2021 NFL Draft Guide Player Profiles: Tyler Boyd

Tyler Boyd has been excellent for the Bengals the past couple years. He was in route to a big year with Joe Burrow last year, before an unfortunate injury derailed Burrow’s impressive rookie campaign. Overall, for the 2020 season, Boyd caught 79 of 110 targets for 841 yards and four touchdowns. Until Burrow’s injury last year, Boyd was the WR1 for this team, and there was no questioning that. Through the first ten weeks of the season, Boyd had a 22 percent target share and was the WR11 in PPR formats with Burrow at the helm of the Cincinnati offense! When Burrow got injured, it was all downhill for Boyd. The team added Ja’marr Chase in the first round of this year’s draft, adding another weapon with which Boyd will compete for targets, not to mention Tee Higgins. Is there enough to go around for Boyd in this star-studded receiver room?

If you take Boyd’s numbers from his time with Burrow in 2020, and parlay it over a full 16-game season, Boyd would have had 110 grabs on 139 targets for 1,136 yards and five touchdowns. That would have been good for WR10 on the year, coming in just ahead of Adam Thielen and A.J. Brown. I love Tee Higgins as much as the next guy but Boyd was the WR1 through the first ten weeks of the 2020 season.

Courtesy of Pro Football Focus (PFF) and RotoViz

Another interesting note is that when Burrow was healthy, it was Boyd that led the Cincinnati receivers in red zone targets. Now, Higgins turned his nine red zone grabs into five touchdowns, whereas Boyd turned his 14 red zone grabs into just three touchdowns.

Once Burrow left the lineup, all of the receivers really took a hit, except maybe Green, who is no longer there, but Higgins’ wasn’t as drastic as Boyd’s. The one thing that I also take away from above is that in his rookie year, Joe Burrow showed that he can support multiple wide receivers in fantasy football! At this point in their careers, Green is on his way out, and Chase is an athletic specimen who should thrive with his former college teammate. Burrow can support three wide receivers in fantasy, especially if they maintain some of the metrics from last year.

Through the first ten weeks of the year, 70 percent of the targets went to the wide receiver position, and Cincinnati threw it 63 percent of the time, per Sharp Football Stats. Unsurprisingly, that was among the league’s highest passing rates. Joe Mixon will get his targets, but with no substantial threat at tight end, this offense has the makings of being very, very wide receiver friendly.

If you aren’t drafting Boyd because there are two other good receivers there, so be it, but you’re just letting other people in your league get a great value wide receiver. Let’s say that Boyd, Higgins and Green were the Big Three last year for the team, which they were. With Burrow at the helm of the pass-happy Cincinnati offense, all three had at least a 17 percent target share! Even without Burrow under center, all three had at least a 17 percent target share! I’ll agree with you that Boyd’s overall upside might be capped, but the Cincinnati offense is largely the same as it was last year, in that Joe Mixon gets his touches, but Burrow is going to put the ball through the air, and more than two-thirds of the time it’s going to one of his wide receivers.

Touchdowns might be an issue for Boyd, and he’s only scored more than five touchdowns once in his career (seven touchdowns in 2018), but Boyd is a possession receiver that was a mid-tier WR2 in both 2018 and 2019 and was on pace for a WR1 campaign last year. Now, all of a sudden, Boyd is chopped liver? That doesn’t sit well with me!

You can convince me that Boyd’s ceiling might not be as high as Chase’s or Higgins’, but I’d argue that Boyd very well might be the best value of these three receivers. Since the draft, Boyd is the 36th wide receiver off the board, nearly making him a WR4 per ADP. Since May 1st, here are the average draft positions, per NFFC, of the new Big Three in Cincy:

• Ja'Marr Chase: WR24, pick 57.01
• Tee Higgins: WR26, pick 61.21
• Tyler Boyd: WR36, pick 85.02

Boyd seems to be the forgotten guy here and truly, I’m baffled by it. He doesn’t need to be a WR2 this year, seeing as he’s nearly being drafted as a WR4, but he should easily return WR3 value at least. He hasn’t finished outside the top 30 at the position in PPR in any of the last three years, and please do not undermine the rapport he and Burrow had in the beginning of 2020, just because his former college teammate is in town.

There’s plenty of opportunity in this Cincinnati passing attack and Boyd is going to get his targets. I love getting Boyd as a value WR3 this year and he’s someone that should routinely put up double-digit fantasy points on a weekly basis, as well as pop off for a couple big games here and there.

Statistical Credits:
profootballfocus.com
rotoviz.com
sharpfootballstats.com