NFL fantasy diamonds for 2022 - Wide receivers

Brandon Aiyuk, San Francisco 49ers

San Francisco 49ers wide receivers Brandon Aiyuk

I once had Brandon Aiyuk ranked a lot higher than Deebo Samuel. Whether it was the risk of injury, their role in the offense or their talent, I had almost the exact same grade on them coming out of the NFL draft. Even though Samuel’s injury history certainly affected my evaluation.

Now, will I back down on any of these statements about Aiyuk? Absolutely not. His athletic profile, his burst off the line, ability to attack the ball in the air and his incredible skills after the catch are still very intriguing.

We saw him put it on display last NFL season once he made it out of the Kyle Shanahan dog house (which took about the first seven weeks of the season). Over the final ten NFL games, he averaged 69 yards and half a touchdown, which made him the WR20, tied with Mike Evans. 22 of his targets from that point on were 10+ yards downfield and outside the numbers, even though those are the areas Jimmy Garoppolo tends to avoid, looking at his heat maps.

Aiyuk is still the designated X receiver for an offense that runs a lot through that guy as the primary read in the dropback pass game. We’ve seen several amazing clips of him in camp making highlight catches down the field, taking advantage of Trey Lance’s willingness to push the ball down the sideline.

Aiyuk has had another year in a system that is hard to master for receivers. We’ve even heard him talk about how nice it is to not have Shanahan in his ear, but rather in the ears of the rookies.

Everything great about Aiyuk from the 2021 NFL campaign is still right there. It may not be as efficient of an offense as it was with Garoppolo, but it certainly will be a more explosive one. Now you can get this guy at a discount, probably as a WR4.

Let me leave you with one more statistic here from the last NFL season - Brandon Aiyuk was targeted 20+ yards downfield just six times. I’m 100% buying the post-hype year version of Aiyuk in the 2022 NFL campaign..