Tyler Boyd’s Increased Workload with A.J. Green Out

Tyler Boyd’s Increased Workload with A.J. Green Out

The Cincinnati Bengals suffered a huge blow in late July when their star wideout A.J. Green suffered an ankle injury during training camp. It’s unknown as to how long Green will be out, but reports from Rotowire project Week 3 is an optimistic estimation. In any event, the Bengals and quarterback Andy Dalton will need to rely on someone else while Green continues to recover. Tyler Boyd appears to be the favorite to lead the team in targets for approximately the first month of the season.

Boyd is a solid receiver and served as a great compliment to A.J. Green in Cincinnati’s offense during 2018. Some have been doubting Boyd’s ability to carry a WR1-type of responsibility in Green’s absence because of how he faired last season in a similar scenario.

During Week 8 of the 2018 regular season, A.J. Green went down with a toe injury against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Green then missed several weeks before returning in Week 13 against the Broncos. Unfortunately, Green wound up exiting that game early as he fell down on a non-contact injury. The following day it came out that he needed to undergo season-ending surgery for torn ligaments in his toe.

It was a tough time for the Bengals and Tyler Boyd seemed to not benefit from the situation either. In the games that Green had played in, Boyd ranked in the top-15 in targets (66), receptions (49), receiving yards (620) and touchdowns (5).

Boyd also was just behind Michael Thomas as WR11 between Week’s 1-8 in fantasy, while averaging 17.7 points per game. It was very impressive what Boyd was able to accomplish during the first half of last season. When Green went down with his injury, Boyd looked like a solid replacement to lead the Bengals’ passing game.

Unfortunately, the exact opposite occurred as Boyd dropped well outside the top-15 in targets (42), receptions (27), receiving yards (408) and touchdowns (2). Also, Boyd was WR36 through this span as well. It was a very disappointing finish to what started off as an incredibly promising first-half of the season.

While the injury to A.J. Green may have hurt Boyd’s second-half performance in 2018, there were some other factors that affected his play as well.

For starters, Tyler Boyd played a good chunk of the 2018 campaign without Andy Dalton and had Jeff Driskel as his signal-caller. Right off the bat that’s a bad sign for Boyd. When a team’s starting quarterback is out for a substantial amount of time, it usually doesn’t bode well for their receivers. There have been exceptions in the past, but sadly Cincinnati did not luck out last year.

Driskel played in eight games for the Bengals last season, and wouldn’t you know, that seven of those games were during the back-half of 2018. This coincides with Boyd’s decline in production causing him to take quite a hit in fantasy value.

A brief overview of both quarterbacks can show the disparity in quality play between the two. Driskel only threw the ball 176 times for just over 1,000 yards, along with six touchdowns, two interceptions and QBR of 29.7 in 2018. Dalton of the other hand, was significantly better as he had 365 attempts for over 2,500 passing yards with 21 touchdowns, 11 interceptions and a QBR of 59.4.

While Dalton certainly has his own issues as a quarterback that he needs to sort out, at least he managed to give Boyd more opportunities when he was healthy. Dalton is not a very mobile quarterback as he only had 16 attempts for 99 yards in 2018. As a result, he needs rely on his arm to get his team down the field on offense. Hence, why he has more than double the passing attempts than Driskel.

It wasn’t very hard for defenses to defend against an inefficient quarterback and only one legitimate threat on the outside. Boyd is projected to bounce back and be more productive now with half a season of experience being the primary target in the passing game.

He also has the sixth-easiest strength of schedule among wide receivers this year which is a great sign for him as well. For example, the Bengals will be playing up against the San Francisco 49ers in Week 2 of the regular season. In 2018, San Francisco allowed the fourth-most fantasy points to receivers.

Even though Tyler Boyd is primarily a slot receiver, I believe his experience being a number one pass catcher in 2018, and an upgrade in quarterback quality will allow him to be more productive this time around in 2019.

Boyd is currently being drafted somewhere in the middle of the fifth round as WR22 of many fantasy drafts right now. This is a perfect spot to select him. He may pose some risks, but I really believe it was because his situation wasn’t all too friendly to him last year than his ability.

This year will definitely give us a better gauge on whether Tyler Boyd can truly handle the load of a top wideout. Hopefully, last year was just some growing pains for Boyd as he had never experienced that type of responsibility before in his young career. He doesn’t have to put up the same numbers like A.J. Green, that’s just asking for too much. As long as he can have around the same type of production as he did from the first half of last year, then that should suffice.

Stay tuned to FanSided Fantasy each and every day for all the latest NFL news and analysis!