September 5, 2017

Chris Moore explains why Washington Redskins wide receiver Terrelle Pryor is overhyped and could be an ADP bust at WR for 2017 fantasy football drafts.

Last year, in his first full season playing wide receiver, Terrelle Pryor finished 18th overall at the position. Catching 77 balls on a ridiculous 140 targets, Pryor finished with over 1,000 yards playing for a Cleveland Browns team that ranked 28th in the NFL in passing, with a total net of just 3,264 yards through the air.

The pupu platter of Robert Griffin III, Josh McCown, Cody Kessler, and Kevin Hogan conspired to keep Pryor’s catch rate at a pedestrian 55%, with an estimated 25% of the balls thrown his way deemed uncatchable. Fast forward to 2017 and Pryor has signed on to be the presumptive WR1 for the juggernaut that is the Washington Redskins passing offense. Pro bowl signal caller Kirk Cousins led his unit to a second best finish among all NFL teams in net air yards at 4,758, trailing only Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints.

With such a pronounced difference in quality of supporting cast, it’s no wonder Terrelle Pryor has earned a long look as one of 2017’s biggest breakout candidates at WR. Has it gotten out of control, though? With Pryor going as high as the second round in some fantasy drafts, it may be time to step back and take a look at Pryor's value through a more objective lens.

Terrelle Pryor - Expectations Out of Hand?

It’s easy enough to see where this hype machine originated, as fantasy owners have spent much of the summer hopping from forum to forum planting the seed, painting a vivid picture of what a Pryor breakout would look like. Imagine a 1,400 yard season as a dynamic playmaker in a prolific air attack for an up and coming QB on a team that racked up almost over 90 more yards per game compared to the unit Pryor left during the offseason.

As is so often the case in fantasy football, the echo chamber got control of a narrative, and rode it full steam ahead, turning justified June optimism into understandable August caution. Terrelle Pryor wasn’t even a consensus top 20 selection at the WR position only a few short weeks ago, but the fantasy community has mobilized, the mock drafts have spoken, and now the sight of Terrelle Pryor slipping as far as the fourth round has become a thing of the not so distant past. Pryor’s ADP is now firmly in the third round. Notable experts are more and more commonly ranking him inside their personal top 30s, and he’s turning into a player who is ranked more for what he *could* do as opposed to what he *should* do.

This piece is being penned with some degree of caution. The upside is undeniable. The range of outcomes is wide. The possibility that Terrelle Pryor authors the dream season that some envision for him is probably just as good as it was a month ago. The problem seems to be that our collective love affair with Pryor has gone too far. Before you go spending your third round pick on a still relatively unproven commodity, it would be foolish not to first consider the risks involved.

Volume: Pryor’s 140 targets from 2016 are probably not repeatable. Despite the fact that Jordan Reed missed 4 games a season ago, the target distribution for Kirk Cousins’ favorite weapons went as follows: Pierre Garcon 114, DeSean Jackson 100, Jamison Crowder 99, Jordan Reed 89. Captain Kirk likes to spread the wealth, and he’ll do so again in 2017. Granted the two most heavily targeted WRs from 2016 have left the equation, but a healthy Reed, a healthy Doctson, and a steadily improving Crowder will stake their claim to a very healthy share of Cousins’ attempts. Furthermore, the Redskins’ running game from a year ago finished just 21st in the league. It stands to reason that Head Coach Jay Gruden will try to improve that balance, so 600+ attempts for Cousins aren’t necessarily a foregone conclusion either. The quality of Pryor’s offerings from Cousins as compared to the four-headed Griffin-McCown-Kessler-Hogan monster will help, but will this be enough to more than offset a dramatic reduction in overall targets? That remains to be seen.

Chemistry: The Redskins’ preseason has been one to forget. The Cousins to Pryor connection simply has not yet gotten off the ground. Will the early part of the season see Cousins lean more on Crowder and Reed than he does on his shiny new toy receiver? We seem content enough to anoint Terrelle Pryor as the undisputed #1 WR in Washington, but make no mistake, this regime is very high on Crowder, and the fantasy community has rightly pegged him as a dark-horse candidate for a 100 catch season. There remains some non-trivial possibility that it’s Crowder, not Pryor, who finishes the year as the Redskins best fantasy WR, and this is especially true in PPR formats. Do you want to use your early third round pick on Pryor or your early seventh round selection on Crowder. Hey- it’s your team, but I think the value is better with Crowder.

Growth: There’s no doubting Terrelle Pryor’s athleticism. He’s 6’4”, 230 lbs., and runs a 4.38 40 yard dash. It’s fair to wonder if the splash he made in 2016 was a product of a great athlete being in the right place at the right time. Does he have the mental game to add that measure of polish and professionalism necessary to really take that next step and make a leap in year two? While we should be careful not to ignore the possibility, it remains to be seen if this was a player who is truly in the process of mastering his craft, or whether he was able to coast on physical measurables and volume in a lost season for a dismal franchise.

In summary, this article is itself a risk. There’s a chance that Pryor will parlay his freakish athleticism, pro-bowl QB, and silver-platter opportunity into a fantasy season for the ages. He has that kind of upside. But bear in mind that this is precisely why his third round ADP exists in the first place. It seems a bit too heavy on the ceiling and a bit too light on the floor. In the fantasy sports world, some of our rankings are “aspirational,” where we rank a guy expecting him to do something we’ve never seen before. Even if Pryor’s rank is a fair one in the final analysis, it is certainly aspirational, and his rank is more about hype at this point than any other player going in the first three rounds. You’re swinging for the fences if you draft Pryor in round three because the home run potential is there. Just don’t be too surprised if you strike out.

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