Ok so here's my thoughts
1) people seem to believe kelce and hill are entitled to repeat last year's production. But Kansas city just gave Watkins 30 million dollars guaranteed over three years. That at least indicates that they wanted to upgrade their offense.
2) Alex Smith played really well the last three years, completing 67.9%, 67.1% and 65.3% of his passes. Iirc he was second only to brees last year. Mahomes is not likely to have as high a completion percentage out of the gate, or maybe ever.
3) One of the arguments in favor of Tyreek is that he caught 75 of 105, and 61 of 83 passes thrown his way the last two years. He also caught 11 of 17 red zone targets, but for just 3 touchdowns in his career
4) One of the arguments in favor of kelce is that he's a special talent at tight end who catches 70 percent of his passes. He has also caught 9 of 20 red zone targets, again for only 5 touchdowns in his career.
5) One of the arguments against Watkins is that he didn't get many targets last year and didn't catch as high a percentage of them, although he did have a high yards per catch and did very well on red zone targets (16 of 30 for 12 touchdowns in his career, 7 of 10 for 7 touchdowns last year with Goff).
The other side of that argument is that he caught 60% of passes with tyrod, who is a 62%passer, and then last year with Goff, who is also a 62% passer.
Goff also had noteworthy difficulties hitting him deeper. To wit, Watkins caught 32 of his 60 non red zone targets for 542 yards with Goff.
6) If mahomes passes for 64%, it would represent a significant downgrade for kelce and hill, but a significant upgrade for Watkins.
I believe a big part of hill and kelce's high percentage receiving numbers was based on Smith's high percentage passing - Smith's ability to read defenses and Reid's ability to scheme guys open. That's not to say hill or kelce aren't good players, but I expect their catch percentages to drop off by 5 percent or more with mahomes.
Watkins, on the other hand, could see his catch percentage increase, as a result of playing in a better overall offense, and playing with a quarterback who has deep ball accuracy.
7) Watkins is arriving in a situation where everyone is starting from scratch. Mahomes barely played or practiced with kelce and hill last year, and the mahomes offense figures to look different from the Alex Smith offense.
Watkins is immediately their best red zone target, having caught 12 touchdowns on 30 targets vs a combined 8 on 37 targets from hill and kelce.
Watkins is also their highest ypc target, averaging 15.9 per reception vs 12.7 for kelce and 13.1 for hill.
And he's likely to improve on his efficiency, increasing his catch percentage slightly while the other two likely drop slightly in catch percentage without Smith.
So it really comes down to targets. If Watkins can earn the same number of targets as hill, he should put up better numbers.
Which is why for me, I think Watkins is about the same in redraft and the slightly better play in dynasty, and the poll bears out that he's become a bit of a bargain relative to hill while people continue to expect the status quo.
Good post. But I'm not sure I agree on the bolded.
Last season, KC scored 415 points, compared to 478 for the Rams. Both teams had 3 defensive TDs and 1 special teams TD; the Rams had a safety, KC did not. Crediting 7 points per TD for convenience, KC's offense generated 387 points, compared to 448 for the Rams. Huge gap there.
Last season, KC had 6007 yards from scrimmage on offense. In comparison, LAR had 5784. So KC had 223 more yards. More than half of that delta is from week 16, when both teams rested a lot of starters.
Perhaps it is more relevant to focus on the passing game and consider which offense is better for Watkins specifically. Last season, the Rams passed for 3831 yards and 28 TDs, compared to 4104 and 26 for KC, which is roughly a wash from a fantasy perspective. However, since this thread is about WRs, consider that the Rams targeted their WRs 321 times in 518 pass attempts (62%), compared to 242 times in 543 passing attempts for KC (45%). Huge gap there.
To be sure, that was influenced by personnel, and KC seems likely to increase its WR targets with Watkins added to the offense... but it is also true that they still have a huge target hog in Kelce and that Reid offenses typically do not provide big target numbers to a single WR, much less to two of them. Top 2 WRs in targets per season in Reid's HC career:
- 2017 - Hill (105), Wilson (62) = 167
- 2016 - Hill (83), Maclin (76) = 159
- 2015 - Maclin (124), Wilson (57) = 181
- 2014 - Bowe (95), DeAnthony Thomas (31) = 126
- 2013 - Bowe (103), McCluster (83) = 186
- 2012 - Maclin (122), Jackson (87) = 209
- 2011 - Jackson (104), Maclin (96) = 200
- 2010 - Maclin (115), Jackson (95) = 210
- 2009 - Jackson (117), Maclin (91) = 208
- 2008 - Jackson (120), Kevin Curtis (63) = 183
- 2007 - Kevin Curtis (135), Reggie Brown (111) = 246
- 2006 - Reggie Brown (88), Stallworth (70) = 158
- 2005 - Owens (92, in 7 games), Reggie Brown (79) = 171
- 2004 - Owens (127), Pinkston (63) = 190
- 2003 - Thrash (92), Pinkston (86) = 178
- 2002 - Pinkston (113), Thrash (107) = 220
- 2001 - Thrash (108), Pinkston (84) = 192
- 2000 - Charles Johnson (100), Small 94) = 194
- 1999 - Small (99), Charles Johnson (72) = 171
The 4 year stretch with Jackson and Maclin in Philly seems like a reasonable comparison in terms of having two quality WRs. That stretch could suggest that Hill and Watkins could be expected to split 210 targets or so... except that the best TE on those rosters was Celek, and Kelce is obviously better and thus will draw more targets.
Had Watkins stayed in LA, there wouldn't have been any significant changes around him on offense. All of the players would move into their second season in the offense. In contrast, KC moves from Smith to Mahomes, and Watkins needs to learn and fit into a new offense and build chemistry with Mahomes. (Not saying that is hard for Watkins, just something he didn't have to do if he stayed.)
So not sure it is fair to say Watkins is moving to a better offense. A lot of that depends on how good Mahomes is, and we don't know for sure about that yet.