Fantasy Football: Can I Get An Amendola?

If your league counts kick return yards, it’d be wise to pick up Danny Amendola before even reading this.

    In case you didn’t hear yet, Donnie Avery is going to miss this season due to the torn ACL he suffered Thursday night against the Patriots. This move will shake up what is already one of the lousiest receiving corps in St. Louis, so let’s look at some options.
     It seems like just yesterday that Danny Amendola was the lovable sweetheart on Hard Knocks just a few seasons ago. He’s changed several teams and made quite an impact for the Rams last year. So much so that D.A. led the league in kickoff return yards with 1618. It’s not hard to figure out how he accomplished that feat when considering how bad the Ram D was last season. The more times an opponent scores, the more times they need to kickoff. The Rams did nothing significant to improve their D and are expected to be in the cellar for points allowed once again, thus Amendola should be among the league leaders for return yards once again.
Amendola was also a decent receiving threat for the Rams. At the end of the fantasy season Amendola topped five receptions in three games from Week 12 to Week 16. Those obviously aren’t numbers to write home about, but for a player in his first year with the team, it’s certainly something that could evolve into notable production this season.
Amendola’s worst-case scenario would be as the slot receiver this year. As mentioned earlier, the Rams are going to be behind a lot, which subsequently means that they will be in more three-wide passing sets to attempt to mount a comeback. Bradford has shown considerable promise thus far and he should be a fairly safe bet to approach 3,000 yards. The picks will be there and he’s not likely going to be a TD monster, but yards, he should be solid. Amendola could be used as a crutch for Sammy B since there’s no doubt defensive coordinators will be licking their chops to use complex blitz packages to confuse the former Sooner (oxymoron special). Is Amendola going to give you big-time numbers? No. Does he have a chance to top 800 receiving yards, 60 receptions, and a few touchdowns? I think he does. So again, if your league counts kick return yards at all, he really needs to be owned.
     The other obvious option is Laurent Robinson. There is really no argument that Robinson has vaulted into the top-40 wide receivers in most formats now that he is the clear-cut number one option. Robinson suffered an extremely severe high ankle sprain with a fractured fibula in Week 3 last year. The first two weeks of the season Robinson was quite productive with an average of 5.5 receptions, 71 YPG, and 0.5 TD. That’s production, folks. Robinson really should be picked up in all leagues and is a better option than recent risers such as Mike Williams (both of them), Legedu Naanee, and Louis Murphy. Don’t let the bad team fool you, Robinson could easily break out and eclipse 1,000 yards with ease.
    The reason why Robinson and Amendola have such great chances to break out this season is really because the Rams have nobody behind them. Prior to last night, Brandon Gibson had been struggling and there were rumors that he might not even make the team just a short while ago. Mardy Gilyard, a promising rookie out of Cincy, is still a rookie and isn’t really coming out of a pro-style offense which should stagnate his ability to learn the offense to make an immediate impact. One of these two will need to play WR2 opposite Robinson, so they at least deserve to be on your watch list and are worth a scoop in deeper leagues.

source:  Fantasyfootball.com
author:  Michael Gallagher