A couple of thoughts on the wide receiver rankings from the Fantasy Index Open. I ran to check some of my key guys against how they were rated (on average) by 165 readers, subscribers and other fantasy experts.
Julian Edelman, for starters. He’s a guy I seem to be a lot higher on than everyone else. He keeps showing up on all of my experts teams.
The readers tend to agree that he’s a top-20 receiver. He’s on 102 of the entires. The other 64 left them off. That’s not an unbiased survery, of course. The vast majority of the entries in this thing have my draft board sitting in front of them and have heard me reason it out. Nevertheless, interesting. Edelman finished in 17th in the poll. One person put Edelman at No. 8 overall; next up was 11th.
Next in interest, I’ll go with Brandin Cooks. He seems to be ripping things up at camp, and he looks like one of those rare rookie receivers who could be very good right out of the box.
Cooks finished in 29th in this poll. Only 14 of the 166 put him in the top 20, and that includes myself.
It’s tough for me to win this kind of thing, because most of the contestants are starting with my list in front of them. So I jumbled my list a little bit, getting a little more aggressive with some of my picks. Most notably, I moved Cooks up to 13th. Two others had him 10th and 12th; one had him 13th. But 152 didn’t rank him at all.
While playing around with my entry – putting in those zigs and zags – I notice that I didn’t rank Andrew Luck at all. Nothing clever there. Just an oversight that came with being busy with too much more pressing stuff on the weekend.
Finally, Cordarrelle Patterson, who’s a breakout candidates. He finished in 21st. 98 put him in their top 20; 68 did not. Five folks ranked him either 8th or 9th. We’ll see.
Calvin Johnson took the top spot in this poll, finishing with 94 percent of a perfect score. Demaryius Thomas wasn’t far behind, at just under 90 percent. Dez Bryant, A.J. Green, Julio Jones and Brandon Marshall: those are your top half-dozen pass catchers (according to the masses).
| FANTASY INDEX OPEN -- Wide Receivers | |
|---|---|
| Player | Pct. |
| Calvin Johnson | 94.3% |
| Demaryius Thomas | 89.8% |
| Dez Bryant | 85.9% |
| A.J. Green | 82.1% |
| Julio Jones | 78.0% |
| Brandon Marshall | 75.7% |
| Jordy Nelson | 71.9% |
| Alshon Jeffery | 62.5% |
| Randall Cobb | 59.3% |
| Antonio Brown | 59.2% |
| Vincent Jackson | 45.1% |
| Larry Fitzgerald | 40.4% |
| Victor Cruz | 38.5% |
| Keenan Allen | 37.7% |
| Andre Johnson | 36.4% |
| Roddy White | 33.5% |
| Julian Edelman | 22.4% |
| Pierre Garcon | 21.9% |
| Wes Welker | 20.2% |
| Michael Floyd | 19.7% |
| Cordarrelle Patterson | 17.4% |
| Michael Crabtree | 16.3% |
| DeSean Jackson | 16.2% |
| T.Y. Hilton | 9.8% |
| Percy Harvin | 7.4% |
| Jeremy Maclin | 5.9% |
| Mike Wallace | 5.4% |
| Torrey Smith | 5.4% |
| Brandin Cooks | 4.4% |
| Sammy Watkins | 3.9% |
| Marques Colston | 3.2% |
| Riley Cooper | 2.1% |
| Emmanuel Sanders | 1.9% |
| Kendall Wright | 1.9% |
| Terrance Williams | 1.8% |
| Eric Decker | 1.8% |
| Reggie Wayne | 1.8% |
| Dwayne Bowe | 1.1% |
| Rueben Randle | 0.8% |
| Kenny Stills | 0.8% |
| Mike Evans | 0.8% |
| DeAndre Hopkins | 0.8% |
| Golden Tate | 0.7% |
| Hakeem Nicks | 0.7% |
| Marqise Lee | 0.6% |
| Brian Hartline | 0.5% |
| Tavon Austin | 0.4% |
| Josh Gordon | 0.4% |
| Miles Austin | 0.4% |
| Markus Wheaton | 0.4% |
| Steve Smith | 0.4% |
| Cecil Shorts III | 0.4% |
| Greg Jennings | 0.4% |
| Kenny Britt | 0.3% |
| Kelvin Benjamin | 0.3% |
| Marvin Jones | 0.2% |
| Eddie Royal | 0.2% |
| Justin Hunter | 0.2% |
| Aaron Dobson | 0.1% |
| Doug Baldwin | 0.1% |
—Ian Allan