Amon-Ra St. Brown
Lead the NFL in Receptions (+1800, DraftKings)
Cooper Kupp should be the favorite in this market, but there is a real chance he misses Week 1 or more games after news of his latest setback (hamstring).
It opens the door for potential value in this market and based on my updated projections, it should be Justin Jefferson (+650) who should be the new favorite to take down this market. That shouldn’t be too surprising since it was Jefferson who took down this market last season with 128 receptions and is off to a historic start to his career after 3 seasons. However, he could face added competition for targets with a full season of T.J. Hockenson and playing across from first-round pick Jordan Addison.
The player I have projected to be the second-most likely to take down this market? Amon-Ra St. Brown, who is currently sitting at +1800 (which ranks eighth among pass catchers).
St. Brown is the perfect player to invest in this market right now because he will remain a target hog in the Lions offense and should be able to command a target rate similar to the 29% rate from last season. He also has a huge edge in this market due to the high percentage of targets he draws. Last season, he caught 77% of his targets, and a big reason for his high catch rate was due to his 6.7 Average Depth of Target (aDot). Typically, we would expect a player with an aDot that low to catch about 71% of his targets, so I’m not expecting much regression, if any at all, in his high catch rate.
With very little regression expected for St. Brown's target rate (29% of routes last season) and aDot (6.7), he has an extremely high ceiling in this market and the recent news of Kupp potentially missing game(s) makes him a great investment at +1800.
Considering I’m currently projecting St. Brown for the second-most receptions, I would bet this down to around +1000. DraftKings has the best number for this market, as of Friday morning.
