Player Profile: Marvin Jones

Player Profile: Marvin Jones

If it isn’t here for you and your league yet, draft day is on it’s way. For me, this is like the Christmas season. Instead of decorations it’s player projections. I’m not listening to Christmas Carols, I’m listening to expert podcasts. It’s not hot cocoa with marshmallows, it’s coffee to keep me awake whilst I crunch stats and run my projections. All leading up to that glorious evening and the auction draft to kick it all off.

In my continuing series, we take a look at another player who’s going for value prices/picks in mock drafts so far.

In 2016 Marvin Jones came out of the gate on fire. After the first six weeks he was in the top 3 receivers behind only Antonio Brown and Julio Jones. In week two he had 118 yards on 8 receptions.  In the third game of the season he torched Green Bay’s secondary for 205 yards on only six receptions and had two touchdowns. For people who were wondering how Stafford would handle being without Megatron, it seemed like the acquisition of Jones was the right answer.

From that point on through the rest of the season, Jones would disappoint owners who jumped on him and traded high to get him. He did not have another 100 yard game and came close only one other time. He had two more touchdowns on the season, both in low total yardage situations.

Jones ended the season playing 15 games with 55 receptions on 103 total targets totalling 930 yards and 4 touchdowns. It’s a pretty decent stat line.

There are multiple reasons why I think Jones can be a breakout player this year.

Anquan Boldin had the majority share of redzone targets last season, and capitalized on those targets, finishing the season with 8 touchdowns. Boldin is gone now and that opens up some redzone targets. While a lot of analysts are bumping Eric Ebron,  I think Jones is going to see a chunk of those targets as well.

With Ameer Abdullah back and looking healthy, and Theo Riddick as the pass-catching-back, the run game will show enough improvement to allow Jones to stretch the field.

Several of his bust type of games last season were low target, and him not making the play when the targets came his way. He ended the season with a 53.3% catch rate, which is pretty low. When he saw 7 or more targets he averaged 82 yards per game.

This offseason has been very quiet for Jones and I attribute that to owners that got burned with him last season. Let’s face it, fantasy football owners hold grudges, or some I’m told. I’m looking at you Eli Manning.

The reality is the offseason being quiet on Jones’ camp is not necessarily a bad thing. I think he’s shown his ceiling in an offense that still had Boldin and lacked a solid, dependable running game. But, he also showed his floor which can mean a disappointing week or two along the way. He did spend some time in the offseason working out with Randy Moss, which has helped other receivers in the past.

His current ADP is 10.12, so he’s almost going in the 11th round! In my opinion, he’s one of the safer plays you can pick up that late in the draft that has a real upside. If you're looking for that low-risk-high-reward kind of player, Marvin Jones may be the pick you're looking for.

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