Dynasty Fantasy Football Rookie Update: Marquise Brown, WR BAL

Stephen Gill Posted On May 18, 2019

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Name: Marquise Brown

Position: Wide Receiver

Pro Team: Baltimore Ravens

College Team: Oklahoma

Draft Status: Round one, 25th overall

Video highlights

Combine Review

Height: 5’9”
Weight: 166 pounds
Wingspan: 71 3/4”
Arms: 30 1/2”
Hands: 9”

Strengths

Explosive first step and acceleration
Tremendous top speed
Savvy, refined route runner
Agile, great at changing direction
With athleticism and elusiveness, can turn any catch into a 30-yarder
Gets off line of scrimmage well for his size
Not afraid of contact despite size
Two years of tremendous production as a Sooner

Weaknesses

Quite small at 5’9” and below 170 pounds
Missed the NFL Combine due to a Lisfranc injury this off-season
Not as experienced running short routes
Inconsistent ball skills, with relatively little margin for error
Departing from a very production-friendly offensive system; will be tested more than he’s used to

Opportunities

There isn’t much to say: The Ravens passing game should allow Brown all that he can handle. There will be 197 targets to go around just with Michael Crabtree and John Brown’s departures, and among Baltimore’s returning receivers, Willie Snead is the most formidable competitor for targets. Brown joins what might have been the NFL’s worst receiving corps, and with the Ravens investing a first-round pick in him, he should certainly get his shot. Even in a low-passing-volume offense, it’s pretty easy to see a healthy Brown getting his fair share of targets.

Also fortunately for him, the Ravens’ newer pieces should help: Third-round receiver Miles Boykin wins in different areas of the field as Brown, while Justice Hill’s explosive running will also occupy some defensive attention. Perhaps most importantly, while Lamar Jackson isn’t yet a uniformly strong passer, he was best at throwing downfield at Louisville, and his rookie season indicated similarly; per Pro Football Focus, Jackson had a passer rating of 99 on throws 20+ yards downfield (to a lacking group of downfield receivers, at that). Brown’s volume will almost certainly be there, and there’s a chance that surrounding pieces click quickly enough that he’ll be able to make good use of that workload.

Threats

I don’t yet have the utmost faith in the NFL’s offensive minds. For Brown to be as effective as possible, it requires an offensive system that makes the most out of two highly unconventional players — himself and Jackson. After the Ravens impressively shifted its offensive system mid-season to accommodate Jackson, and then hired Greg Roman from within to be their next offensive coordinator, things look promising. Still, Brown’s tiny stature places many constraints on the ways that Roman can effectively deploy him, and I’m not taking it for granted that a run-first offensive coordinator realizes Hollywood’s potential.

Next, a Lisfranc injury is one of the more concerning types of injury. Brown’s durability concerns could simply keep him off the field long enough to sap most of his dynasty value — as well as his athleticism. It’s impossible to say what will happen on the injury front, but it should certainly be on owners’ minds.

Additionally, in my dynasty circles, there’s a lot of hesitance toward Lamar Jackson. The former Heisman winner experienced quite an up-and-down season, and the downs are hard to forget — his ugly playoff loss to the Chargers especially so. However, Jackson’s 2018 shouldn’t be taken as a definitive judgement, even considering that Wild Card game.

He ended the regular season with 7.1 passing yards per attempt — league average over the last ten years — on 170 throws to an… unsightly receiving corps. Meanwhile, the playoff game featured a terrific Chargers defensive scheme with one of the few personnel sets capable of executing it, which Jackson (and the Ravens) had no answer for. On paper, his rookie season points more to an “inconsistent rookie who still needs to get acclimated to the NFL” than a “likely bust”, and even then, a season with less than 200 pass attempts isn’t a strong sample size to be working from. Jackson is a threat to Marquise Brown in that he is a definite question mark, but not yet a definite liability.

Short-term expectations

Provided Brown is healthy entering this season, I’d expect a much better season from him in best ball formats than in lineup-setting ones. A developing downfield threat paired with an inconsistent, young quarterback has all the makings of a very boom-or-bust year for Brown, but as we’ve seen of him at Oklahoma, at least the booms will be pretty big.

Long-term expectations

Assuming relatively good health (obviously a strong assumption), Brown is a solid bet to gain and sustain dynasty relevance. As the Ravens’ first-round pick, he’s been given the runway to become the clear number one receiver. His film and draft slot indicate that he should claim that status fairly easily, and from there, he would be a relatively quarterback-insulated receiver — as a guy who’s best at getting open and staying open, he relies more on competence than excellence from his passer.

Of course, if he doesn’t live up to his billing, it’s hard to work a mediocre 166-pounder into an NFL offense. Still, I would expect yearly production in the WR2-3 range with weekly WR1 potential as a baseline. With strong quarterback play, his good weeks would presumably be more common, possibly pushing him into WR1 territory.

NFL player comparison

It’s hard not to say DeSean Jackson. Jackson was a bit taller and lankier than Brown, and perhaps not quite as good of a route runner out of college, but both are as small and fast as anyone on the field, and better at getting behind secondaries than anyone else I can remember. Jackson has recorded five 1,000-yard seasons in 11 years, and probably would’ve put up more if his prime came in today’s more downfield-friendly NFL. It’s a lofty comparison to place on Brown, provided he’s healthy, but again, he’s got that talent by all indications.

Projected rookie draft range

All of my praise for Brown has come with the caveat of health. A Lisfranc injury is no joke, and in a dynasty community that can get hysterical about lacerated kidneys, it’d make sense for Brown to drop a good amount because of it. Sure enough, despite being the first receiver taken in the NFL Draft, Brown has fallen all the way to 14th in DLF rookie ADP. In some of my drafts, I’ve even seen him fall to the end of the second round. There should always be caution when drafting a player entering with a significant injury. However, Brown’s injury does not appear to be that alarming, especially considering how players like Deebo Samuel and DK Metcalf have retained value despite their own lengthy injury histories.

Others point to an unfavorable situation in Baltimore, but as I’ve already gone into depth with, I think those concerns have also been overblown. In a class where every receiver outside of N’Keal Harry has his fair share of concerns — AJ Brown competing with Corey Davis and a few others in another low-volume offense, Metcalf’s injury history and slide in the draft, Samuel’s durability concerns and his own competition for touches, etc. — it’s an overreaction to push the first-drafted receiver outside of the first round.

To that end, I’ve seen a little momentum pushing Brown back up draft boards, and would ultimately expect him to work back into the back half of the first round. I personally have him third (very slightly in the lead of a six-player second tier), but thanks to a bearish market, would advise you to move back, gain additional value, and draft him later on — you’ll probably be able to get him there.

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Stephen Gill

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

An aspiring sports executive, Steve hails from Kansas City and currently studies in Montreal. In addition to fantasy and the NFL, he enjoys college football and the NBA. Other interests of his range from video games to hip-hop to online argumentation.