After bursting onto the scene with Josh McCown as his quarterback in 2017, New York Jets wideout Robby Anderson took a step back statistically with Sam Darnold in 2018, but he still hauled in 50 balls for 752 yards and six touchdowns. However, Anderson’s upside is much higher with Darnold than McCown, and the way two hooked up over the final four weeks of the season provides optimism for 2019. Anderson is a deep ball specialist, but he’s so much more talented than just a guy who can use his speed to run straight and maybe make a cut after he’s already 15 or 20 yards downfield. Head Coach Adam Gase has already come out and said he will continue to expand his route tree and find ways to get him the football other than when he is streaking down the field. Perfect. That’s what we want to hear.

Through Anderson’s first ten games of 2018, a whopping 39.2 percent of his targets were thrown at least 20 yards downfield. However, over the final four weeks of the season where he and Darnold were operating like a fine-tuned machine, his deep target percentage dropped to 27.8 percent, per Pro Football Focus. Furthermore, his average depth of target (aDOT) tumbled from 18.5 yards to 15.6 yards, per Pro Football Focus, yet Anderson is good enough with the football in his hands that his yards per reception metric stayed within one yard between his season split.

When you compare the first ten games of 2018 to the final four games, it’s really no comparison, especially when you consider the fact that only five other wide receivers had more fantasy points (0.5-PPR) than Anderson over the final four games of the 2018 season. Woah.

 

Rec. Yards

TDs

Rec. %

Passer Rating When Targeted

Fantasy Points per Touch

First 10

416

3

52.9%

67.1

2.96

Last 4

335

3

63.9%

122

3.24

 

When you’re not relying on chunk plays every single time, Anderson was able to be more efficient, and arguably more effective in this Jets offense. Sure, he still has the ability to take the top off the defense, and will continue to attempt to do so, but the more he can develop and enhance his route tree, the more of a menace he will be to opposing defenses. With Jamison Crowder and Le’Veon Bell being introduced to the offense, he likely won’t average the nine targets per game he did down the stretch of 2018, but he’ll have plenty of opportunities to shine in the Darnold-led offense.

Additionally, Anderson was used more in the red zone as the year went on, and became a frequent target, to some degree, over the final four weeks of the season. In the first ten games of the season, Anderson had one red zone target, and played in more than 80 percent of the snaps in the red zone just twice, per Pro Football Reference. However, over the final four games of the season, he saw eight red zone targets, and eclipsed 90 percent of the red zone snaps in each of the final three contests. The additions of Bell and Crowder, as well as the health of Quincy Enunwa , may eat into his overall workload in the red zone, but if Anderson can truly expand his route tree, he’ll be a reliable weapon that consistently gets open where it matters most for the team’s franchise quarterback.

In the month of August, per NFFC data, Anderson is being drafted as WR30, just behind Jarvis Landry and ahead of the likes of Arizona’s Christian Kirk , Houston’s Will Fuller and Kansas City’s Sammy Watkins . If the rest of your league wants to buy into what Anderson did in the first ten games of the 2018 season, then fine. Let them. You need to buy into what happened over the final four weeks of the season, because the expansion of his route tree is real and Darnold is only going to continue to get better. If you meet in the middle in terms of his fantasy points per touch between ultimately his two different seasons within 2018, you come out to 3.14 fantasy points per touch, and if he catches 60 balls in 2019, that comes out to 188.4 fantasy points, which would have made him the WR16 in 0.5-PPR formats.

Anderson is undervalued heading into the season, and while the concerns are there with Gase’s anemic pace of play, Darnold is a gunslinger and you need to put your faith in him when drafting Anderson. The former Temple standout is a WR2 in 2019 that can be drafted as a WR3. Get on board.

Statistical Credits:
pro-football-reference.com
profootballfocus.com
https://nfc.shgn.com/adp/football