Coming into 2015, not many people believed tight end Julius Thomas would be as productive in Jacksonville as he was with Peyton Manning in Denver. It opened the door for some owners to grab the tight end late in drafts, but ultimately, that prediction came true. Thomas scored 45.4 fewer fantasy points in standard leagues last season than 2014.
Let’s take a closer look at what plagued the 27-year-old tight end.
The easy answer is a new quarterback. Blake Bortles doesn’t put up the same type of numbers as Manning did in his prime, but that’s also a lazy answer.
In 2014, Manning had 4,727 passing yards and 39 touchdowns while Bortles had 4,428 passing yards and 35 scores a year ago. But Thomas scored nearly 50 fewer fantasy points. There’s more to his fantasy struggles than merely the quantity of attempts.
If quantity wasn’t the issue, perhaps quality was the problem? Therein lies the answer.
Bortles attempted 606 passes and 80 of those targets went to Thomas – in other words, Bortles targeted his tight end with 13.2 percent of his passes. Manning only targeted Thomas 62 times, which equated to 10.4 percent of his passes in 2014.
Yet the tight end’s reception total only increased by three. He caught a career-low 57.5 percent of his targets (46 of 80).
That wasn’t the only inefficient part of Thomas’ game. Even when Bortles connected with the tight end, on average, it went for a shorter gain. Thomas had a 12.1 yards per catch average in 2013 and then totaled 11.4 yards per reception in 2014. Last season, that average dropped to 9.9.
All of that led to far fewer yards than owners were accustomed to seeing from the 27-year-old. He set a career-high with 788 yards in 2013. That decreased to 489 in his last season with the Broncos, and then it fell again to 455 in 2015.
As bad as that was, the decrease in touchdowns hurt fantasy owners even more. After two straight years of 12 scores per season, Thomas only found the end zone five times in 2015. Four of those touchdowns came in four straight games in late November and early December.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving, he had his best game, catching nine passes for 116 yards and a score. Bortles and Thomas were extremely efficient that day,connecting on 9-of-10 targets. But he didn’t have another game where he even had 80 receiving yards or eight grabs.
Like many tight ends, Thomas is touchdown-dependent, and even though Bortles threw 35 scores last year, his struggles in the red zone, where Thomas shines the most, hurt the tight end’s value. Jacksonville converted just 53.7 percent of its red zone trips into touchdowns, which was ranked 19th in the league.
And whether it was Bortles or offensive coordinator Greg Olsen, Thomas wasn’t used nearly enough in the red zone. The two-time Pro Bowler only received 10 red-zone targets the entire season.
Ten red-zone targets.
Just to reiterate, Thomas caught 12 touchdowns each of the last two years, yet the Jaguars only targeted him in the scoring area 10 times in 12 games. Even though he only had 15 red-zone targets in 2014, that equated to 24.2 percent of his targets. Just 12.5 percent of his targets came inside the 20-yard line last year.
Thomas is still a fringe top-10 tight end in standard leagues, but until he improves his efficiency and/or Jacksonville makes him a bigger part of the offense closer to the end zone, he won’t be able to reach the same elite tight end status he had while with the Broncos.
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