Week 16 Target Watch

Today I'm going to look at wide receivers and their targets per game over the last five games compared to the previous five games. If you check below you'll see the overall chart which I've sorted by the most targeted receivers over the last five games so we can see who has been seeing the ball the most recently, but before that I have some target notes just for y'all.

We’ve seen the rookie phenom Odell Beckham’s targets rise from 9.8 per game to 12.4, the second most in the league, over the last nine-weeks and for good reason. I don’t have to sell you on his ability, but it is nice to see that he has completely overtaken Rueben Randle who led in targets most of the season. Randle has seen his targets over the last nine-weeks fall from 11.2 per game to 5.8. That’s the biggest drop off in the league and deservedly so.

As you can see, Mr. Julio Jones has seen the most targets per game since Week 11, but of course he also had to miss the game against the Steelers last week and is iffy again this week against the Saints, two amazing matchups. He really is the Falcons offense when he's on the field and when it came down to it the coaching staff knew it and tried to get him the ball as often as possible.

A.J. Green has seen an uptick in targets, but that is mostly due to him being injured earlier in the season. But his 11.6 per game recently is fifth in the NFL and he has absolutely nobody else on the team taking targets away from him. All other Bengals wide receivers have 17 total targets over the last three games compared to Green's 34. He’ll continue to be a high volume target while the running backs Jeremy Hill and Giovani Bernard pick up the rest of the offense.

The Patriots ability to go away from just about any of their offensive players for a game or two had some people down on Edelman as he wasn’t getting consistent high volume, and without touchdowns that’s hard to stomach, but that trend has gone away as Edelman has averaged 11 targets over the last five weeks compared to his eight target average between Week 7 through 11. Over the last four games he’s caught 33 passes and had two of his four touchdowns and as long as he is cleared for his concussion, he should see those numbers again versus the Jets.

Stedman Bailey has been inconsistent since his mini-breakout in Weeks 12 and 13, but there’s no doubt he is one of the Rams best offensive players and they’ve begun giving him the targets to show that. Even his disappointing two target day in Week 14 had him catching both for 47 yards. He has tough matchups to end the season, but sometimes talent is worth the risk.

With Brandin Cooks out for the year we’ve seen Marques Colston and Kenny Stills see slight increases in targets, which has helped them become slightly more consistent and even Nick Toon has finally gotten some work of late. Of course his three targets per game are tough to count on, but we know that Brees spreads the ball around instead of focusing on one receiver and Jimmy Graham just isn’t 100% right now. He's a crapshoot pick to be sure, but in that offense in the dome against Atlanta this week, you could do worse.

The Cowboys receivers are pretty much Dez Bryant and Dez Bryant, but lately we’ve seen Cole Beasley overtake Terrance Williams in targets. That wasn’t all that tough to do as Williams has had a total of 12 over the last five games and Beasley had a measly 17, but measly targeted Beasley has also found the end zone three times in the last four games. Will that keep up? Probably not, but if I had to choose between the two for some reason, I’d choose The Beas.

Albert Wilson has 13 targets over the last two games for Kansas City. If you extrapolate that over a season he would be KC’s leading targeted receiver, which yes, means little, but he’s shown some good explosiveness and could give KC some work in a must win game in Pittsburgh this Sunday.

The injury to Philip Rivers is scary for any Chargers receivers to end the season, but if he can be somewhat effective, my guess for who takes a chunk of Keenan Allen’s targets is Eddie Royal. Rivers hasn’t been right for a while now, but he has been able to target Allen on shorter routes, giving him two breakout games in Weeks 12 and 13 while Royal started seeing a bump in targets at the same time. If Rivers can go, I expect Royal to see plenty of targets.

I’ve been talking about Jarvis Landry for much of the season as we watched him pass Brian Hartline and Mike Wallace in targets. His ascension as the go to guy for Ryan Tannehill seems to be complete. Over the last six games Landry is averaging 6.8 receptions on his nine targets per game. Yes, Mike Wallace remains the upside receiver as he gets targets further down field, but Landry fits the accuracy of Tannehill, which is in short to mid-range routes. And since Week 8 Landry has more fantasy points than Wallace in standard scoring.

As the Eagles offense has bogged down, so has Jordan Matthews, and it shows in his targets as he’s seen a sharp decline after a blazing hot four-week stretch. He has a total of 11 targets over the last three weeks compared to 25 the three previous weeks. It doesn’t seem like he’s lost any favor with Mark Sanchez or Chip Kelly, but more of an overall team problem the last two weeks. Expect him to still be an early read in this offense.