Marquise Brown’s fantasy outlook in first season with the Cardinals
In the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast, Matt Harmon and Dalton Del Don break down what they expect to see from Cardinals WR Marquise ‘Hollywood’ Brown this season.
Video Transcript
[BAT HITS BALL, CROWD CHEERS]
MATT HARMON: So let's talk about the other Brown who got traded on draft night, Marquise Brown. What's the best case scenario for Marquise Brown in Arizona? And I think this is the first one I'm going to trend a little positive on, spoiler alert.
DALTON DEL DON: Yeah, I know he's joining an Arizona team that's going to be without DeAndre Hopkins the first six weeks. Kyler Murray's always playing his best the first half of the season before the injuries. So yeah, it should be up-tempo offense. And Marquise Brown looking at a lot of targets. And he's quietly been a target share hog in a Baltimore situation that never throws the ball. But he's really quietly earned those targets.
So yeah, the more I look-- originally, the more I looked at him, I'm like, man, Marquise Brown, in that new situation, he deserves to be a top 20 fantasy wideout, quite clearly.
MATT HARMON: Yeah, I agree with you. I'm pretty close to that range as well. The difference between the two offenses can't be overstated. I've got Baltimore projected for, like, dead last in the NFL in pass attempts. And I think that's what they'd like to be. I don't know that they'll get there, but I think that that's where they'd like to be close there.
Arizona = I've got 13th. And Marquise Brown is definitely going to get like a 21%, 22% share of those targets. That's pretty good. And I think the efficiency will be better even than last year for Marquise Brown. People often cite the bad deep ball connections between Marquise Brown and Lamar Jackson. But I think some of that is probably more--
As much as I like Lamar Jackson and I don't think he's a bad deep ball passer or anything, I think just their fit together isn't quite the same. But Kyler Murray throwing deep posts to Marquise Brown, that's going to be pretty exciting.
DALTON DEL DON: I don't want to cut you off, but Graham Barfield tweet, you're perfect here. Just 37% of Browns deep targets, 20-plus air yards, were catchable last year. No quarterback had a higher on-target throw rate on deep balls than Kyler Murray. I mean, seems like a decent fit there. So yeah, quite an upgrade. And yeah, in the first half of the year, he's just been dominating the targets.
And I mean, Rondale Moore, yes, he's exciting, but he did not play even the receiver position last year, as you've noted. Dusty AJ Green competing for targets? No, I really like where Hollywood's looking, man.
MATT HARMON: Yeah, yeah, he's a guy, definitely, I want to point people to draft this year. I think he's the one I feel pretty good about. I've got him at wide receiver 22, firmly in that fourth tier of guys.
OK, so what's the negative key? What's the downside for Marquise Brown? Kyler Murray gets fricking hurt again? I will say, yeah, I mean--
DALTON DEL DON: The downside, the most important part is the fantasy playoffs, which is the second half of the year. And that's when DeAndre Hopkins will return. And Kyler Murray, who knows? Third year in a row, suffers a second half drop-off. So there's downside as well, for sure.
MATT HARMON: Yeah, I think he could be a guy that I could bet, week seven, everybody who thinks they're the smartest person on planet Earth is like, you should trade Marquise Brown because DeAndre Hopkins is coming back and all. It's like, OK, yeah, that's a pretty obvious one to think about.
But yeah, so I think that the downside too is like, I do want to see him play more of that Christian Kirk role. I think if he's stuck on the outside and he's not that vertical slot receiver, that, I think, is less exciting. But I don't know how much to weigh that.
I really do want to pay attention to the camp reports for where they're lining these guys up because Kliff Kingsbury, famously, not a flexible guy, right? When DeAndre Hopkins gets hurt, they just throw some goofball like Antoine Wesley into his vacated X receiver role. And it never goes well. They don't move their guys around. So we'll see. We'll see on that one.
