Brandon Lloyd - Wide Receiver Poised For A Fall In 2011
Hello once again fantasy football fanatics. This week’s task is to identify a 2010 top 15 wide receiver I think will fall from among the top 15 receivers in 2011. Before I get to this year’s pick, I want to let you know how I did last year when my task was to pick a wide receiver that finished among the top 10 in 2009 but I expected him to drop out of the top 10 in 2010. Actually, I gave you six players that would drop out of the top 10 and I was correct on five of them. My correct picks were Miles Austin DAL (finished 14th), Wes Welker NEP (finished 17th), DeSean Jackson PHI (finished 18th), Larry Fitzgerald ARI (finished 19th), and Steve Smith NYG (finished 58th). My only slip was Roddy White ATL. He finished as the top fantasy wide receiver in 2010. Five out of six wasn’t bad. This year I’m placing the “Poised for a fall” label on Brandon Lloyd. Brandon was the best Denver Bronco receiver in 2010 and he came out of nowhere to post top five fantasy football wide receiver numbers for many team owners. As I’ve pointed out in previous years, it’s hard for even a top wide receiver to post top 10 numbers in two consecutive years. Receivers like Andre Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, Randy Moss, Calvin Johnson, and others have found it hard to repeat a top ten performance. Brandon Lloyd has been in the NFL for eight years. It took him eight years to make the top 10 list. In 2010 Lloyd was targeted 153 times, he caught 77 of those targets for an unimpressive 50%. Remember, he was the number one man at the position in Denver. Denver’s running game was nonexistent in 2010. Yes they had running backs in the backfield, but due to injuries, the running back carousel just kept going round in circles. The coaching staff was going round in circles too. My point here is Denver was a team in turmoil. There was naturally a lot of opportunity for the wide receivers to excel. The running game was of no help, rotating quarterbacks proved to be of no help, and Denver’s poor offensive line play, well you know, was of no help either. The Bronco's solution was to throw the ball often and pray. Lloyd will be 30 years old before the 2011 season kicks off. In his previous 7 years, his most productive year was 2005 when he caught 48 passes for 733 yards and 5 touchdowns. In 2007, 2008, and 2009 Brandon caught 2, 26, and 8 passes respectively and scored only 2 touchdowns over those three years. Enter John Fox in 2011. We know the new head coach likes to pound the ball via the running game. I expect Knowshon Moreno to have a better year as he enters his second year in the NFL. Coach Fox will have many decisions to make, including who his quarterback will be. Will he be satisfied with 28 year old Kyle Orton or 23 year old Tim Tebow, or will he draft or trade for one? I expect Denver to keep Orton as their starter for now, while Coach Fox rebuilds the offensive line. With all the uncertainty surrounding the team as a whole, I expect Brandon Lloyd to have a pretty good year, just not another top 15 year. I believe Brandon will finish somewhere in the 20 to 30 range. His career has been up and down much like the DOW Jones report. In Lloyd’s case, it’s been mostly down. See What Other Roundtable Writers Wrote Article provided by: Jim PiattFanaticFantasyFootball.com LLC
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