It’d be about time for Ridley to blow up tonight on Monday Night Football—that’s for dang sure. I’m not sure how much more patient fantasy managers and Ridley/Titans fans more broadly can be with the first-year Tennessee wideout. He’s going to have to do some serious work on the Dolphins secondary.
Fantasy managers with Ridley on their team are likely either not starting him at all in Week 5, or far beyond any sort of roster decision point for rolling Ridley out tonight. I’m here to encourage the folks who bet on Ridley that it was, at least, opportunistically sound.
I wrote about Ridley last week, telling you to buy low on him before tonight’s game. He ranks fifth in total air yards (345), commands a 17.6% target share, and averages 2.55 yards of separation at the catch-point for all his receptions so far this year. These are well-above-average opportunity numbers.
Here’s an excerpt from the above piece:
So—what it comes down to is whether or not you believe air yardage for air yardage’s sake is worthy of a blind investment. Will Levis remains an anomaly; we know he can throw the deep ball, but we’ve seen some of his rawest moments exhibit themselves as immaturity (see: inexcusable throw which led to surrender cobra in Week 1, etc.) so far. He might just be figuring it out.
I’ve been bitten before by trusting too much in air yards alone as a vector. But I honestly believe it’s Ridley’s final year to get one last chance from fantasy managers. I’ll grant him that. Of the top-ten receivers in air yards, Ridley ranks second in average route depth at 14.5 yards (second to MHJ, who, in his rookie season, is averaging 15.5 yards per clip).
Folks are understandably spooked by his 1.9 FPT performance in Week 3. But consider this: in Weeks 1 and 2, he logged 51 and 50 offensive plays, respectively. In Week 3, that plummeted to 38. There’s been no word of an injury, so this was likely just a slow game-script against the Packers. He’s still run 92 routes on the year, which is above league-average.
Don’t be fooled by that box score. Others will be.
As far as the matchup goes: we know new DC Anthony Weaver is utilizing Ramsey’s skillset by deploying him in various positions across the defensive backfield. Ramsey primarily and almost-only played outside for Vic Fangio. We’ll need to see how this affects Ridley’s coverage.
But, generally? I don’t want to use the term dart-throw, here. It’s just there’s something about this situation that just has me feeling like tonight is a total coin flip. A boom-or-bust night ahead for Ridley. He’s either going to get two points, or, like, 28.
I make no claims to be the best bettor in the world, but my strategy of betting on optimistic/positive regression trends has been far more successful than it has been a failure thus far. I’ll call it and say tonight’s Ridley’s night. I was right about Justice Hill last night. Heat check!
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