It’s odd how quickly things can change in the game of fantasy football. One week, you’ll have someone like Tyreek Hill on your bench with not a single soul wanting to trade for him, and the next week you’ll have trade offers up the wazoo, yet you don’t want to trade him away. It’s always fascinated me when looking over rosters, thinking “Who can be that guy?”

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Someone in a completely different situation is Jaguars wide receiver Allen Robinson, as he’s someone who went from untradeable in 2015, to someone fantasy players didn’t want to put into their lineups in 2016. There appears to be a divide on him going into 2017, as the stat-heads want nothing to do with what was the most inefficient wide receiver performance, while others stand up for Robinson saying that he still looks great on the field, but that he and his quarterback Blake Bortles just weren’t on the same page in 2016.

The Deep Ball

Let’s start with Robinson’s 2015 season and dissect where he succeeded and then compare that to his 2016 season. He saw a league-high 46 targets that traveled at least 20 yards in the air that year, converting them into 19 receptions for 672 yards and three touchdowns. That’s a 41.3 percent catch rate and 14.6 yards per target on deep balls, while the league average stood at a 34.6 percent catch rate and 12.1 yards per target. It’s clear that Bortles and Robinson were on the same page in 2015, but that number was flipped upside down in 2016.

Robinson saw 31 of those targets in 2016, which resulting in a very disappointing four receptions for 108 yards with zero touchdowns, which amounts to just a 12.9 percent catch rate and 3.4 yards per target. The league average remained similar with a 35.1 percent catch rate and 12.1 yards per target. Was this Robinson’s fault? Not really. Just five of his deep targets in 2016 were deemed “catchable,” while 20 of his deep targets were catchable in 2015. Bortles was and still is a problem when trying to project a player like Robinson.

Shorter Targets and Touchdown Percentages

What about the remainder of his targets, how was he there? Below is the chart of his performance on passes thrown under 20 yards in the air.

As you can see, the numbers align for the most part. Touchdown regression was almost certain when scoring 14 touchdowns like he did in 2015. This again comes back to Bortles, whose top three wide receivers scored a touchdown once every 27.7 pass attempts in 2016. To give you an idea as to how bad that is, it would have ranked 100th out of 135 wide receivers who caught a touchdown last year. This is not just a problem with Robinson, but the whole passing offense.

Looking closer at the inconsistencies of Robinson throughout the 2016 season, much of his struggles came from games where he saw a lack of targets, which should be expected when the targets are coming from an inconsistent quarterback, but not to the extremes that Robinson’s splits were.

Going back to look through his game logs, it seems like he struggled in obviously bad matchups, like against the Broncos (Aqib Talib and Chris Harris), Texans (A.J. Bouye, who is now his teammate), Lions (Darius Slay), Bills (Stefon Gilmore), and the Vikings (Xavier Rhodes). Does this make up for his six performances that included 31 yards or less? No, but it should help you understand what got him to where he finished. There were just four games in 2015 where he saw eight targets or less, and he struggled in most of those games as well, including finishing lines of 1/27/0, 1/4/1, and 3/57/1.

2017 Outlook

So when looking forward to 2017, what do we need? Pure volume. That might be an issue with the changes that have happened with the team. After allowing 28.0 points per game in the first seven weeks, the Jaguars defense started to improve (as we thought they would) as a unit and allowed just 23.3 points per game the remainder of the season. This matters because if the defense improves, Bortles’ 1,231 pass attempts over the last two years are sure to dip. In fact, his pass attempts already dipped when the defense started performing. After averaging 41.4 attempts over the first seven weeks, Bortles averaged just 37.2 attempts over the final nine games.

It doesn’t end there, either, as the Jaguars boosted their defense once again this offseason, adding the top cornerback on the market A.J. Bouye, the top defensive lineman on the market Calais Campbell, and one of the top safeties on the market Barry Church. This legitimately could be a top-five defense in 2017. If that’s the case, I went and looked at the top five defenses from last year (points per game allowed) and matched it up with their point total. The Patriots ranked 13th in pass attempts, Seahawks ranked 23rd, Broncos ranked 18th, Giants ranked 8th, and the Vikings ranked 11th. You see the Giants and the Vikings in the top-12, but what’s the common denominator? Neither had a foundation running back. The Jaguars drafted theirs at No. 4 in the NFL Draft, when they selected Leonard Fournette.

Another thing going against Robinson and the passing game is that there is a new coaching staff in place, and if you read my article earlier this offseason discussing what a coaching change means (read it here), the Jaguars were likely to throw much less regardless of whether or not they had a solid defense and/or run game. Is Robinson going to see nine or more targets in more than half his games? Probably not, but it does help that Julius Thomas was traded away to the Dolphins, as he ate up 6.2 targets per game over the last two years, and the Jaguars didn’t really replace him with anyone who deserves anywhere close to that many targets. Blake Bortles has reportedly changed his throwing motion, but that doesn’t change anything for me, as we heard the same things about Tim Tebow back about five years ago.

Robinson is going to be a good wide receiver in this league for a long time, I truly do believe that, but his ceiling right now is limited because of the current state of his team and the lack of talent/consistency out of his quarterback. In order to return to WR1 status, he needs too many things to go in his favor. With that being said, there are some being drafted around him that also come with some risk, like Terrelle Pryor, Jarvis Landry, and Keenan Allen. When all is said and done, I think Robinson’s ADP as the 18th wide receiver is just about right, though he’s probably the 20th wide receiver off my board. If he gets off to a slow start in 2017, buy him in dynasty formats, as he’ll have a different quarterback throwing him the ball next year.

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Mike Tagliere is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeTagliereNFL.