Fantasy Football draft steal alert: Reach for DeVante Parker
By Peter Chung
Ryan Fitzpatrick’s WR1 = Fantasy Football WR1
Looking back at last season, Parker’s 128 targets were good for the 16th most of all players, sandwiching him between wideout studs Odell Beckham Jr. and Davante Adams. However, his 72 receptions left him tied at 30th most with Courtland Sutton, John Brown, and RB James White. This equaled to an embarrassing 56.3% catch rate, or 171st overall.
However, history has shown that catch rate efficiency does not matter as Fitzpatrick will incessantly feed his bona fide #1 outside receiver, which has been a guarantee for top end fantasy production.
Since 2015, Fitzpatrick’s #1 outside receiver has performed as follows:
- 2015, New York Jets: Brandon Marshall, 109 catches on 173 targets for 1,502 yards and 14 touchdowns.
- 2016, New York Jets: Brandon Marshall, 59 catches on 128 targets for 788 yards and 3 touchdowns.
- 2017, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Mike Evans, 71 catches on 136 targets for 1,001 yards and 5 touchdowns.
- 2018, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Mike Evans, 86 catches on 139 targets for 1,524 yards and 8 touchdowns.
- 2019, Miami Dolphins: DeVante Parker, 72 catches on 128 targets for 1,202 yards and 9 touchdowns
The only outlier is in 2016, but that can be ascribed to Marshall entering the twilight of his career as a then-32 year old, and he experienced a dramatic decline from that point until he finally retired after the 2018 season.
Fitzpatrick – who by all accounts is still the expected starting quarterback for the Dolphins – has a proven affinity with targeting his big-bodied outside receivers like Parker. In fact, Fitzpatrick enjoyed a high 98.5 passer rating when targeting Parker. But when he targeted the next best receiver in Williams, his passer rating declined to 79.0. Speaking of Williams…