New York Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. enjoyed quite the coming out party last season. After missing the first four weeks of the regular season with a leg injury and drawing the ire of some impatient fans, ODB lit the league on fire upon his return and likely swung the fates of countless fantasy football leagues. Over the last nine weeks of the season, Beckham racked up 169 standard fantasy points and 250 points in point per reception (PPR) leagues. As such, he's being drafted as a top four WR this year.
But ESPN NFL Insider KC Joyner believes the sophomore phenom is being overvalued, even with a potential monster season looming for Eli Manning. Joyner points to ODB's unsustainable pace and workload entering the 2015 season as serious concerns that fantasy owners should take into consideration.
"The first fallacy here is having any expectation that Beckham will post that scoring volume again," Joyner wrote. "If he did keep producing at that pace over a full 16-game stretch, it would equate to 300 points over the course of a season and would make him hands down the No. 1 wide receiver (and arguably the No. 1 overall pick in the draft)."
For comparison, the top five fantasy scorers in standard leagues last season were Aaron Rodgers (342), Andrew Luck (336), Russell Wilson (312), Peyton Manning (307) and Ben Roethlisberger (295). Notice a trend here? The top fantasy wide receiver was Antonio Brown (251) and he didn't even crack the top 15 overall. Wide receivers just don't consistently produce the type of prodigious numbers Beckham posted last year.
"The second is expecting Beckham to keep posting anywhere near the 12.7 targets per game volume he registered over that time frame. That would generate 203 targets over the course of a 16-game season, a pace that ESPN Stats & Information says no wideout has generated sine 2011 (the first year in their database). In fact, only three players have racked up 190 or more targets (Brandon Marshall, Marvin Harrison and Calvin Johnson), with Johnson being the only one of that trio to post at least 200 targets (201 targets in 2012)."
Denver Broncos WR Demaryius Thomas led the NFL in targets last season with 184. With Victor Cruz (presumably) returning healthy, Larry Donnell emerging as a quality option and the addition of pass-catching back Shane Vereen, it's unlikely that Beckham will get as many looks as he did last season.
"So if he can't keep up at that pace, the idea must be that Beckham can at least produce upper-tier numbers for a 16-game stretch. That may happen, but Beckham has been very injury prone since joining the NFL. Hamstring injuries kept him out of spring practices in each of the past two seasons and those same ailments caused him to miss the first four games of the 2014 campaign. He was never a workhorse wideout at LSU, posting only 58, 76 and 95 targets respectively during his three seasons in Baton Rouge, so his long-term durability is far from guaranteed."
Beckham sports jaw-dropping athleticism and incredible overall talent. There's no doubt that he will be one of the more productive wide receivers in the NFL this season. But Joyner argues that spending an early second-round pick on the second-year pro may be a slight reach until he proves he can produce over an entire season.
