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Can Rondale Moore follow the path laid by Deebo Samuel? | Fantasy Football Forecast

In the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast, Matt Harmon and Andy Behrens break down the outlook for Arizona Cardinals WR Rondale Moore for the 2022 season, and debate if he is worth the risk for fantasy managers.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

MATT HARMON: I want to be wrong about Rondale Moore because, you know, Kliff Kingsbury and the boys are all saying, like, he's going to take the Christian Kirk role. He's getting expanded role. Excuse me for not trusting Kliff Kingsbury and, like, his deployment of players and being all that sharp about it, because we've seen since he's come to the NFL he's just not. So I want to be wrong about that. I'm ranking Rondale Moore as if he's going to still play at least somewhat in the role he had last year, which I want to read this off because I cannot overstate enough how Rondale Moore's rookie year Reception Perception is the weirdest profile I've-- I've been doing this since 2014. It's the weirdest by far.

So just a few notes here. Rondale Moore ran a screen route on 29.9% of his sampled routes in RP. That's the most by a country mile. The previous high was Deebo Samuel at 18% in that injury-wrecked 2020 season. Scrolling down further, you've got Albert Wilson in a partial sample at 14.8. That's a 50% drop-off from what Moore did in 2020. Moore ran against zone coverage on 89% of his sampled routes. It's mega rare for a guy to go over 70%.

It's just-- it's just wild stuff, like historical outliers by 10%. Like, he lined up in the backfield 18.2% of his sampled snaps, which, you guessed it, that's the highest rate in RP history. Like, he just wasn't even playing real wide receiver last year. And I'm nervous he's going to be back playing not real wide receiver last year-- or this year again. But I'd love to be wrong about that because I actually think Rondale Moore's fun.

ANDY BEHRENS: If I can just say, I'm glad you mentioned him because he popped into my head when you were discussing Deebo Samuel earlier. Like Deebo early in his career, Rondale Moore was a guy who was just basically targeted at the line of scrimmage and never went downfield last year. And so like, what do we do with a-- like, early-stage Deebo was not even really playing receiver in any sort of traditional sense. It's much the same, yeah.

MATT HARMON: It's really hard. And now I'm like sort of saying to myself, hey, remember what you just said at the start of the frickin' podcast where you wanted to toss out Deebo's 2020 season? Maybe I should toss this out too. So this actually might make me rethink my ranking of Rondale Moore.