Tyler Lockett Fantasy 2019
Did you know that Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson posted a perfect passer rating when targeting Tyler Lockett last season? The 26-year old wide receiver signed a three-year, $30.7 million contract with the Seahawks last offseason. The connection between Lockett and Wilson will continue to strengthen in 2019. You have some questions. Was Lockett’s production a result of the injuries that Doug Baldwin dealt with last season? Will Lockett see enough targets in the Seahawks run-heavy scheme under offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer? This article will address those and more while sharing three reasons Lockett should be on your watch list heading into fantasy football drafts this summer.
1. Lockett’s Average Draft Position
Wilson finished the 2018 season as the fantasy QB9 and his top two receivers are values at their current ADP. You and I both know why. The Seahawks only averaged 26.7 passing attempts per game last season, but ranked second in rushing attempts and first in rushing yards per game. Wilson was surgical in his effectiveness finishing with a positive passing fantasy point over expectation per attempt of 0.21 on only 427 attempts. To put that into perspective Patrick Mahomes finished with a passing FPOE per of 0.23 on 580 attempts. Lockett has a history of making the most of his opportunities.
2. The Passing of the Torch?
Baldwin’s PPR fantasy points and receiving fantasy points over expectation have trended down since 2015. The opposite has taken place with Lockett. Here are other interesting stats from his 2018 season:
- Ranked ninth among wide receivers with 2.67 yards per route run
- Ranked ninth among wide receivers in target quality. This metric combines catchable targets with average target depth putting a premium on deep, catchable targets and discounting shorter, uncatchable passes.
- Ranked 12th in Target Separation (1.77) which measures a receiver’s average yards of separation from his assigned defender at the moment the pass arrives.
Lockett has the athletic ability to win against any type of coverage. Baldwin’s health struggles resulted in the second lowest total of receiving yards in his career. The 30-year old wide receiver was outplayed by
In an interview with @JohnClaytonNFL, Pete Carroll referenced a six-to-eight-week recovery time for Doug Baldwin’s upcoming surgery. pic.twitter.com/2cQfd0HEip
— Brady Henderson (@BradyHenderson) March 27, 2019
Lockett has had a higher average depth of target or aDOT than Baldwin over the last four seasons. Lockett is in a great position to emerge as the Seahawks No. 1 receiver. Will he see enough target volume to finally have a peak season?
3. A Peak Season for Lockett is Within Striking Distance
The Seahawks offense found success under offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer and offensive line coach Mike Solari. The team has not found this kind of production since the 2014 season.
Once criticism of Schottenheimer’s playcalling last season was his obsession with establishing the Seahawks running game. This inflexibility caused him to lean away from the passing game and All-Pro Wilson who has averaged 22.4 fantasy points per game over the last five seasons. Josh Hermsmeyer, writer at FiveThirtyEight, summed up Schottenheimer’s old school philosophy perfectly in an article earlier this year:
Over the course of the 2018 season, there was no three-play sequence that Seattle favored more than rush-rush-pass. The Seahawks called rush-rush-pass 26 percent of the time, a rate 10 percentage points higher than league average. Yet despite the high frequency with which Carroll and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer used the pattern, they were not successful with it. Just 41.2 percent of their rush-rush-pass sequences ended in success. Meanwhile, on three-play sequences where the Seahawks started with a pass and mixed in a run afterward, they were successful 88.9 percent of the time (pass-rush-rush), 71.4 percent of the time (pass-pass-rush) and 50 percent (pass-rush-pass) of the time.
Pete Carroll has mentioned publicly that the Seahawks plan to leverage Wilson’s success on play action passes. He’s averaged 9.3 play action pass attempts per game over the last two seasons with a completion percentage of 67. This news suggests the Seahawks offense will be more balanced this season. This coincides with Wilson entering the final year of the contract extension signed in July 2015.
A peak season for a wide receiver is one who finished with 258 PPR fantasy points since 2000. The sample size of receivers who have accomplished this is 182 with an average age of 27.3 years old.
Lockett is currently within the age window where 56 percent of these peak seasons take place. It is also useful to be aware of fantasy point production of wide receivers drafted in the third round or later to see how successful they’ve been during their first four seasons in the NFL. Were you aware that the only receivers drafted at No. 60 overall or later since 2000 with more PPR fantasy points than Lockett during their first four seasons are Randall Cobb and Allen Robinson? I know that’s a lot to take in, but bear with me because below is a visual of how the wide receivers with similar production to Lockett performed during their fifth season.
It’s encouraging to see Baldwin so high on this list considering he caught passes from Wilson during the 2015 season. A season like that or Keenan Allen’s 2017 is in the realm of possibilities if Lockett sees an increase in target share.
Bringing It All Together
Lockett is in an ideal position to build on his outstanding 2018 season. He will build on his rapport with Wilson and has an offensive coordinator in Schottenheimer who will look to course-correct his playcalling behavior. Lockett has the upside to finish as a WR1 if the Seahawks implement more of a vertical passing game in 2019.
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