Following Corey Davis’ reported departure from the Titans to the New York Jets in free agency, a player that should fly up fantasy football ADP boards at the WR position is AJ Brown. A Pro Bowler in 2020 in only his second season, Brown finished with 70-1,075-11 splits in 14 games and amassed this total on only 106 targets. Throw in the signing of former Titans’ TE Jonnu Smith by the New England Patriots, Brown is in for a monster uptick in targets and should be a top five fantasy WR in 2021.
Titans’ Departures Open the Target Floodgate
In 2020, Davis and Smith saw a combined 157 targets, per Pro Football Focus. After releasing Adam Humphries (7 games/35 targets), that leaves 192 available targets from last season for an offense that ranked in the top 10 in the league in total offense along with an experienced, talented, and committed franchise QB in Ryan Tannehill. All this bodes incredibly well for Brown, who should see an unprecedented amount of looks in the Titans passing game.
Even after a Pro Bowl season, Brown has seen only FIVE games with nine or more targets. FIVE times during his 30 game NFL career. When you have a back like Derrick Henry who has won the rushing title in both of the previous seasons, and the best bet to three-peat, passing the ball has become the secondary source of offense — even in a passing league. That being said, Tannehill can still sling it. The Titans will throw the ball and will throw it well.
Projected DOMINANCE for Brown
So let’s do a little projecting here, using RotoViz’s NFL Stat Explorer tool. Using stats from the five games where AJ Brown had over 9 targets, he projects to 115 receptions, 1,792 yards, and 16 TDs on 163 targets. All this equates to 24.4 PPR fantasy points/game, and a whopping 390 total PPR points on the season. That would be a mind-boggling season from a wideout.
AJ Brown has seen 9+ targets only five times in his career(criminal). His 16-game pace in this split:
115 rec (163 tgts), 1792 Yds, 16 TDs: 390 FPs, 24.4 PPG.
No WR in the last 25+ years has hit 390 FPs, and 163 tgts might be lowballing AJB's 2021 volume.
— Wolf of Roto Street (@RotoStreetWolf) March 17, 2021
To put this into perspective, Davante Adams, 2020’s WR1, had 243.4 PPR points on the season. Holy shit. Now, this is pretty far-fetched. BUT, as stated before, the Titans are losing 192 targets and Brown should get the lions’ share of these as Tennessee has yet to add any other perimeter weapons.
Davante-like production in 2021 isn’t as far-fetched as almost 400 PPR points. The Wolf ranks AJ Brown as the WR5 in his updated 2021 Fantasy Football Rankings heading into the new season and look for that to be the floor for his offensive output this year.
