Dynasty Spotlight: Tavon Austin

Jacob Feldman

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Editor’s note: This article is one in a series of articles geared towards the Dynasty Football World Championship contest sponsored by our friends at FFtoolbox.com. This is the world’s first dynasty fantasy football contest designed to reward the long term, successful dynasty coach, and crown a Dynasty King!  Find out more about the Dynasty World Championship at DynastyKing.comand be sure to check FFtoolbox.com’s articles, tools and rankings for sports beyond fantasy football, including Baseball, NASCAR, Golf and more!

If you’re new to the world of dynasty football, let me welcome you to the ultimate fantasy football experience! Be warned it is an entirely new journey and one that requires year round commitment to do well. In essence, it is the difference between buying a car and renting one for the weekend. Anyone can rent a red Ferrari, but it takes a special individual to be able to own one and take care of it. The same is true when you compare redraft fantasy leagues to dynasty leagues. Anyone can get lucky over a brief period of time and win in a redraft league, but it takes someone special to put together and maintain a roster that can win year after year.

Since you keep the same roster each year in a dynasty league, there is a special focus on young players and rookies who are coming into the league. Unfortunately, many owners who are new to dynasty leagues tend to make two fatal errors in reasoning:

1)      They tend to overvalue rookies and their potential when compared to more established players.  It is very easy to get swept up by “rookie fever” when the media focus of the majority of the off-season is on the NFL combine, college pro days and the NFL Draft. It is also easy to remember the rookies who made major impacts in past years like Andrew Luck and Doug Martin. The important item that seasoned dynasty owners know and that new ones need to learn is that most rookies do NOT become fantasy relevant. In fact, many of them don’t even become NFL relevant. Putting too much weight on unproven players can destroy a roster.

2)      They fail to realize that not all rookie classes are created equally. The 2012 rookie class was exceptional in a number of ways giving us the extraordinary talents of not just Luck and Martin but also Robert Griffin IIIRussell WilsonTrent RichardsonJustin Blackmon and others. The 2011 rookie class gave us AJ Green and Julio Jones, both of whom exploded as rookies. This is simply not normal. In fact, it is extremely rare that you get multiple top ten talents in a draft. This year’s group, while it has some nice players, doesn’t have any who are at the same level as those players listed above. It lacks that special player, or in the case of the past few years, those special players, plural. Simply put, not all groups of rookies are the same.

With that in mind, I’m going to share some thoughts on a few of the biggest rookies at the skill positions this year. My goal is to help you figure out how they compare to past rookie classes so that you value them properly when drafting your first dynasty team.

Previously I took a look at the top running back in this year’s draft, Eddie Lacy, as well as the top quarterback on most board, Geno Smith. If you missed either of those, take a look at them. I would now like to spend some time looking at one of the top receivers, Tavon Austin.

Austin was a college teammate of the top quarterback, Geno Smith, at West Virginia. When you add in fellow wide receiver Stedman Bailey to the mix (who will probably go on day two of the NFL draft), you start to get the picture of just how high flying the Mountaineers’ offense was this past year when they had three of the top 25 skill position players in this year’s draft.

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Austin’s skill set was a perfect fit for the spread offense they run at West Virginia. He has great straight line speed as evidenced by one of the best times in the 40 yard dash at the combine with a 4.34 second time. He also excels in the area of acceleration and keeps his speed better than just about anyone when making cuts or changing his direction. When you combine with very good vision you get someone that is extremely dangerous with the ball in his hands. Speaking of hands, he also possesses good (though not great) hands and can bring in most balls that are in his catch radius even if they are thrown a little bit off the mark. When you put it all together you get someone who gets at least 100 catches, over 1,180 yards, and eight or more touchdowns during his Junior and Senior seasons in college. He is a big reason why Geno Smith has looked so good over the last two years.

After hearing all of that, you might be running to your draft boards to put Austin on the top of it. While I’m not saying he doesn’t belong there, let’s first take a moment to make sure that you get the whole picture. Austin will be a first round NFL pick and almost certainly be gone at #16 to the St. Louis Rams if he makes it that long. You might be wondering why it would even take that long. With Austin, it all comes down to size. So far I’ve neglected to mention he’s only 5’8” and 174 pounds – that is a bit of an issue. There aren’t a whole lot of players in the NFL who are 5’8”, and the ones who are tend to be a fair amount more than 174 pounds. Ray Rice is 5’8”, but 212 pounds. He plays a different position than Rice, but I think you get the idea that Austin is definitely on the small side.

While the size doesn’t mean he can’t succeed, it does raise some question marks. Over the last few years, the league has seen several dynamic playmakers at the wide receiver position who have been on the smaller side of things. Percy Harvin was 5’11” and 192 pounds at the combine. Randall Cobb was a little smaller at 5’10” and 191 pounds. Both have had success in the league. The question that I (and many others) have is how small is too small. Austin is a few inches and about 15 pounds smaller than either of those players. While he showed great durability in college, it is fair to wonder how he is going to hold up against bigger, faster and stronger defenders in the NFL.

If we were to take Austin’s skill set and put it into a body that was listed at 6’0” and 200 pounds, we could be talking about a top ten or maybe even top five pick in the NFL Draft this year – he’s that good. Unfortunately, he isn’t that size, so the question is where exactly he belongs. He’s going to be a top two rookie wide receiver, along with Cordarrelle Patterson, in all drafts, if not the top receiver overall. He’s also going to push for the top rookie overall, regardless of position in a lot of drafts if people can get over the normal tendency to favor running backs just because of the position they play. In our recent rookie only mock draft at DLF,  Austin was the top selection.

What does all of that mean for those of you doing a startup draft?

Like the other skill positions, this year’s crop of receivers isn’t quite on par with the groups of last year. There isn’t an elite level talent because all the players have some major question marks about them, be it character, size, or them being raw at the position. Austin and the other top rookie wide receivers really shouldn’t be on your radar until at least the seventh round in 12 team leagues. You hopefully already have two (if not three) starting wide receivers before you look to any of them. After all, they are rookies and carry a fair amount of risk because they haven’t done anything in the NFL at this point in time. I would look to Austin around the same time that you are looking at players like Cecil Shorts, Kendall Wright and Miles Austin.

The bottom line with Austin is he has the skill set to be a dynamic player in the NFL. Unfortunately, that skill set is packaged into a body that is only 5’8” and 174 pounds. We know that is small for the NFL. The question is if it is too small to have a nice career in the league as a slot receiver. Only time will tell.

Here are some other rookie wide receivers who should be on your radar come draft day:

Cordarrelle Patterson (Tennessee) – He was a JUCO transfer this year. He has very good size and a dynamic skill set that puts him in the running to be the top receiver in this draft. The problem is he is extremely raw at the position. The question is how long it will be before he is an NFL level receiver, if ever. However, the explosive skill set is definitely there.

Keenan Allen (California) – He is an interesting prospect this year. He had terrible quarterback play in college, making it tough to judge him. He also had a knee injury last season that he still hasn’t recovered from. There are questions about his speed and his 4.7+ second 40 times didn’t help those. Were those times slow because of the injury? No one really knows. Rumors of a failed drug test at the NFL Combine could also plague him. He is someone to watch.

Justin Hunter (Tennessee) – As a teammate of Patterson last season, Hunter was actually more productive, even though he was recovering from a 2011 ACL tear. At 6’4”, he has great height, but is a touch lean. He could add a few more pounds to help with the press as long as it doesn’t slow his 4.4 speed because that is truly his bread and butter. He runs nice routes and displays decent hands.

DeAndre Hopkins (Clemson) – Many are higher than I am on him. He has decent size and very good hands. He also runs great routes and uses his body well to get into position to make the catch. Unfortunately, he lacks the speed needed to be a top NFL receiver. He could very easily be a very solid possession receiver in the NFL, though.

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jacob feldman