Fantasy Football: One Wide Receiver to Target in Each Round of Your Draft
Randall Cobb, Green Bay Packers
ADP: 7.08 (WR34)
In his age-24 season in 2014, Randall Cobb was the PPR WR8. Paired with one of the game's elite passers, he looked set for a run of dominance.
It hasn't happened.
After a WR25 finish in 2015, the bottom fell out these past two seasons as Cobb has been the WR45 (2016) and WR35. He scored 12 touchdowns in his magical 2014 campaign, and he's got a total of 14 scores in the 44 games since.
This year could be different, though. While we shouldn't expect him to come close to his 2014 season, Cobb is penciled in as Aaron Rodgers' number-two wideout, a position that has averaged 115.7 targets per year in Rodgers' last three fully-healthy seasons (2014 to 2016).
Cobb put together a not-horrible WR35 season in 2017 despite playing just five full games with Rodgers. In those five games -- Cobb's first four outings of the season (he sat in Week 3) plus Rodgers' late-year, one-game return at Carolina in Week 15 -- Cobb went for at least 60 yards or scored a touchdown four times.
| Game | Targets | Catches | Yards | Touchdowns | Weekly PPR Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | 13 | 9 | 85 | 0 | WR11 |
| Week 2 | 9 | 6 | 60 | 0 | WR27 |
| Week 4 | 4 | 4 | 44 | 1 | WR20 |
| Week 5 | 5 | 4 | 29 | 0 | WR55 |
| Week 15 | 14 | 7 | 84 | 1 | WR8 |
Among those five games, Cobb had a top-20 weekly PPR finish three times, including two WR1 (top-12) weeks and another WR27 week where he just missed being a WR2 (top-24) producer. In all, he averaged 9.0 targets per game with Rodgers.
Cobb failed to top 60 yards in any of the games in which Rodgers didn't suit up.
So Cobb was better with Rodgers under center than he was with Brett Hundley pulling the strings -- not exactly groundbreaking stuff. But the takeaway here is that Cobb showed last year he can be an every-week fantasy starter with Rodgers healthy.
That's well worth the price of admission in the seventh round, and it makes Cobb -- our PPR WR27 -- one of the better cheap wideouts to target this season.
