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Fantasy Impact of DeAndre Hopkins for 2020 Fantasy Football. The Counselor dives in and lets you know if Hopkins is worth that late first-round pick or not.
Welcome to show everybody, Joseph Khamou, the Fantasy Football Counselor. Today we’re talking about DeAndre Hopkins and his Fantasy Football impact going into 2020 Fantasy Football. Is he worth that late first-round pick? Should you draft him? How should you draft him? When should you draft them? What do you do with DeAndre Hopkins this season for Fantasy Football 2020? I’m going to give him his outlook and his impact and everything you need to know so you guys can make that proper decision before considering a guy like DeAndre Hopkins super early in your 2020 NFL draft. Very, very important you pay close attention.
DeAndre Hopkins, let’s talk about him. Now, listen, this guy is going into his what? The eighth season, eighth, ninth season? The guys getting older, still top of his game. One of the best wide receivers in the game. There’s no question about that. We don’t get to debate that, top three wide receivers. Some may make the argument that he is the best wide receiver in the game.
DeAndre Hopkins Fantasy Stats
Now with DeAndre Hopkins, every single year he’s done well. I mean, if you look at his numbers every single year constantly producing on a high level. In 2018, he finished first amongst wide receivers. Last year in 2019, finished top-five amongst wide receivers in PPR, phenomenal numbers. I mean his best pinnacle season goes back to 2018 where he finished first with 333.5 PPR Fantasy points. He’s peaked at 13 touchdowns in 2017. And in 2019, he had a little bit of a decline there, only seven touchdowns.
Now he is on the Arizona Cardinals so you’ve got to understand it’s an entirely new situation. Again, stay till the end, because I give you guys my verdict on if I’m going to draft that player or not. And of course, I’ve linked the impact series here for YouTube below to catch all my other impact series videos. I’ve done a bunch of running backs now I’m kind of getting into the wide receivers, okay? So when you look at DeAndre Hopkins, a big part of his success is predicated on him getting a lot of targets. Doesn’t matter if it’s from X, Y, Z quarterback. I know he had the rapport with Watson, but he gets a lot of targets. Now in his pinnacle year, which was in 2018, he had 163 targets. Not bad. The most he’s ever received was back in 2015 was 192 targets for 111 receptions and he had 331 points. That was his second-best year back in 2015. So last year, still 150 targets. For DeAndre Hopkins to have a really successful year, he needs to be fed. For any player to have a successful year, you need to be fed the targets. And the problem I’m having with him in Arizona is, is he going to get the targets? Now, the best way we can gauge that is to kind of look at what happened last year with Kyler Murray, Larry Fitzgerald, and of course, Christian Kirk and the other receivers there.
If you look at the volume distribution, the peak receiver there last year, the number one wide receiver, was Larry Fitzgerald at 109 targets, okay? Now you could make a debate and you can come at me and say, “Well, Joe, Larry Fitzgerald’s older, he’s just not…” But it doesn’t matter if he’s older because, at the end of the day, he peeked out at 109 targets, which means nobody else, even Kirk who’s a young guy, had 107 targets. 107 targets, 68 receptions for Kirk, 109 targets, 75 receptions for Larry Fitzgerald. So my big question is, okay, those guys are still there, now if Larry Fitzgerald was out of the equation, I know they’re going to phase him out so I’m expecting a bit of a decline for sure in his numbers with the addition of DeAndre Hopkins in Arizona, but you’ve got to look at it and say, okay, 109 targets peaked and Christian Kirk, 107, that’s what? Let’s say 220 targets between those guys, okay? What happens now? Who is going to see a major decline?
Let’s say it’s Larry Fitz, let’s say he loses 50 targets. Those 50 targets go to DeAndre, okay? DeAndre now has 50 more targets, that’s great. Now let’s say Kirk takes a little bit of a dive and loses 50 targets from 107 to 50, I’m just doing the math here guys, now we’ve got a hundred targets towards Hopkins. Now we’re talking, okay? Now, what else? Where’s he going to get more targets from? So is Kirk and Fitzgerald completely going to be phased out? Now, if Kyler continues to throw to Hopkins, I mean the defense is going to hone in and double cover him, which is going to open up the rapport that Kirk, it’s going to open up Kirk and Kyler has got rapport with Christian Kirk. He’s also got a rapport with Kesean Johnson who had 42 targets for 21 receptions, okay?
I also want you to notice another thing now, Hopkins in his kind of pinnacle years, he had 11 touchdowns, right? Larry Fitzgerald and Kirk combined had seven touchdowns. All together with all the wide receivers combined, they had seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 touchdowns combined with all the wide receivers, okay? And for Hopkins to perform on a top five-level, he needs a ton of targets and a ton of touchdowns. He needs yardage. He needs everything, right? Larry Fitzgerald maxing out at 809 receiving. And that’s just wide receivers. Understand, guys, that the Cardinals want to line up four wide, so that’s going to be distributed pretty evenly across, right? Maybe it’s going to gravitate towards Hopkins because they’re going to use him. And then you got to look at the running backs. They catch the ball in the backfield as well. Drake last year, didn’t get integrated to later, had 68 targets for 50 receptions. So you could see Kyler does like to throw to his running backs. David Johnson, when he was playing 47 targets, 36 receptions. So there’s well over a hundred, 150 targets easily going towards the running back. So you’ve got to look at the entire scenario. And then you got to ask yourself, this is another big question, does Kyler Murray throw the ball up? Because you need a guy that has a lot of volume to get those targets out there, get the volume out there, right? And when you’re looking at it from an attempt standpoint, not bad. Kyler Murray was ninth in attempts with 542. So let’s say he starts throwing more. Let’s say throws over 600 times, what is the distribution to Hopkins? And again, you have to look at this entire scenario. Listen, you guys may see the consensus rank because you may look at it and say, “Hey, they’ve got him top five, I got to drive him top five. That’s what they say. That’s what we got to do.” No, it doesn’t work like that. You got to look at the entire situation.
I’ll give you another scenario that happened last year. Odell Beckham, at the end of the first round, everyone was suggesting Odell top five, the mainstream consensus. And I said to them, I said to everybody, I said to you listeners if you guys were listening last year, that’s why you guys got to smash, thumbs up and subscribe. If you guys are listening in the car, nobody’s talking about this. Everybody had Odell top five. And I said, “Listen, Landry the year before,” this is going back in 2018, “maxed out at 149 targets with Mayfield. Maxed out. That was their wide receiver one Mayfield and Landry have that rapport and Landry is still on that team. How is Odell going to come in and get 150 more targets when the number one receiver maxed out at that and he’s still there?”
So mathematically and I could be wrong, every pass could go to DeAndre Hopkins, Larry Fitzgerald gets benched, Christian Kirk gets phased out and they just focus strictly on him. Understand these guys still have Andy Isabella. They’ve got some targets. They got Keyshawn Johnson. They’ve got some weapons at wide receiver. Are they going to phase all these wide receivers out and focus on Hopkins? If they do, can he handle the double coverage consistently and get that top-five production? You know what? Let’s just get to the verdict. I’m going to say no, I’m going to say no. Heck no. I’m just not going to be investing in DeAndre Hopkins based on all of these reasons. Now again, Hopkins could be the number one receiver next year. He could. Kyler could come out and become the next Lamar and a lot of people are saying that I don’t think he’s as good as Lamar. I think he’s good, I don’t think he’s as good as Lamar, Lamar Jackson that is. Guys, I don’t know what to tell you. I just don’t trust it. Especially with that precious first overall or first-round pick, forget it. I’m not going to do it.
Not to mention guys, I talked about this in my 16 rounds, in the first four rounds ideally, so at least three rounds minimum, you have to be going robust RB. If not, you’re going to end up with the Phillip Lindsays and Jordan Howards of the world. I’m telling you right now, you need to load up on running backs early. Now then you could take some wild cards later. You can get Swift, you can get Acres in the fifth round if you need to. You can get a Kareem Hunt later. You can get Zack Moss, AJ Dillon. There’s a ton of sleepers, I talk about that in my 16 rounds, but what you need to do guys load up on those running backs early. There’s a ton of depth wide receiver later.
And it’s a question Mark with any receiver this year. Last year we saw Odell busted. I told you about that, Davante Adams busted because he was a little banged up, understandable. A lot of wide receivers bust. It happens, okay? And you’re taking a risk no matter where you draft them. Even if you draft them on the first round, you can see the question marks pertaining to DeAndre Hopkins. So he’s a big risk at the first round. Now, if you look at other guys that you can get later, Hilton in the fifth round, you get like D.J. Moore later, you get Shark later, you can get Digs later, you can get Cooks later, you can get a ton of wider receiver ones. MacLaurin later, Deebo Samuel later, AJ Brown a little later, all these guys have question marks as well, but you don’t have to invest that first-round pick on them, okay? Does this make sense? And again, I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, but toot here, okay? Smash the thumbs up, I appreciate it. I’m not just going to toot my own horn here, but what I’m saying is that a lot of the consensus will say, “Okay, he’s top five, draft him. He’s in my top five rank,” that’s what they’re going to say. You guys, you can’t win based on just drafting off ADP rankings, that’s not the way to do it. I dive in, I strategize. I look at the entire scenario to give you guys a massive competitive advantage.
I have significantly upped my game to a science. I’m literally getting this. Fantasy is very unpredictable, there’s a lot of uncertainty, but I am trying and I’m really putting in a lot of effort to make it as bulletproof as possible and make sure your rosters are optimal. So if I can avoid a potential pitfall and a guy with a lot of question marks in the first couple of rounds where I need to be making proper decisions, I’m going to go ahead and do that for you guys.
2020 Fantasy Football Projection
So final verdict on this DeAndre Hopkins, guys, I’m going to stay away, completely. Draft yourself a running back and you say, “Well, Joe, DeAndre Hopkins comes at the end of the first round. Who can I get?” Grab yourself a Josh Jacobs. I mean, he’s going to be fine at the end of the first round, grab yourself a Gurley, go Gurley late first round, come back and get David Johnson. I’m just giving you an example, right? You come back get Leonard Fournette. Get yourself a workhorse running back at the end of the first round. Jacobs, Gurley would be nice.
Now I’m seeing David Johnson’s ADP come up significantly since I’ve been promoting him. A couple of months ago, David Johnson was a fourth-rounder. He’s still sitting around 20th on the ADP consensus rankings, the consensus rankings, but they’re sleeping on him because last year he didn’t have the greatest season. David Johnson is in a prime position to succeed based on volume and talent, okay? And the reason I’m talking David Johnson, other than the fact that I love his value and he’s the biggest deal in Fantasy Football, is that that trade happened. And I really think that Texans won that trade and you’re going to see it this year. Texans won that trade getting David Johnson, the top five potential workhorse running back there.
And I’m telling you guys, you may want to consider getting them in the second round because his ADP is flying up. Think of it as a state draft, you’re drafting Jacobs, and you go, Gurley, you come all the way background. There’s going to be 24 picks, David Johnson is now getting sniped in the third round, you’re not going to get him, okay? So that’s what’s happening right now is ADP is going up and back to Hopkins, I’m going to stay away. Too rich for my blood and too much uncertainty there. The new team, new office, got to build a rapport with Kyler Murray and I don’t know if the targets are going to be there, stay away.
All right guys, make sure you guys subscribe. Leave a thumbs up, leave your Fantasy questions below. And of course, follow on Twitch the fan-to-fan network, big things coming up ahead. And I will see you guys in the next video. Thank you.
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