In fantasy football communities, many analysts seemed to break the top three wide receivers into one tier. You would have been insane not to draft Antonio Brown, Julio Jones and Odell Beckham before any other players.
Jones and A.J. Green have been two players comparable throughout their whole careers; they were picked two spots apart in the 2011 NFL Draft. In the past two years, fantasy football experts and analysts alike have all seemed to find agreement that Jones had finally proven to be the better of the two.
However, after a dominating Week One for A.J. Green, he may be on the track to having himself a season similar to the one we saw of Julio Jones in 2015. That season landed him second all-time on the most catches and receiving yards list for a single season.
A.J. Green’s 2016 Will Be Julio Jones’ 2015
A.J. Green vs. Julio Jones
Let’s play a blind player test. Player A catches 59.4% of his career targets. He scores a touchdown in 59.7% of his games played, has 14.9 career yards per catch, and has a career high of 11 touchdowns. Player B catches 63.7% of his targets, he scores a touchdown in 53.8% of his games played, has a yards per catch rate of 15.0, and a career high of 10 touchdowns. Which player would you choose?
The answer is really a toss up. Green is player A and Jones is B, but when it comes to efficiency and ability to find the end zone, the two are hand in hand. The big difference is targets. Over the past two seasons, Jones has 366 targets to the 249 of Green. Therefore, it is no surprise Jones has 85 more catches for 1,126 more yards in only two more games played.
Falcons Have More Weapons, Bengals Have Less
That is because in Atlanta the past two seasons Jones has been the only real option in the offense. Roddy White aged quickly, and while he is not retired he is still a free agent and his phone has been quiet. The team has not replaced Tony Gonzalez since 2013, and have not replaced Harry Douglas since 2014, and he was not even a difficult task.
On the Bengals side, this was a young team with two talented running backs. They also had Mohamed Sanu, Marvin Jones, and Tyler Eifert; all players worthy of target consideration and all weapons away from A.J. Green. However, this year the Bengals lost Jones and Sanu, and Eifert is down for a questionable amount of time with an injury.
Sanu will go from being a reason why A.J. Green did not get Julio Jones’ targets to a reason why Jones may not get Green’s targets in 2016. The Falcons added Sanu and right off of the bat he was targeted eight times in Week One. The Falcons also drafted Austin Hooper to be a potential replacement at tight end, and at running back they are seeing an emergence from Tevin Coleman as he and Devonta Freeman both demand touches. It is starting to sound more like the Bengals’ situation of 2015.
A.J. Green Will Get the Targets
For the Bengals of 2016, the offense should look more like the Falcons of 2015. A.J. Green will see the ball a ton. Green was matched up with Darrelle Revis for most of his debut, and he abused the future Hall of Fame cornerback for 12 catches on 13 targets.
A lot of talk came from the game that Revis is a bit washed up, but by all accounts, it appeared that Green was just on another level. If the Bengals are not going to ease the targets or avoid Green when lined against Revis, who are they going to avoid throwing him the ball against?
13 targets per game over a 16-game time span would equal 208 targets. Julio Jones finished his 2015 season with 203, which ranked sixth of all-time. Green is already on the pace to be right there with Jones of 2015 and has the talent and the ability to find himself just as high on those lists. While it was only one game, it may not be an over-reaction to think that Green is on pace to have himself a Julio Jones type of season.
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