Calvin Ridley caught 4-of-5 targets for 38 yards in the Falcons’ Week 5 loss to the Steelers. It was Ridley’s first game without a score since Week 1. Ridley, who leads the Falcons in red zone looks, did draw a target from the Steelers’ 21-yard line. He’ll remain a solid WR3 for next week’s matchup with the Bucs’ awful defense.
It was inevitable to happen, but Calvin Ridley finally regressed from the Everest like high mountain he sat atop the past few weeks in the fantasy landscape. Ridley had 6 touchdowns over his last three games with the Falcons and had become a red zone nightmare for opposing defenses. He was picking up the massive slack left by Julio Jones in the touchdown department as the Falcons thrived down in the red zone.
What was cautionary about Ridley’s expectations though was his low snap count compared to Falcons receivers. Ridley had registered 46,35,42 and 38 offensive snaps through Week 4 which was the third most on the team behind both Julio Jones and Mohammed Sanu. Simply, the amount of production coming from Ridley was going to be unsustainable with the lack of snaps he was seeing. Even in a juicy matchup against Pittsburgh, Jones and Sanu dominated in targets with nine and seven respectively to Ridley’s five. We’d expect Ridley’s numbers to start falling back to Earth and regressing to the mean. Although, a matchup with the Tampa Bay Bucs is juicy enough to keep his stock up a little longer.
