Is Robby Anderson an Undervalued Dynasty Asset?

Bobby Koch Posted On November 22, 2017

If you know me, you’ll know that I always root for the underdog. That’s the reason my favorite comic hero is Spiderman. He doesn’t have the god-like powers of Superman, but he tries his best anyway. This feeling applies to many things in life. I like some indie music, and I like tv shows I consider to be underrated. I’m starting to think I might be a “hipster”. In fact, the song “Underdog” by Spoon might as well be an anthem for all the things I like.

Now let’s bring this all back to football. When I first watched a NFL game, I was watching a Patriots-Jets game. My future brother in law was a huge Pats fan and told me they were the heavy favorites. If you haven’t figured out by now, that made me cheer as hard as I possibly could for the Jets. They still lost, but they put up a good game.

You understand by now that I truly have a thing for underdogs (and no, I am not a Jets fan. I’m a Giants fan, which may be worse this season). Why are we talking about underdogs? Because the player I want to talk about today is one. His situation in some regards reminds me of Adam Thielen, another love of mine.

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Adam Thielen was an undrafted free agent in the 2014 draft, and that seemed to follow him no matter where he went. This is something DLF write Peter Howard and I have discussed, but we as a community tend to hold on to draft capital too much. Sure, high draft picks tend to succeed more than undrafted free agents. However, when a guy like Thielen puts up over 900 yards like he did last season, it might be time to stop paying attention to the draft capital and rather pay attention to the production on the field.

This is happening to another player in the league right now. I think it’s a combination of the lack of draft capital and the situation he finds himself in. It’s fitting I mentioned the Jets earlier because the player I’m talking about is Robby Anderson.

For those that are unfamiliar, let me introduce you to the 24-year old you should be paying attention to. Robby Anderson was an undrafted free agent out of Temple in the 2016 draft. The Jets took a flier on him despite still having Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker in town.

The move seemed to work out pretty well for them. Anderson managed to put up a 42-587-2 line last year despite catching passes from Ryan Fitzpatrick, Geno Smith, and Bryce Petty last season. In the past four seasons, there have been 27 rookie wideouts to get to 500 yards. I get why that might not impress you, but what if I told you that Robby Anderson had more yards than either Brandin Cooks or Allen Robinson did in their rookie seasons? Or that he did it on fewer receptions?

Am I saying that Anderson is on the same planet as Cooks or Robinson? Of course not. However, I certainly would be interested to see how he followed up a rookie campaign in which there was a three-week span that he didn’t finish lower than the WR17 in .5 PPR formats. So now let’s examine how he’s doing this year.

The sophomore campaign didn’t get off to a bang for Anderson. The Jets seemed like they were in total tank mode with the release of Marshall and Decker, and Anderson was arrested during the off-season. The report was that Anderson had a run in with a police officer at a music festival in Miami, and this had all his dynasty fantasy owners panicking.

Despite our fears, nothing came of it and Anderson was able to play this season. That didn’t alter that Josh McCown was still set to be his quarterback though. Yes, the same Josh McCown who has started for eight different teams in his 15-year career.

Since you’re all reading this now and not at the beginning of the season, you know what happened. Josh McCown has pleasantly surprised everyone, and Robby Anderson is doing very well in a down year for receivers. He ranks 22nd in receiving yards on the season, is tied for ninth in touchdowns and 29th in receptions. Those ranks were all before week 11 when he had his bye, but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Here we have a young receiver who has shown flashes of excellence and has followed it up with a very solid campaign. Surely we are valuing him properly as a community, right? Well, according to the most recent Dynasty League Football ADP he’s the 115th player off the board. Some players going ahead of him include Terrelle Pryor, Dede Westbrook, and D’Onta Foreman.

I’ve been clear about my feelings about Pryor in the past (I thought he was overrated after last season), and I mean no respect to either Westbrook or Foreman but I’m not sure what they’ve done to prove they are more valuable than Anderson. The only thing that I can think of is that both players were drafted.

I know for a fact that Robby Anderson is still being undervalued, because in the DLF Voxer group chat one of our writers recently asked if a third was enough for Robby Anderson. That’s how this all started. I realized he wasn’t the only one thinking that Anderson was worth “maybe a third”. Just to give you all an idea the third round this past season consisted of players such as Amara Darboh, Josh Reynolds, and George Kittle. Kittle seems to have turned into something of value, but compared to all those guys I rather have Robby Anderson.

Just in case you’re not sold yet let me share this with you: in his last sixteen games, Anderson has scored 157.5 ppr points. Remember when I compared him to Adam Thielen earlier? Thielen scored 160.7.5 ppr points all of last season and was the WR29 in that format. I think it’s time to pay attention to Anderson, don’t you?

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