RP Clips: A Fascinating Jacksonville Reveal Awaits in Week 1

Matt Harmon (0:00)

This is Reception Perception, The Show. Now, James Koh and Matt Harmon.

James Koh (0:06)

All right, so most interesting wide receiver rooms and target trees that you're watching here in week number one, we'll start with the Jags wide receiver room. Obviously, they've got these three guys, BTJ, Parker Washington.

What are we doing here with the tight ends as well, the running back? I mean, there's just so much in regards to question marks and not really, I mean, this is the funny thing, Matt, everyone is anticipating them to be good. It's just we don't know where is all of the production going to fall. How do you kind of sort of see it playing out there in Jacksonville?

Matt Harmon (0:44)

Yeah, look, man, this is one of the most interesting week one reveals that we could, I mean, that we've got to be watching out for because this has been like a subject of fascination is what are these, what is this Jaguars wide receiver room kind of, you know, how does it sort out in the whole deal? And man, I will say one of the kind of like final takeaways I have from the last two weeks of August specifically doing fantasy content is, and I do think we've kind of overcorrected on Brian Thomas Jr as a player.

James Koh (1:16)

I agree with you.

Matt Harmon (1:17)

Like man, anytime I would take him in a draft, like we streamed our Yahoo! Fantasy Analyst League draft, and people liked my draft, but they hated that I took BTJ.

I referenced that BTJ was my favorite value in the eighth round of Yahoo! ADP.

People lit my ass up on Instagram for that one.

So I feel like, of course, I don't say this is to be mean, but kind of like more casual drafters who check back in in August, they're like, I'm never drafting this BTJ goofball again. He burned me last year. There's some of that, I think, to it. Yeah, for sure. But I just even think also, there's been so much buzz about Parker Washington coming out of Jacksonville, and buzz that I'm generally buying. I thought Parker Washington was, he was the number one ranked Jags receiver for me in my fantasy rankings. I think that he should be the favorite to be the most productive, based on what we saw at the end of last season. If you do the same exercise that I just was talking about with the Colts wide receivers, with the top three Jags receivers, and you look at a smaller sample, but 159 snaps in six games last year, including the playoffs where Parker Washington, Brian Thomas Jr, and Jacoby Myers were all on the field. It's not even close in terms of production, 3.14 yards per route run for Parker Washington, 1.4 for BTJ, and 1.2 for Jacoby Myers. I mean, Parker Washington ran away with the efficiency metrics, targets per route, he was targeted on. He had a 35% target share in those 159 snaps. It was obviously all Parker Washington all the time. Again, I think where he went in fantasy was pretty fair. I had him around wide receiver 30, that was basically where he went off the board. But again, it's just like the hype on social media was so crazy for Parker Washington that it really got pushed out and pushed under the rug. Like generally, they were really excited about what Brian Thomas Jr was doing. He was healthier in training camp. So I'm interested to see just what BTJ looks like in week one, what his role looks like, because he definitely has a gauntlet early season schedule. Even especially outside cornerbacks, like he's going to face Derek Stigl, he's going to face Pat Sertan. Shoot, he's facing Denzel Ward in this first game here, most likely.

So just is he an exclusive X? Is he a vertical X? I don't think he's a sacrificial X whatsoever. I'd be shocked if that's his role. Like his route tree will be one of the more interesting ones to go back and chart in week one, which of course I will be doing in season charting as always for the website. So he'll definitely be one of the ones I write up because I think his role will be fascinating. Plus, like just again, how did the snaps get allocated here? Is it going to end up being, you know, Parker Washington? Is he the guy that does lead the team in Snaps? Or is he like a slot mostly player and comes off the field in two receiver sets? It doesn't sound like that's going to happen based on the training camp reports, but let's find out for real in week one.