The Gase Effect: Devante Parker and His New Best Friend
The Dolphins hiring of Adam Gase was a controversial one. Some argue that he rode Peyton Mannings coattails in Denver and that’s what made him look good. I frankly thought the same thing until he got to Chicago. Who was there to make him “look good”? Smokin Jay? A hobbled Alshon Jeffrey? Their first round draft pick? Oh wait...Yeah I don’t think so. Arguably dealing with one of the weakest offensive units in the NFL last year, he made them a top 10 offense in terms of efficiency. This is really what swayed my opinion on him and made me dive a little deeper into his players tendencies as a coach. While researching, I found some pretty interesting trends revolving around the X receiver in his offenses and reasons to be optimistic about Devante Parker for 2016.
History of X Receivers with Gase:
Demaryius Thomas:
Demaryius posted some of the best numbers of his career with Gase as his OC.
Now lets take a look at Alshon Jeffreys stats last year:
This was a season to forget for Alshon due to all of his injuries, but when he played, he was a stud.
In the 7 games he played while not being a decoy he averaged 11.8 targets, 7 receptions,110 yards and had a TD in 3 of those 7 games. This would have led him to a full season pace of 332 PPR Fantasy Points. This would have made him the WR #4 in fantasy points this year.
These remarkable statistics should not go unnoticed, especially since they both had the same OC.
Basic Measurables:
To compare Alshon, Demaryius, and Gase’s newest outside receiver Devante Parker we can also look at their measurables. Alshon and Parkers are actually unbelievably similar, while Demaryius is a whole different animal.
Not only are Alshon and Parkers build, speed and jumping ability strikingly comparable, I noticed many other similarities while watching film on both. They both have shown flashes of elite jump-ball ability, while possessing great hands and a knack to get open.
On a side note, some of Devante Parkers actual draft comparisons were to A.J. Green (PlayerProfiler.com), and Deandre Hopkins (Walter Football). Overall I would say he fits quite well into the mold of players Gase has featured or would want to.
Parkers Rookie Season:
After a rocky start, Parker got going week 12. He was coming back from an injury, and there are reports now that he tore scar tissue in his foot week 8. Another setback after returning from foot surgery in the beginning of the year held him back until week 12 where his splits were very revealing:
Breaking this down further, he posted stat lines of 4-80-1 against the Jets, 3-63-31 against the Ravens, 4-87-0 against the Chargers, 4-93-0 against the Colts and ended the season on a high note with 5-106-1 against the Patriots.
Countering Reasons he Won’t Breakout:
Trying to be as unbiased as possible and to consider counter-arguments against yours, can help verify your own claim to why a player will be successful so here are a few counter-arguments. Also feel free to add more criticism.
Looking at some of these counter-arguments, there are other factors you could attribute to DT and Alshons usage and success. DT and Peyton had some great chemistry going, and DT was being targeted a good amount before Gase was the OC. For Alshon, everyone knows that Jay has tunnel vision with his #1 WR, especially if he is somewhat talented. However, both receivers were MORE successful on a per-game basis in their respective offenses when Gase was the OC.
Another factor that might delay Parkers breakout is Jarvis Landry. Tannehill’s favorite receiver isn’t going to just disappear. Although, something I looked at was when Wes Welker played in Denver as the slot receiver with Adam Gase. He saw a huge decrease in his usage from 2013-2014. I originally thought this was because he played in the slot and I brought this up In a recent conversation with Brad Evans (@YahooNoise) on twitter, but he claimed that Gase strictly designs targets for his best receivers, not just his outside ones. So going with Brads theory of utilizing his best players, Gase has actually been able to generally been able to maximize around 2 pass-catcher’s values and make them consistent fantasy performers regardless of where they are. In Denver it was DT-Decker (2013), DT-Sanders (2014), and in Chicago it was Alshon-Martellus (2015). Still the one common denominator and the premier performer in these duos is the big X receiver. Even if Gase is very excited about Landry and features him more than Parker, ending up as the #2 guy in these tandems still ends up boding pretty well from a fantasy perspective.
Recent Reports:
Now, none of this analysis matters if offseason reports don’t match what I just stated, and his assumed role in the offense. Obviously some of these reports are bloated, but some hype from the OC and QB means they are at least heading in the right direction.
Back in February Gase started the hype train early with Parker:
Another report came out in April saying Tannehill and Parker have been practicing Gase’ new plays:
Parker was already starting to gain Tannehills trust at the end of the year as well. Over the last 6 games in 2015 he received at least 5 targets in each of them.
In the most recent report, Tannehill continued to Rave about him.
Projection:
When projecting him for 2016 I used a lot of the averages from Gase’ featured offense and Parkers stats from last year due to the small sample size of Parkers NFL career.
I gave him 17 targets lower than the lowest target total out of all featured receivers in Gase’s offense. I gave him less because we still aren’t fully sure that he will be “the-guy”. But even Emmanuel Sanders, as the second receiver in the Broncos offense in 2014 received 140 targets. I settled on 125 targets, attempting not to over-project and so there is still upside available off of my projection.
When looking at catch rate, Parkers was pretty poor as a rookie. He caught only 26 of his 51 targets amounting to a little over 50%. I expect him to shake off these rookie struggles and catch closer to 60% of his targets as this is more of a norm for receivers like himself. Other receivers in Gases’ offense also averaged about 60% as well. This would give him 76 catches on the year.
Parkers 19 YPR last year was ridiculous and I expect that to go down quite a bit. I gave him 15 YPR for 2016 because it is the average of all of Gases’ featured receiver’s the last 3 years and Ryan Tannehill can’t throw a deep ball extremely well. This would amount to 1144 yards for 2016.
He scored only 3 TD’s last year but I bumped him up to 7 this year and that honestly may be a bit low. Demaryius scored 11 and 14 TD’s in his two years with AG and there are more reports now saying they want to use parker in the RedZone and get more creative with him.
This total stat line projected would be 76 catches, 1144 yards and 7 TDs. This would give him 232.6 PPR fantasy points for 2016. That puts him at #20 in my projections for this upcoming season which is 11 spots higher than the Expert Consensus on FantasyPros.com. However, I am still comfortable with it because of his massive upside. On a per game basis over the last 3 years, ALL three of Adam Gases’ X receivers have been ELITE WR1s. Adjusted PPG put them at WR#3 in 2015, WR#2 in 2014 and WR#1 in 2013. According to FantasyData.com and TheFootballDatabase. This is the kind of upside we are talking about if Parker fully blossoms.
All of these reports and historical analysis along with the similarities of Parker to past successful receivers in a Gase offense suggests he could be in for a big year. His current ADP according to FFcalculator.com is 6.11 and the 31st receiver off the board. At this price I am drafting him very often. You probably won’t have to start him right away if you are drafting him here, and if you are it is your flex. Parker is also one of the few players in the late 6th rounds that offers top 15 positional upside! This kind of upside cannot be ignored, especially at this price. Draft Devante Parker and thank me later.
Don't forget to follow us on twitter: @Fantasy_Matrix and watch out for our next article about one of our favorite TE's for 2016.
