Amon-Ra St. Brown Is Good
Amon-Ra St. Brown broke out at the end of last season and has kept it going the first two weeks of 2022. “Broke out” almost doesn’t do it justice because St. Brown has been on a downright historic pace. His last 8 games he has 67 catches for 740 yards and 8 touchdowns. If we extrapolate that over the course of a 16 game season (Yes there are 17 games now, but there are way more 16-game seasons to compare to and multiplying by two is easier than multiplying by 2.125), that’s 134 catches for 1480 yards and 16 touchdowns.
Wow.
How good is that? Only 5 players ever have had 130+ catches in a season: Cooper Kupp 2021, Antonio Brown 2015, Harvin Marrison 2002, Quintorris Julio Jones 2015, Michael Thomas 2019. It’s worth noting all five had over 1700 receiving yards, which is a sizable gap, but this is the company that St. Brown is keeping.
Even if we lower the threshold, still only 12 players have had 120+ catches in a season. Kupp, Brown, Marrison, Jones, Thomas, Stefon Diggs, Herman Moore, Davante Adams, Wes Welker, Jerry Rice, Cris Carter and Calvin Johnson. If we assume Josh Allen and Matthew Stafford make the Hall of Fame, then St. Brown and Herman Moore (ironically both Lions) are the only two on this list that are putting up this level of production without a Hall of Fame quarterback.
Of course, this is a fantasy football newsletter so let’s provide some context for how he’s performed in that realm. We’ll eliminate Week 18 from last year since the fantasy season ends in Week 17 (St. Brown had over 100 yards and a TD so this isn’t an attempt to cherry pick). Over the last 7 weeks of the Gang Does Fantasy, St. Brown has averaged 27.7 points per game. Here’s how that would’ve stacked up in 2021 and in 2020.
2021 Top 5 PPG
Cooper Kupp 28.59
St. Brown Last 7 Weeks 27.7
Deebo Samuel 25.53
Davante Adams 23.68
Justin Jefferson 21.79
Ja’Marr Chase 21.01
2020 Top 5 PPG
Davante Adams 27.99
St. Brown Last 7 Weeks 27.7
Tyreek Hill 24.83
Stefon Diggs 22.19
AJ Brown 20.52
Calvin Ridley 20.7
Also he’s damn good on handoffs.
When Do Rookie WRs Break Out?
We all know the sizable impact of rookie wide receivers have had in fantasy over the past few years. That is expected to be case again this season, with six wide receivers being taken in the first 20 picks of this year’s NFL draft and quite a few more taken on Day 2 with the expectation that they will contribute early as well. Not all of these wide receivers will hit of course, so the question is when should we expect a breakout to happen?
I looked at the rookie wide receivers that really hit in all three seasons of the Gang Does Fantasy and charted their weekly point totals. I then shaded each point total according to where that would’ve ranked relative to that season’s average (you’ll notice the averages are lower in 2019, which was before some rule changes that boosted scoring). Green means Top 5, Orange means Top 25 and Yellow means Top 50. To be clear, these aren’t the only good rookie wide receivers in our league’s history, but I wanted to limit the scope as much as possible, which is why guys like Chase Claypool (tailed off hard after his incredible 4-TD performance vs. the Eagles) and Rashod Bateman (missed the first month and a half of his rookie year to injury) aren’t on here.
Of the 17 receivers I looked at, all but three (Michael Pittman Jr., Elijah Moore and Amon-Ra St. Brown) put up a Top 50 performance by Week 3 and all but four put up a Top 25 performance by that point (those three plus Darnell Mooney). All four of these players were hindered by mediocre quarterback play, as well as mid-season injuries in the case of Pittman and Moore, before they broke out around Week 8-10.
Does this mean that managers should panic if their rookie wide receivers don’t break out this week? No, but it should be at least a little concerning if they aren’t putting up even Top 50 caliber performances by around Week 3 or 4. We’ll be tracking the rookie wide receivers for the rest of the season; next week we’ll have a similar chart with them in it that will be updated in the newsletter weekly.
In Joe Biden’s America, Families Are Suffering From A Lack of QB Depth
Presently, we have two teams that have only two starting quarterbacks on their roster (a full 1/5 of the league!). Both Eric and Taylor do not have a quarterback to turn to in the case of an injury and they don’t have a second quarterback for their QB BYE weeks. At minimum, Eric needs a third quarterback by Week 8 and Taylor needs a third quarterback by Week 7 to accommodate those BYEs.
Not Great Bob Dot Gif