Fantasy Football: Underperforming wide receivers
Wide Receivers are kind of like Mark Reynolds of the Arizona Diamondbacks; they’re either hit or miss. I have always hated receivers, mostly because I never draft the right ones (Greg Jennings of the Green Bay Packers this year) and always end up trading them away for better running backs.
Despite being in the core of a fantasy line up, receivers are the least reliable players. Certain wide receivers will inevitably prevail at the top such as Indianapolis’ Reggie Wayne and San Diego’s Vincent Jackson. However, the rest of the elite wide receivers have had some inconsistency.
Wayne is the clear-cut number one receiver right now. The Colts’ wide out has a touchdown in five of the last six games and hasn’t had less than six receptions during that span. The Colts aren’t slowing down anytime soon, and neither is Wayne.
The Chargers’ Jackson has had similar success with a touchdown in four straight games. He has been taking pretty much all of Antonio Gates’ touchdowns this season, which is great for Jackson but bad for Gates’ owners like myself.
Jackson and Wayne seem to be the only consistent elite receivers. The Arizona Cardinals’ Larry Fitzgerald put up a monster game last week against the Chicago Bears, but he didn’t have a touchdown in the two weeks before that.
Andre Johnson of the Houston Texans hasn’t had a touchdown in four weeks. The New England Patriots’ Randy Moss has had one giant game (150 yards, three touchdowns) but only has touchdowns in the three of his eight games this season.
Marques Colston of the New Orleans Saints, Chad Ochocinco of the Cincinnati Bengals, and Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos have experienced similar inconsistencies.
The solution? There probably isn’t any good answer. Wide receivers are emblematic of the unpredictable nature of Fantasy Football. Luck can play just as a strong of a factor as talent can. I guess that’s what makes the game exciting. Or incredibly frustrating.
The only thing to do is try to have a balance. If you have hit or miss guys like Ochocinco, try and balance them with possession receivers like the Patriots’ Wes Welker or the Packers’ Donald Driver. No matter what Ochocinco does, possession receivers will put up consistent stats akin to what running backs post.
However, I am getting sick of all this wide receiver talk. Several weeks back I wrote an article on running backs. Click here to check it out.
At that time I was down on New York Jets running back Thomas Jones. So, it is only natural for him to explode in the weeks since then. Jones is definitely someone to target right now. He has gotten over twenty carries in each of his last three games, and the running back by committee system that was in place earlier in the year is clearly gone.
Five of his seven remaining games are cakewalks (Week 17 doesn’t apply to most Fantasy leagues). In this span he faces some of the worst run defense in the NFL including the Buffalo Bills, the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Atlanta Falcons, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Look for him to explode in these upcoming weeks until he has to face a stingy Colts’ defense Week 16.
