Last year in half-point PPR leagues, Adam Thielen was seventh in points per game.  In all formats, he was a WR1.  And that’s despite missing a game with COVID.  Yet a peculiar thing is happening in early drafts this season.  As of now, per the most recent couple of weeks of best ball draft data, Adam Thielen is going off the board as the WR20.  In the 5th-6th round.  What gives? 

Like Lieutenant Columbo might do, let’s start the investigation by going back to the beginning of the story and leaving no stones unturned.  We’ll start with the basic building blocks of wide receiver success.

Usage

Wide receiver scoring in fantasy football is simple.  Points are generated based on statistics.  Statistics are based on catches (and the resulting yards and touchdowns).  Catches are based on targets.  And targets are based on usage.  You can’t catch the ball when you aren’t on the field.

As we mentioned, last year Thielen missed a game with COVID.  Per PlayerProfiler.com, he had a 96.7% snap share in the games where he was healthy.  Probably don’t need to tell you that that’s a high number, but it’s second only to Terry McLaurin for WRs.  Another stat of theirs, route participation, measures the percentage of the team’s pass plays that you ran a route on.  Adam Thielen’s was 100%.  You can guess where that ranks among WRs.

If you mosey on over to Sharpfootballstats.com, you’d see that the Vikings only used 11 personnel (1 TE, 1 RB, 3 WRs) on 29% of their snaps.  That’s the lowest of any team in the league by almost nine percent.  They used a LOT of two-tight end, three tight end, and even two-back sets (sometimes with Mattison and Cook, sometimes with the fullback CJ Ham).  Even with the lack of three-wide sets, Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson were consistently on the field for nearly every relevant snap when healthy.  Pretty good but that was last season of course.  This offseason they ost Kyle Rudolph.  And they brought in next to no one.  They didn’t draft any pass-catchers until the fifth round when they took slot WR/return man Ihmir Smith-Marsette and tight end Zach Davidson.  They essentially added no free agent WRs either.  The rest of that depth chart is Chad Beebe, Olabisi Johnson, Dan Chisena, and KJ Osborn.  So clearly, they plan on maintaining the status quo in terms of snap share with their top two guys.

Targets

Checking in with our pals at Player Profiler once again, Thielen had a 24.4% target share.  Justin Jefferson had a 25.7% target share.  The next two highest players on the team were Irv Smith Jr. and Kyle Rudolph, both down around 10%, and now Rudolph isn’t even on the team.  Even if Irv Smith were to absorb all of Kyle Rudolph's targets (which he probably won’t) that would give him a 20% target share without him even encroaching on the targets for Thielen and Jefferson.  Blocking tight end Tyler Conklin and fullback CJ Ham isn’t likely to soak up a ton of pass action so there might actually be MORE targets available to Thielen this year.  Unless we are projecting Justin Jefferson to just get 200 balls thrown his way.  Is that where your investigation leads you?

Of course, Justin Jefferson is an incredible player but there are a couple of things to think about here with him as well. First and foremost, just because Justin Jefferson is worth his ADP, that doesn’t mean that Thielen isn’t worth his ADP.  Second, there wasn’t a huge disparity last year in target share so they might not be that far off once again.  Third, we don’t know how teams are going to adjust this year after Jeffersons’ breakout last year.  We do have examples of how teams did adjust.  For instance, in the first game of the season, the Packers largely had their stud shadow corner, Jaire Alexander, covering Adam Thielen.  In the second matchup, however, he covered Justin Jefferson.  Here’s a little look at how that went.  

Towards the end of the season, Jefferson also saw some similarly difficult weeks against the Buccaneers Carlton Davis and the Saints Marshon Lattimore.  Not that Jefferson isn’t up for the challenge, still catching a few balls each week in those games, but a shift in focal point by the defense could work in Theilen’s favor this season.  Given the lack of other receiving talents on the team, they are both going to be out there every pass play so why all of a sudden now can only Jefferson succeed and not Thielen?

Anyway, let’s wrap up this case with some of the common arguments against Adam Thielen.

Justin Jefferson is good so Thielen will be bad

Wait a second - we just explained in detail why that doesn’t matter for Thielen.  Alright, next argument against him. 

Age

I’ll go on record here saying that I think the entire argument of fading a player based on his numerical age is silly.  In fact, I recently did a poll and I asked Twitter which version of “wear and tear” they were most scared of: age, touches, or injuries.  Here are the results.

The results are basically this: no one has any idea.  But numerical age was the least important factor when my Twitter followers randomly clicked an option while eating a sandwich at lunch.  If you want to talk about “tread on the tires” Thielen had 20 career catches by the time he was 26 years old.  By that same age, Larry Fitzgerald and DeAndre Hopkins both had over 500.  Larry played until he was 37 and Hopkins is 29.  Thielen is currently 30 and he’ll turn 31 just before the season.  From age 32 - 34, Larry Fitzgerald had back to back to back 1,000-yard seasons.  Then he played three more seasons.  So as far as wear and tear and age go, there’s at least one example of a guy throwing all that out the window.  And that’s not getting into guys like Jerry Rice, Steve Smith, etc.  There are plenty of examples of good players having great seasons even though they just turned 31.  So if that’s your argument you can take a lap.

Low Volume Pass Attack

This one makes a lot of sense. The Vikings don’t throw a lot so the receivers aren’t going to be good.  Don’t need to be a famous detective to figure that one out.  Only one thing though, Sherlock.  The Vikings just this past year ranked 27th in pass attempts per game.  Yet, in every single fantasy format, both Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson were top ten wide receivers.  On a team with pretty much the lowest passing volume you are going to see.

Here is something to think about on top of that - the Vikings just lost their left tackle to the Bengals and their blocking tight end to the Giants.  What happens when they actually throw MORE this year than they did last year?


As Jacob Rickrode points out in the tweet below, Kirk Cousins has been incredibly efficient despite his low pass volume.  Perhaps with the new offensive coordinator, they actually attempt to take advantage of that?  Worst case scenario they are one of the bottom teams in the league in pass attempts again, which are the conditions in which Adam Thielen was just highly successful.  Best case, there are even more targets to split between the only wide receivers this team uses.  Why don’t people talk about that upside?


Touchdown Regression

This is my absolute favorite argument against Thielen.  “He scored too many touchdowns last year so we can’t draft him this year.”  Guess what? I just explained to you that, with his snap share, target share, and the MINIMUM projected number of passes available, Thielen is a lock to have over 100 targets.  That’s essentially the barrier to entry for WR2s.  We don’t even really need to get into his catch rate of 68.5% (awesome) or his average depth of target of 12.5 yards (awesome).  Being a lock for 100+ targets makes you worth your ADP at WR20.  Every time.  And here’s the craziest part about it.  He just DID catch double-digit touchdowns.  So what happens when he does that again?  


For more from Andrew Cooper follow him on Twitter @CoopAFiasco, check out the Fantasy Alarm NFL Podcast, or argue with him incessantly over on Reddit.