More than a Thielen: Examining Adam Thielen’s Dynasty Value

Everyone seems so tempted to make the pun of “Hooked on a Thielen”. I get it. I loved Guardians of the Galaxy too but don’t forget that Boston also had a great song called “More than a feeling”. In this case, I think that song is apt. Many trade polls suggest the community views Adam Thielen as a low-end WR2 at best, but I have a feeling that there’s more to Thielen. Sick of the puns yet?

Really, I’m writing this article because as of in my most recent update I had Adam Thielen ranked as my 14th-best wide receiver for dynasty purposes. Besides Jake Anderson, who I know is very high on Thielen, not many rankers have him that high. In fact, his average ranking here on Dynasty League Football is the 22nd-best wide receiver for dynasty purposes. Some of our rankers even have him as low as the 29th-best, so what gives?

History

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Adam Thielen went undrafted in the 2013 class. He managed to sign a deal with the Minnesota Vikings, but never saw any action except for their practice squad. Undrafted free agents who end up on practice squads never seem to warrant any attention from the dynasty community.

2014 wasn’t much better from a fantasy perspective. However, he did see his first NFL action and managed to make a name for himself on special teams. He was named to the All-Pro special teams kick return unit for the NFC and his play was well regarded.

We saw more of the same from him in 2015, so we are going to flash forward to 2016. In 2016, Stefon Diggs dealt with a groin injury which allowed Thielen and not the first-round draft pick Laquon Treadwell to emerge as the main man for the Vikings. He ended the year with a 69-967-5 line on 93 targets, which was good enough for a WR29 finish in PPR formats.

I want to dig into this a bit further. I recently examined the number of wide receivers who had 95 targets or less that finished as a top 24 wide receiver or better since 2010. Only eight players have accomplished that feat since 2010. They are listed in the thread below (except for Nelson Agholor who I missed in the original tweet).

Alright so instead of asking I’m just going to tweet it out so I don’t make mistakes: WRS who have finished as a WR2 on 95 targets or less since 2010 in PPR:
Desean Jackson (twice)
Julio Jones
Mario Manningham
Juju Smith-Schuster
T.Y. Hilton
Laurent Robinson
Stefon Diggs

— Bobby Koch (@RekedFantasy) March 22, 2018

You may have noticed that Adam Thielen’s 2016 season doesn’t make this list. However, he did manage to finish as the WR29. Additionally, his 195.2 points in 2016 would have been good enough to make him the WR18 in 2017. I recognize that this was a down year for fantasy scoring, but that’s still impressive given his limited volume.

How did he follow up that performance in 2016? Well, he was rewarded with more volume as he has been every season since being placed on the practice squad. Notice a pattern here? It’s almost like a guy who must work hard instead of being handed a role due to his draft pedigree may work harder to prove himself. What a concept.

So, in 2017, armed with additional volume, surely Thielen must have shown that his effectiveness from 2016 couldn’t carry over, right? Regression was coming him for and hard! Except he finished as the WR9 in PPR formats. He had the fifth-most receiving yards last season and beat out Michael Thomas who is beloved by the fantasy community.

That’s all great, but how will he perform now?

The Present

Some of you are likely thinking: surely, he can’t keep it up in 2018 because Stefon Diggs is the true number one wide receiver on the Vikings! Perhaps you didn’t know that over the past two seasons that Thielen has 491 more yards than Diggs. Yes, that was in five more games played but that means Diggs would have had to average nearly 100 yards per game missed to keep pace with Thielen.

I also understand that Diggs missing time means Thielen gets more looks. That’s a fair criticism, so let’s look at what the splits are with Diggs in the lineup versus without him, courtesy of Rotoviz:

As you can see, it doesn’t make a huge difference for Thielen whether Diggs is in the lineup or not. Sure, his receiving yards and receptions go up but his points per game stay about the same because of his increased touchdown ratio. Really though, with these stats set out in front of you, it’s hard to argue that Thielen is only good because Diggs is injured so often.

We do need to talk briefly about the Vikings signing Kirk Cousins because it has a rather large impact on the players. Sure, Case Keenum played very well last season, but he is not Cousins.

What does Cousins signing mean for Thielen? As you can imagine, I think it means his quality of targets is about to go up. Cousins has been a top ten fantasy option for the past three years, and he now has even better weapons with the Vikings. He may not throw as much as he has in the past because the Vikings do have a strong defense and Dalvin Cook, but I see little reason to think that the Vikings passing offense will decrease from the 527 passing attempts they had last season.

Additionally, Cousins signing means that the Vikings will have less cap room going forward. Anthony Barr, Eric Kendricks, Danielle Hunter, and Diggs are all due for extensions in 2019 or else they’ll become free agents. One of those players will likely find themselves on a new team, and it’s not hard to imagine that it may be Diggs.

Thielen is signed at a very reasonable rate through 2020 for the Vikings, and if Diggs were to leave that would make him the default number one wide receiver for a Cousins-led offense. Before you get too excited though, in 2015 Jordan Reed was Kirk Cousins’ top target and finished with 244.2 PPR points which would have made him the WR13 that season if he qualified. In 2016, Pierre Garcon was Cousins’ top target and finished as the WR22. We won’t go into 2017 because it was generally bad. It didn’t help that most of his receivers couldn’t stay healthy.

Why am I excited that Thielen could be Cousins top target then? The Redskins never targeted one player more than 114 times in Cousins’ three seasons there. It could be that Cousins doesn’t like to spread the ball, or it could be that was part of the system. In Minnesota, the past two seasons the top target hasn’t seen less than 130 targets. That could change with offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur going over to the Giants, but new OC John DeFilippo gives his top pass-catchers a healthy dose of targets too.

Dynasty

Let’s bring this all back to what this means for Thielen’s dynasty outlook. He’s currently going into his age-28 season, which certainly doesn’t make him a spring chicken, but it also doesn’t make him a dinosaur as some people would like you to believe. If you believe there is a chance that Diggs isn’t back in 2019 season, then Thielen would become the top pass-catcher for the Vikings at age 29. It’s not crazy to think he can continue to be productive, if not improve upon his numbers for the next three seasons.

Recently, on the Dynasty Wallstreet Podcast, I heard the hosts discussing whether would trade Adam Thielen for the third pick in the 2018 rookie draft. All of them said they would. That means they would trade the man who has the eighth-most receiving yards over the last two seasons for either Nick Chubb, Sony Michel, or perhaps Courtland Sutton. While everyone is all about the new kids on the block, or digging Diggs, just remember there is more than just a feeling that you should be hooked on Thielen.

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