As the Chicago Bears 2020 season approaches, where does Riley Ridley’s fantasy football value stand?
The Chicago Bears are my passion, but for a long time, my secondary passion surrounding football was fantasy football. Going forward, at this point in the year I am going to start running through players on the Chicago Bears roster and explain what round the player should be drafted, the player’s ceiling value, the player’s floor value and for dynasty fantasy leagues if the player is a buy low or sell high candidate.
When it comes to rankings and fantasy data, I will be using FantasyPros Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) and FFToday with half-point scoring.
2020 Outlook
The Chicago Bears have two wide receivers locked in as the team’s WR1 and WR2. Allen Robinson is a stud and clearly the WR1 on the depth chart. Anthony Miller is likely to take over as the secondary option now that Taylor Gabriel is out of the picture. That leaves a spot available for the taking. Who will find his way into that third receiver option? Could it be Javon Wims? Maybe Cordarrelle Patterson sneaks into that spot? My money though is on Riley Ridley.
Target Round
It seems that FantasyPros disagrees with my prediction. The site has an overall ECR of 468 for Ridley, making him WR154. On the other hand, Wims has an overall ECR of 415 with a wide receiver ranking of WR134. Furthermore, the overall ECR for Patterson is 403 making him the WR130.
None of this matters from a target round perspective. None of these three hold much fantasy value outside of maybe dynasty leagues and bye week fill-ins.
Ceiling Value
Whoever wins the WR3 spot could hold some value throughout the fantasy year. Robinson, Miller and Gabriel were all owned in deeper leagues. If Ridley becomes the WR3 on this team, I am expecting something similar to Miller’s rookie season with fewer touchdowns. Ridley’s ceiling is around 450 yards receiving and four touchdowns.
Floor Value
Unfortunately, the gap between his ceiling and floor is quite large. He could wind up duplicating his rookie performance of six catches for less than 70 yards. I do not see this happening, but Wims did show promise in the preseason last year.
Buy Low, Sell High or Hold
With players like this, the only value they have in a trade is an additional asset or basically a throw-in with more valuable players. This is why, if you own Ridley, all you can do is hold him and hope he reaches his full potential. Could he find a way to be as good, if not better, than his brother Calvin? Only time will tell.