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The Baltimore Ravens added depth to their receiving corps this week as the club announced the signing of veteran wideout DeSean Jackson. Jackson, 35, spent the latter half of the '21 season with the Las Vegas Raiders after asking the Los Angeles Rams for a release. He had wanted to hit the open market due to a lack of targets in Los Angeles.
Lamar Jackson, who won the MVP award following his 2019 campaign, finds himself with another weapon. The Ravens have strengthened a receiver room that already housed Rashod Bateman, Devin Duvernay and Demarcus Robinson. How this electric Jackson-Jackson combo will fare is a question NFL fans are eager to have answered. For fantasy fans, there's an entirely different question: Is DeSean Jackson worth picking up in fantasy football?
DeSean Jackson's fantasy outlook
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Lamar Jackson is a fantastic fantasy football quarterback. In fact, most outlets have the 2019 MVP as their top fantasy QB league-wide, and most 'fantasy analysts' agree that he is the best in this space. That means a receiver on the Ravens is automatically a hit, right? Well, not exactly.
Despite being the most productive quarterback in fantasy football, the Ravens' receivers aren't the reason why - at all. Per ESPN's fantasy Power Rankings (PPR), Rashod Bateman clocks in as the highest-rated Baltimore player in the WR category, with a ranking of 29. No other Baltimore receiver cracks the top-50 on this list.
Yet, Lamar Jackson is at the top of the fantasy quarterback pyramid this season. So what's the deal? When Baltimore's passing attack is being discussed, the subject of that discussion is tight end Mark Andrews. Just as Jackson is the consensus QB1 this season in fantasy, Andrews is the TE1.
Currently, no tight end league-wide has more targets than Mark Andrews. From this, we can conclude the obvious: Lamar Jackson and the Ravens look to get their tight end going much more frequently than they do their wide receivers. On top of this, Baltimore's WR1, Rashod Bateman (who will remain the unquestioned WR1 even with DeSean Jackson now on the team) has returned to practice this week. That spells an even worse fantasy situation for DeSean Jackson.
At the end of the day, Jackson is still the home-run receiver he always was. The veteran wideout will make huge plays here and there, but expect them to be few and far between. So, is DeSean Jackson worth picking up in fantasy?
No, he probably isn't. There simply won't be consistent opportunities for the 35-year-old, although a big game or two isn't out of the realm of possibility.
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