This article is part of our On Target series.
If there were ever a time to put in insultingly low trade offers for a first round pick, this would be it. Beckham has almost the exact same yardage output through the first month of the season that he did last year, and while it is true that he is losing a fair amount of slot snaps and targets to Sterling Shepard, those are floor-based stats. What I mean by that is Beckham is not losing his overall market share even though the easier catches and routes that he was getting from the slot are now Shepard's, but he still has the same role as the Giants' game-breaking playmaker and RZ threat. He has one of the best possible matchups against a Green Bay team missing its top corner and that already allows the most fantasy points to opposing WR1's. I'd be hounding anyone in my league with Beckham to see if they could give up on the frustrated superstar before the fireworks Sunday night.
Eddie Royal / Cameron Meredith
I hate the time of the year when we have to talk about Royal. It happens every single fantasy football season, where one of the WR ahead of him will suffer some sort of injury and he'll have an eight target, 112 yard, two touchdown day and everyone rushes to the waiver wire to pick him up. The passing volume is 100 percent going to be there on a very bad Chicago team playing in a division
If there were ever a time to put in insultingly low trade offers for a first round pick, this would be it. Beckham has almost the exact same yardage output through the first month of the season that he did last year, and while it is true that he is losing a fair amount of slot snaps and targets to Sterling Shepard, those are floor-based stats. What I mean by that is Beckham is not losing his overall market share even though the easier catches and routes that he was getting from the slot are now Shepard's, but he still has the same role as the Giants' game-breaking playmaker and RZ threat. He has one of the best possible matchups against a Green Bay team missing its top corner and that already allows the most fantasy points to opposing WR1's. I'd be hounding anyone in my league with Beckham to see if they could give up on the frustrated superstar before the fireworks Sunday night.
Eddie Royal / Cameron Meredith
I hate the time of the year when we have to talk about Royal. It happens every single fantasy football season, where one of the WR ahead of him will suffer some sort of injury and he'll have an eight target, 112 yard, two touchdown day and everyone rushes to the waiver wire to pick him up. The passing volume is 100 percent going to be there on a very bad Chicago team playing in a division against two very pass-heavy offenses (increases pace of play, increases Chicago's deficits). The coaches have been talking up undrafted free agent Meredith from Illinois State, who got in the game after Kevin White got injured last week. In 16-team leagues I have already made a speculative bid because he looks more like a full time outside WR than Royal does, but in most standard and PPR leagues the call is of course to roster Royal until he flames out like he does every single season.
What more can be said about the fantastic performance that Julio put on last week against the Panthers? The main point that I want to extend here (and believe me, I am incredibly guilty of this as well) is that we all need to R-E-L-A-X about the lack of production from our studs for the first weeks of the season if you can't pinpoint a reason why their numbers are lacking. DeAndre Hopkins is suffering because Will Fuller might honest-to-God be more useful to Brock Osweiler. Alshon Jeffery? We have no idea, other than a lower-than-projected market share that should normalize with White on IR. For Julio, the best we had was that maybe he had an ankle injury, but he was practicing last Wednesday. We should have known better; we didn't, so we learn and we move on.
I think... guys, I think we forgot that Baldwin and Russell Wilson are both very good. The Seahawks looked terrible for two weeks of the season, but it turns out that when you possess that much talent, you often work things out. Baldwin has caught 24 of his 28 targets this season and has two touches with over 150 total yards after the catch. I also think this is a really good buying opportunity for Graham, who most owners acquired for free. In fact let me extend this: the Seahawks counting stats don't look great because they played so terribly for two weeks, but that is not an active representation of who they are as players or a team, so the whole lot of them (particularly if you can find someone who thinks they are offloading Christine Michael to you) should be targets for offers. Graham is guy that I'm going to be looking to more often in DFS because the TE position has been so volatile, and he has two straight 100-yard games while carrying a meaningful market share.
Robert Woods / Marquise Goodwin
This is what we would call a "value trap". The only format where these two are going to be worth a roster spot is very deep leagues where honestly they were probably already owned, or in large field DFS tournaments. I actually prefer Goodwin by far over Woods for DFS because Woods' ceiling is a ground floor apartment in a grungy neighborhood in Buffalo. He doesn't have the long speed or leaping ability to change the finished product that he already is in the NFL. I think Goodwin is unremarkable, but he at least has one elite trait which is his speed. He's one-sixteenth the player that Sammy Watkins is but he's able to run some of the same routes, whether they be nine routes or bubble screens. I'm not insinuating that Goodwin is good or primed for a fifth-year breakout, but he does have some limited value in formats that tend to reward volatile performances, which he is certainly capable of.
