2018 fantasy football forecast: Minnesota Vikings receiver Adam Thielen
By Adam Carlson
Adam Thielen is a consistently reliable receiver for the Minnesota Vikings but can fantasy football managers trust him to bring their team a championship?
Two Minnesota Vikings wide receivers will likely be selected during your fantasy football draft this year and odds are both will start for whichever manager uses a selection on the dynamic duo of pass catchers.
Honestly, you can’t go wrong with drafting Adam Thielen or Stefon Diggs on your squad. However, the question is when you should be looking to add them to your roster to maximize the value of your fantasy draft.
That’s where you have to look at the past as well as ahead to the future to figure out your draft strategy. Adding a great player like Adam Thielen can take your team to the next level if you’re smart it,
So, let’s take a look at where you should be targeting Thielen by first looking at the last the last two seasons worth of standard scoring fantasy football production according to FantasyData.com:
- 2016: 69 catches for 967 yards and 5 touchdowns – 126.2 points
- 2017: 91 catches for 1,276 yards and 4 touchdowns – 148.7 points
The point totals are more than solid over the last two seasons and his production will likely not be slowing down any time soon. However, the concerning numbers are the touchdowns, which he has never had more than 5 receiving touchdowns in a season in his entire career.
Minnesota adding quarterback Kirk Cousins and bringing in a new offensive coordinator may change the fact his touchdown numbers haven’t been great, but that has yet to be proven and shouldn’t be something fantasy managers rely on.
Instead, Thielen remains a much better target in PPR leagues than standard scoring because of the volume of catches he accumulated in the last few years and the fact he hasn’t missed a single game in the last two years.
Let’s take a look at where the experts are ranking Thielen among other wide receivers entering the fantasy football draft season and what they project his points total will be during the season:
- ESPN: 247.9 PPR points – approximately 162.5 standard (9th)
- Fantasy Pros: 144.3 points (13th)
- NFL.com: 125.64 points (24th)
- FF Today: 134.0 points (19th)
As we have seen with each Vikings player in these rankings, they are all over the place. A range of 9th to 24th is pretty incredible considering he is pretty consistent in what he brings to the table and his point projections aren’t all over the place.
Related Story: Fantasy football forecast for Stefon Diggs
Thielen ranks 24th on the ESPN Top 200 non-PPR rankings, which is really funny considering he’s NFL.com’s 24th best wide receiver. Being 24th means he could be seen as early as the end of the second round of your fantasy football draft, which seems a bit high to select him unless you really believe in him having a career high in touchdown catches in a PPR league.
Fantasy owners will want to keep a keen eye on the preseason to see if a rapport is made between Cousins and Thielen and how the new offense looks, but unless things change, it looks like the late third round would be the safest place to grab Thielen if he shows that upside.
As far as a projection, TVA predicts that Adam Thielen will net fantasy team owners approximately 154 points.
Next: 15 best Vikings first round picks of all time
When do you think fantasy owners should select Adam Thielen in drafts? And can he both maintain his large catch and yards output while increasing his touchdown output? And where you feel comfortable selecting the Minnesota Vikings wide receiver? Let us know in the comments section below.