With Roddy White playing a ton of snaps but never being open/being 500 years old, Jones has seen 40 percent of his team's targets. Forty percent! No one in the NFL came close to that last year and the next closest this year is Antonio Brown who is at 36 percent of his team's targets. While a lot of historical analysis might suggest that Jones is due to regress in these target numbers, I don't really see it. Leonard Hankerson, Jacob Tamme, Roddy White… these are not impact players in the NFL. Jones is the Falcons best offensive player and that is the way they are deploying him. Without continuity in the ground game (rotating between Freeman and Coleman while healthy), I fully expect Jones and DeAndre Hopkins to lead the NFL in targets at season's end. With Jones preternatural ability to turn routine receptions into long gains, an 1800-yard, 16-TD season is fully within his reach.

Rishard Matthews

I'll say that this one came to me as a pleasant surprise. Matthews was a player I really liked coming out of college but he fits the profile of a player that an NFL coach would never really give a chance. He was a community college transfer to Nevada, accumulating a really solid senior season before being drafted by the Dolphins in the seventh round of the 2012 draft. He basically hasn't gotten to play since then but is now a firm part of the Dolphins offense. He has played more snaps on offense than any other skill position player outside of Jarvis Landry and Jordan Cameron and is clearly showing why he is more of an impact player than Jarvis Landry with three TDs in three weeks. Landry will continue to get seven-yard targets galore, but Matthews works better down the field and in the red zone. The Dolphins are not a good football team and they are pretty committed to ignoring Lamar Miller which will work in the favor of Matthews. He should still be on the wire in some leagues and freely available for trade in most. Additionally, when in a bad matchup for the Dolphins or Landry, I think he's a pretty solid DFS play with how often he has been on the field and the team's lack of a real deep threat with Davante Parker not allowed to flourish as of yet.

Houston Texans Wide Receivers

What is happening?! One of the teams with the worst quarterback play in the league is throwing more than any other team in the NFL. Without Arian Foster, the Texans are throwing as the first, second and third option on offense. Hopkins, Cecil Shorts and Nate Washington are all among the top 30 target-getters in the NFL while no other offense has more than two. The Texans have really narrowed down their passing game to these three players; now what do we do with that information? Unfortunately, I think nothing. These are not high-quality targets, especially when thrown at Washington and Shorts who just aren't game-breaking players. They're both fine as WR3/4 types in PPR leagues and as bargain values for daily fantasy, but they aren't players we should be rushing to acquire. What we can learn however, is just how much Hopkins is going to get the ball even when Foster comes back for Houston. When Foster is active again, the Texans will certainly run more but we've definitely learned that the staff isn't shy about letting Ryan Mallett throw the ball around the yard a little bit. There may still be a little bit of a window to buy on Hopkins which I would do immediately.