The Best Players to Stash in Fantasy Football From the NFC North

Cordarrelle Patterson, WR, Minnesota Vikings

The Player

There's something to be said about drafting a player in a post-hype year. Last year, Cordarrelle Patterson's tantalizing potential caused fantasy owners to inflate hit value, overlooking the fact that he was an extremely raw player with only one season of major college production on his resume.

Now he's essentially free in fantasy football, and nothing about his impressive athletic traits have changed. Patterson is 6'2, 220 pounds, runs a 4.42 40-yard dash and has a great 37-inch vertical. More importantly, he's smooth and effortless in the open field with the ability to run past players and the strength to run through players. Like a bigger Percy Harvin, he also has the ability to make plays out of the backfield either on screens, sweeps or direct handoffs, a skill that only adds to his ceiling as a talent.

When looking at his production in terms of Net Expected Points, or NEP, we are given an even more clear look at his strengths and deficiencies. NEP is numberFire's signature metric quantifying a player's production versus what is expected of them on a given play. You can learn more about NEP in our glossary.

For Patterson, his NEP scores as a runner are otherworldly, even for gadget players with limited carries. Only Jacoby Ford in 2010 has had a better Rushing NEP per rush than Patterson's 2013 season for players with more than 9 carries. While he wasn't as dominant on the ground in 2014, his 0.54 Rushing NEP per rush was still fifth in the NFL for receivers that year with five or more carries. Not a massive sample size, but definitely indicative of his explosive ability.

But as we learned last year, there is more to playing receiver than just being a great athlete. Apparently, offensive coordinator Norv Turner wants Patterson to also possess the ability to get open. In college, running great routes is only a necessity for underwhelming athletes who aren't able to just dominate inferior college talent with their natural ability, and it is a skill that Patterson did not refine at junior college or the University of Tennessee.

As a result, Patterson's NEP scores as a receiver were really bad in 2014. In terms of Target NEP -- the number of expected points added on all targets, not just ones that are caught -- his -16.31 score was worse than every NFL receiver not named Cecil Shorts (-27.32). His Reception NEP per target of 0.43 also put him in the bottom 10 of players at his position.

However, while the last few crops of polished rookie wide receivers have spoiled us into valuing immediate production, it wasn't long ago that we were conditioned to expect receivers to make major strides heading into their third NFL seasons. So is this the year Patterson finally explodes?

The Opportunity

Rookie quarterback Teddy Bridgewater gave the team reason for optimism last year, and with the return of Adrian Peterson, perhaps he is poised for a significant sophomore jump.

Patterson is competing for targets with a group of receivers that have talent, but not a dominant presence.

Charles Johnson and Mike Wallace both ran circles around Patterson based on our NEP data, but Johnson only saw 59 targets last season and Wallace is on his third team since 2012 and may end up being no more than a role player.

So while Patterson has a lot of work to do to emerge as a legitimate wide receiver, his draft pedigree and athletic ability almost ensure he will get another chance... and likely another one after that. And if he ever figures this "route running" thing out, he's the type of player who can put up a dominant type of season at the position.

So if you like to gamble on talent, why not pay the relatively free price tag for a lottery ticket like Patterson? His value won't -- it can't -- get any lower than it already is.