Fantasy Football Report Card: Tyler Lockett

Entering 2019, it was going to be Tyler Lockett’s first season as the alpha in Seattle.  His prior four seasons were spent alongside Doug Baldwin, who retired the last offseason after he had some luck investing with one of the best trading platforms in Australia.  Expectations were high for Lockett, who was coming off a top-20 fantasy season in 2018 and had Russell Wilson throwing him the ball.  The fantasy hype was real during the 2019 draft season and for good reason.

From 2018 to 2019, Tyler Lockett saw a gigantic 55% (55!) increase in targets.  This led to an identical fantasy output (194 pts).  How is that possible?  …Well, his yards per reception regressed from 16.9 to 12.9.  While regression was likely, the pendulum swung farther than expected.  Fun Fact: Lockett saw the same number of targets in 2017 and 2018.  He scored double the amount of points in 2018.

It’s safe to say Tyler Lockett disappointed optimists, but he was a really valuable fantasy option for stretches of the season.  Let’s evaluate and grade Tyler Lockett’s performance in 2019…

The Good from 2019

• Lockett had the 2nd most Red Zone receptions (17).
• He had three games this season where he probably single-handedly won you the matchup: Week 2 (26.9 pts), Week 9 (33.7 pts), and Week 15 (22 pts).
• Russell Wilson, future Hall of Famer, was his quarterback.  According to playerprofiler.com, Lockett saw a 86% catchable target rate (ranked #5).
• Lockett caught 74.5% of his targets (ranked #4).
• He was super consistent early in the season, which gave owners the confidence to plug and play.  From Weeks 2 – 9, he finished as a top-30 receiver seven times.
• He’s a talented player that shows flashes of brilliance like the following INSANE catch, which had a 6.3% completion probability according to Next Gen Stats.  Shout out to our own Mike Wright for literally being the voice of Next Gen Stats.

Tyler Lockett with arguably the catch of the season!

Via: @NFL pic.twitter.com/0iPqHUC9rJ

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) October 4, 2019

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The Bad from 2019

• The Seahawks were bottom-10 in the NFL in pass attempts (517) despite having an elite real-life quarterback in Russell Wilson.
• Lockett cost you a fourth-round pick (4.07 ADP) in 2019 and was drafted just ahead of receivers Cooper Kupp and Kenny Golladay, who were more valuable in 2019.
• Lockett was inconsistent.  Sometimes he was hyper-targeted (18 targets in Week 9) while other games he wasn’t involved at all.  Players that are unpredictable cause problems in fantasy.
• From Weeks 10 – 17, D.K. Metcalf saw 21% more targets than Tyler Lockett.
• Lockett’s early-season production likely skewed your opinion of him toward the end of the season.  Lockett was the perfect player to trade away midseason to acquire a more productive player with lesser name value, but hindsight is 20/20.
  • From Weeks 1 – 9, he averaged 15.7 pts/g and only scored fewer than 10 pts once.
  • From Weeks 10 – 16, he averaged 6.5 pts/g and only scored more than 7 pts once.

2019 Resume

2019 Final Grade: C

Tyler Lockett was extremely consistent and productive as a WR2 for the first half of the season.  After that, he was a boom-or-bust player…and mostly bust.  His inconsistency and unpredictability were significant detriments to your team.  It’s simple: you would have been happier drafting a different player in the 4th round of fantasy drafts last season.

2020 Outlook

Before this past season, Doug Baldwin was the only player who had ever received 100 targets from Russell Wilson in a season.  In 2019, Tyler Lockett became the second player to do it with 110 targets.  D.K. Metcalf became the third with an even 100.  I believe Metcalf will become the more productive receiver in Seattle moving forward.  Regardless, Lockett and Metcalf will both be capped if the Seahawks stick with their run-heavy offense.  If only Seattle had a hall of fame quarterback that they could rely on…

I expect Lockett to produce similar numbers in 2020.  I also expect that he’ll cost you a 4th or 5th round pick again.  I’ll pass on Lockett at that price tag.  Also, Metcalf is the Seattle fantasy piece that I want to own in 2020.