Fantasy Football: One Wide Receiver to Target in Each Round of Your Draft
Cameron Meredith, New Orleans Saints
ADP: 10.12 (WR48)
In 2016, Cameron Meredith had a pretty nice year for the Chicago Bears, finishing with 66 grabs, 888 yards and 4 touchdowns and coming in as the PPR WR40.
That's probably not going to generate too much excitement in you, but things change a wee bit when we look at his game-by-game production from that year, specifically the stretch after which Kevin White got hurt, granting full-time snaps to Meredith.
| Week | Targets | Catches | Yards | Touchdowns |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 12 | 9 | 130 | 1 |
| 6 | 15 | 11 | 113 | 0 |
| 7 | 2 | 1 | 12 | 0 |
| 8 | 2 | 1 | 24 | 0 |
| 10 | 2 | 1 | 50 | 1 |
| 11 | 4 | 4 | 49 | 0 |
| 12 | 9 | 2 | 19 | 0 |
| 13 | 4 | 3 | 67 | 0 |
| 14 | 8 | 6 | 72 | 1 |
| 15 | 13 | 9 | 104 | 0 |
| 16 | 12 | 9 | 135 | 1 |
While the week-to-week volume was all over the place, Meredith was a legitimate fantasy stud when he saw significant targets.
In the six games in which he was targeted at least 5 times, he averaged 7.7 grabs, 95.5 yards and 0.5 touchdowns. He registered an eye-popping five WR1 (top-12) weeks in those six games, and in 2016, only six receivers -- T.Y. Hilton, Jordy Nelson, Odell Beckham, Antonio Brown, Julio Jones and Mike Evans -- had more WR1 weeks all year than Meredith did in that 11-week stretch.
Admittedly, that was a long time ago, and a lot can change in the NFL in that amount of time. Meredith is a perfect example. Not only is he coming off a missed season due to an ACL injury, he's now in New Orleans.
But Meredith looks to be healthy, fully recovered in time to open camp, and outside of Michael Thomas, no one in the Saints' offenses appears to have a bunch of targets locked down.
There's a chance for Meredith to land the "big-slot" role in the Saints' attack, and as we touched on earlier when talking about Thomas, regression points to the Saints passing more in 2018 than they did a season ago.
Ted Ginn Jr. should do his thing as a deep-ball maven, and rookie Tre'Quan Smith could wind up being Ginn's replacement down the road. But the slot role may be Meredith's to lose, and he's shown in the past that he has the ability to put up big-time fantasy numbers when he sees meaningful volume.
The upside and cheap cost more than make up for anything Meredith lacks in the floor department, and he is worth a roll of the dice late in the draft.
