Remember the Titan: A.J. Brown can trade efficiency for opportunity share and still thrive
It took a while for the Titans to unleash A.J. Brown last year.
For the first month of the 2019 season, he wasn’t even playing on half of the snaps. Marcus Mariota was a quarterback in trouble, and Brown was a fresh receiver, underutilized.
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Soon, of course, everything changed. Ryan Tannehill took over by the middle of October, while Brown’s role continued to expand. Brown made a bunch of splash plays in the middle of the year, and he was unstoppable in the final third of the season. If you grade all wideouts over their final five games of the year, Brown ranks as the No. 1 fantasy receiver. Not one of the WR1s — the WR1, the best guy.
When you examine Brown’s rookie year from a historical prism, juiciness percolates to the top. If we grade all rookie wideouts in the post-merger era (using a standard scoring system), Brown’s debut comes in as the WR6 season. His 12.51 yards per target is the third-best rookie number since the stat became tracked in 1992 (interestingly, Mecole Hardman sits first). Brown’s 20.2 yards per catch comes in at seventh. He’s an efficiency darling, putting up these monster numbers on just 84 targets.
Now that we’ve found Brown, what are we going to do with him? This is where the second-year star becomes a polarizing figure.
There’s a school of thought that says you should fade Brown; the Regression Police love to make this type of argument. Brown’s glittering efficiency metrics, after all, are unlikely to repeat. Tannehill is also coming off a shocking career year, a season no one expects again. Brown had five touchdowns from 49 yards and up; those explosive touchdowns can be very difficult to repeat, year over year.
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Okay, so Brown’s efficiency has nowhere to go but down. But we have to consider that his opportunity will go way up. His days of the 45-percent snap rate are long gone. Brown managers can also take heart in Tennessee’s continuity, with just about every key offensive piece returning, including OC Arthur Brown. It’s also plausible to expect Brown to see a modest uptick in red-zone usage, after getting very little of that work last year.
Brown’s fantasy setup reminds me of what Tyler Lockett faced a year ago. Lockett was an all-time efficiency darling in 2018, posting a 57-965-10 year on just 70 targets. Russell Wilson had a perfect quarterback rating — that elusive 158.3 — when he targeted Lockett two years ago.
Nobody can expect to duplicate that level of efficiency, and Lockett didn’t, either. He lost 4.2 yards per target last year, and his YPR dropped four yards. But Lockett’s increased opportunity cushioned the blow. He gained 40 targets and posted a strong 82-1057-8 season. Lockett wasn’t a league-winner last year, per se, but you got what you paid for.
Brown can do the same thing. With an expected opportunity spike, I’ll live with whatever efficiency drop comes his way. The early marked price seems reasonable — he’s the WR15 in Yahoo drafts (ADP 37.7) and the WR14 in NFFC drafts (ADP 38.8). This is a mid-third round pick, sometimes a fourth-round pick. It’s not unusual to see him be the second or even third wideout on a fantasy roster, depending on how a draft falls.
Regression is a key fantasy concept, and we have to be mindful of it. But it’s never a good idea to scream “Regression!” and then drop the mic. The game has more nuance than that.
No, Ryan Tannehill isn’t Russell Wilson. Yes, defenses will have Brown marked all year, and two good defenses shut him down in the playoffs. Brown’s priced as an expectant fantasy commodity this year, but not egregiously so. I’ll be open to drafting him in the third round all summer, depending on how other things fall.
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