Jaylen Waddle, Courtland Sutton Form Top WR Duo For Broncos
Fantasy

Jaylen Waddle, Courtland Sutton Form Top WR Duo For Broncos

Ian Hartitz breaks down the WR duo of Jaylen Waddle and Courtland Sutton for the Denver Broncos and fantasy football.

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If there was a team that needed to upgrade the WR room to kick open a Super Bowl window, it's the  Broncos. Into the WR room walks Jaylen Waddle, and visions of big seasons like that of Michael Thomas and others in Seah Payton's scheme start dancing around. He might be just the right complement to holdover Courtland Sutton to turn the offense from promising to prolific. Ian Hartitz breaks it down as part of his Denver Broncos Team Preview.

How does Jaylen Waddle change things in this wide receiver room?

The need for a WR upgrade was certainly there this offseason, so failure to secure any of the bigger-name free agents perhaps led to Denver’s decision to spend big on Waddle, who, oh yeah, is pretty f*cking good at football. The five-year veteran averaged a crisp 75 receptions, 1,008 yards and 5.4 touchdowns in five seasons in South Beach despite sharing the passing game with Tyreek Hill, and having to deal with some rough play from Tua Tagovailoa in recent years.

The integration of Waddle in this Denver offense is pretty perfect:

  • Longtime No. 1 WR Courtland Sutton is a dominant presence in the red zone and remains a rock-solid possession receiver.
  • Rising second-year WR Pat Bryant is more in the mold of Sutton and doesn't exactly instill a lot of fear in opposing secondaries as a downfield threat.
  • Bo Nix had some rough downfield chemistry with Troy Franklin to put it nicely. Feel free to reference this chart if you ever don't want to put it nicely.
  • Marvin Mims has flashed the ability to win deep over the years, but Sean Payton and company have continuously refrained from putting a full-time role on his plate. Don't blame me. I wish Mims had a full-time role too, but it's seemingly not happening. Just please don't blame me.

The Sutton-Waddle partnership suddenly gives the Broncos their best one-two punch at the position since Demaryius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders—and you can argue it's been even longer since somebody brought Waddle's downfield speed element to the equation.

Overall fantasy rank takeaways here:

  • Waddle is my WR20 just ahead of the UNC tier of veterans like Terry McLaurin, Mike Evans and Davante Adams. That said, we could be overestimating his lead over Sutton in the targets department; I still prefer more clear-cut No. 1 types like Zay Flowers and Garrett Wilson.
  • Sutton is ranked as high as WR32, and as low as WR34, by Fantasy Life's crew of alleged expert rankers. This makes him a bit of a value at his current WR38 price tag. Of course, drafting Sutton is never exactly a reason for celebration—he's more of an eat your vegetables sort of pick—but his "boring" ability to consistently provide WR3 production with potential for WR1 spike weeks is useful for teams that loaded up on RB early.

Players Mentioned in this Article

  1. Jaylen Waddle
    JaylenWaddle
    WRDENDEN
    PPG
    10.0
    Proj
    182.5
  2. Courtland Sutton
    CourtlandSutton
    WRDENDEN
    PPG
    10.4
    Proj
    169.3
  3. Pat Bryant
    PatBryant
    WRDENDEN
    PPG
    4.3
    Proj
    76.6
  4. Troy Franklin
    TroyFranklinQ
    WRDENDEN
    PPG
    8.2
    Proj
    19.7

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