Consider Dez Bryant's 2017 schedule

Posted on 8/23/17 at 3:37 pm

Posted by GynoSandberg

Bay St Louis, MS

Member since Jan 2006

74538 posts

Posted on 8/23/17 at 3:37 pm

*All of this data is from Scott Barrett at PFF

Keep in mind, this season Dez gets

Janoris Jenkins/ARC x2
Josh Norman x2
Talib/Chris Harris
Pat Peterson
Trumaine Johnson
Trumaine Brock
Casey Heyward
Marcus Peters
Desmond Trufant
Sean Smith
Richard Sherman

On paper his only soft matchups per PFF are PHI x2

quote:
On a fantasy-points-per-target basis, Dez Bryant has been the most cornerback-sensitive wide receiver over the past three seasons:

Here’s Bryant’s splits by overall production:

On a per-route-run basis the same thing is true again — Bryant has been the most-cornerback-sensitive wide receiver over the past three seasons:

quote:
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR FANTASY?
I was worried our data-sample was skewed by Bryant’s 2015 season, when he struggled with injuries and poor quarterback play, but his 2015 season only made up 12.2 percent of his qualifying routes in this sample.

Anyone can break down fantasy points by any number of different splits to find meaning when it isn’t really there. Throughout his career, Odell Beckham Jr. averaged 6.0 fantasy points per game more in even-numbered weeks than odd. Does this mean we should only start Beckham in Weeks 1, 3, 5, etc.? Of course not, but if these were home/away splits rather than odd/even splits, we’d never shut up about them. I find value in this data and will approach the 2017 season with these splits in mind, but as an added grain of salt, I talked to several PFF analysts who suggested that this might be purely due to randomness and a small-ish (539 routes, 110 targets) data sample. Basically, from looking at Bryant’s physical profile and tape, they were surprised and unsure why this might be the case.

That said, I think the implications are huge. For DFS, the answer is simple – load up on Bryant shares when up against a poor cornerback, and fade completely when up against a top-tier cornerback.

For season-long leagues, things get trickier. If you’re drafting him at his current ADP (WR10), you’re likely not going to ever be in a position to bench him when in a tough matchup. This does raise another important question — like with Ben Roethlisberger, due to his weekly variance, should we downgrade Bryant in our redraft rankings? I actually think his current ADP is more than fair, and he should improve on last season’s numbers with added rapport from working with Dak Prescott all offseason. However, due to his brutal schedule to start the season, we might be better off trying to acquire Bryant as a buy-low trade target heading into Week 5. The Cowboys start their season off against the Giants, Broncos, Cardinals, and Rams. It’s likely Bryant is shadowed by or is primarily in coverage against Janoris Jenkins, Aqib Talib, Patrick Peterson, and Trumaine Johnson in each game over this stretch. All four players graded among our top-25 cornerbacks last season. Things look much better for Bryant in Week 5, up against a Green Bay Packers defense that allowed the most fantasy points per game to outside wide receivers last season.