Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: Julio Jones' impact

(Leading up to the 2021 NFL season, FTN’s Tyler Loechner will dive into the fantasy football numbers to bring you his Fantasy Stat of the Day, five days a week.)

A.J. Brown is primed to be the next Julio Jones, so it’s only fitting that Brown gets to play with actual Julio Jones as he enters the most crucial years of his young career.

It’s hard to call Jones’ impending trade to the Titans a fantasy win for anyone on the Titans outside of Ryan Tannehill. Dreams of Brown's 175 targets have vanished. Derrick Henry will still be a workhorse, but a repeat of 2020 seems unlikely now. And any hopes of a TE riser — Anthony Firkser? — have been gutted.

The fact there are a lot of alpha mouths to feed is not ideal for fantasy — but it sure is bound to be fun as hell. From a talent standpoint, the Jones-Brown-Henry talent trio is absurd, and Titans games will now be a staple in best ball and DFS stacks in 2021.

Julio Jones slides into the Corey Davis role — as a big upgrade

Davis has only topped 100 targets once in his career, while Jones has averaged 130 targets per season. From a workhorse standpoint, they aren’t comparable. But Jones and Davis were right next to each other in aDOT last season — Davis as 11.43 and Jones at 11.44.

That stat in and of itself doesn’t mean anything from a fantasy perspective, but it does mean that Jones should fit easily into this offense. He’s basically just a massive upgrade from Davis, who was actually quite good last year in his own right. Davis scored nearly 14 fantasy PPG in PPR leagues last year. That’s a respectable number, though it’s not up to Jones’ 18 PPG figure from 2019. Brown was also at about 18 PPG last year.

It’s clear that Brown and Jones are both dominant WRs. Among WRs with at least 50 targets last season, Brown ranked seventh with 2.14 fantasy points per target. Jones ranked 11th (2.09).

Jones has averaged nearly 100 receding yards per game over the course of his 10-year career. Brown hasn’t been as prolific in the yardage category (70 per game), but he has been an elite scorer, finding the end zone 20 total times in 30 career games (0.66 per game).

So how will two alpha WRs work on the same offense? Jones thrived in Atlanta despite the emergence of Calvin Ridley, last year’s overall No. 5 WR in fantasy, so there shouldn’t be any questions about his ability to perform alongside another elite talent. And while Davis was good in 2020, we can’t say Brown has been battle-tested the same way Jones has.

But the real threat to production will not be Jones vs. Brown. It will be Henry, fresh off a 2,000-yard rushing season and a truly rare dominant RB force in the league. A threat for 350-400 touches, Henry may be the biggest mouth to feed of them all.

Exactly how the Henry-Jones-Brown trio split shakes up remains to be seen, but it seems clear this combo absolutely should still work for fantasy purposes, even if it’s not exactly the ideal setup.

A top-12 finish for both Brown and Jones is not completely out of the question, but it would likely require Henry to finish outside the top five at his position. A more realistic expectation is a tail-end WR1 finish for either Jones or Brown and a mid-pack WR2 finish for the other. My money is on Jones being the better fantasy asset in 2021.