If you been following along with my preseason player profiles, you have probably noticed that I haven’t written a lot about the upper tier of wide receivers. As I have previously written, my fantasy portfolio will have a lot of diversity because of Covid-19, but the only WR I’ll take any chances on in the first round is Tyreek Hill, assuming Michael Thomas doesn’t fall to the back half of the round.
With so much depth at the WR position, I’ll be starting most of my 1-QB drafts RB-RB. This isn’t to be confused with my crazy community college nights where I went streaking with a Beef-n-Cheddar and curly fries in hand chanting, “Arby’s! Arby’s!” If you’re wondering, eat your curly fries quickly while in the middle of a display of public nudity. Cops won’t feed them to you when you’re in handcuffs no matter how nicely you ask.
There is so much WR1 talent in rounds 3-4. I’ve already shown my admiration for Allen Robinson and Cooper Kupp. But there is another WR1 that is being drafted a round later than those two and his name is DJ Chark. And he provides more than a super lame team name of D.J. Chark doo-doo-doo-doo.
A lot of you are thinking that Chark is one of the most obvious names to target. But, he is falling into the fourth round. I’m in the middle of a slow draft right now and he went smack dab in the middle of the 4th. Chark finished as the WR17 in PPR leagues in a pretty sputtering offense that has potential to improve in 2020.
First, take a look a Gardner Minshew. My Razz brother actually wrote about Minshew a couple of weeks ago. In his post, he pointed out the success that quarterbacks who threw for a 60% completion rate and 3,000 passing yards in their rookie seasons have went on to have. He also pointed out the accuracy that Minshew had on his deep balls in 2019. Do you know who likes deep balls… errrr ahh passes? *Pick me! Pick Me!* Ah, yes, thank you. D.J. Chark loves deep passes. Chark ranked 14th in the NFL in deep targets with 25 of them.
Jacksonville actually threw quite a bit in 2019. Jacksonville threw the ball 39.4 times per game which was good enough to be in the top 10 in the league. Chark also hit pay dirt 8 times and it’s reasonable to assume that number is repeatable. Jacksonville didn’t do much to improve a pretty vanilla wide receiver room outside of drafting Laviska Shenault Jr., who is rumored to not just specifically play wide receiver. So Chark’s 117 targets should be safe and even have the possibility of going up as he becomes more established.
It’s also important to note that the Jaguars added a lot of valuable experience to the coaching staff on the offensive side of the ball. Jay Gruden and Ben McAdoo both didn’t cut it as head coaches in their most recent stints, but seemed to find more success earlier in their careers as coordinators. I role my eyes at the revolving coaching carousel as much as anyone, but I think Jay Gruden is a great call for OC.
Players have one good season and fall off of the map all of the time but there is no evidence that I have found that this will be the case for Chark. I’ll definitely have some shares in 2020.
