Today’s Best Bets
Sam Choudhury
What once looked like a bleak future for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers has turned around quite dramatically over the last week. Following Tom Brady’s unretirement, the team was able to re-sign C Ryan Jensen and CB Carlton Davis. Tampa then bolstered their wide receiver corps Tuesday with the addition of former Falcons WR Russell Gage, agreeing to a three-year, $30 million deal.
(Follow along with all of the big free agency reactions here!)
Throughout his four years in Atlanta, Gage was often characterized as a limited wideout who profiled primarily as a slot option. However, he was thrust into a larger role in the wake of Calvin Ridley stepping away from the team last season, and Gage responding in impressive fashion. From Week 9 on, he caught 57 balls for 675 yards. While he only managed two scores over that stretch, Gage ranked 12th among wideouts over that stretch. Not too shabby.
In Tampa he won’t need to serve as the team’s top receiving option. Mike Evans and Chris Godwin remain locked in place atop the target pecking order. Of course, the elephant in the room is that the team will no longer feature Antonio Brown along with Evans and Godwin. Brown’s exit leaves a healthy number of targets on the table in Tampa’s pass-heavy offense.
Brown saw 62 targets in each of the last two seasons with the Bucs. That equates to a tick under 8.3 targets per game he played. Yes, it would be a big stretch to expect the same sort of volume for Gage, but the key here is that there is plenty of meat on the bone. Brady attempted a massive 719 passes last season.
That sort of number isn’t a feasible expectation, but even a conservative projection would have him well north of 600 passes and likely much closer to 650. It’s fair to project both Godwin (if healthy) and Evans in the 25% target share range. Gage won’t be close to that sort of volume, but he’d need just a tick north a 15% share to top 100 targets. That’s well within the realm of possibility.
As I previously pointed out with Christian Kirk, only one wideout saw more than 100 targets and finished outside of the top 40 receivers in fantasy points last season. If Gage can see this sort of volume, he’d be hard pressed to not finish as at least a fringe WR3. Of course, we still need to see how things shake out with the depth chart and with what Tampa does at tight end. But Gage is in a very favorable spot even as a No. 3 option.
The same cannot be said for his former team. Just two seasons ago, Atlanta had one of the best wideouts of the last generation in Julio Jones and a budding star in Calvin Ridley. Today, Jones is gone, Ridley is suspended, and their top wide receiver currently under contract is Olamide Zaccheaus. Sure, they do have Kyle Pitts, but the Falcons have some major work to do in the remainder of free agency and in the draft.
