Whenever someone says Julius Thomas in fantasy football circles, we have flashbacks to his two massive seasons with late era Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos, where he amassed over 1200 yards and 24 touchdowns over two seasons. He flipped this production into a contract with the Jacksonville Jaguars, and unfortunately for his fantasy football owners, his production dried up when he moved out east to the Jags, and even more unfortunately, his name value has not caught up to his actual fantasy football production and value.[embedit snippet=”jeff-ads”]
While Thomas started his career with the Jags injured (a theme throughout his time in Jacksonville), he was not useful even when he played. His per-sixteen game average in his two years with Blake Bortles is 560 yards and 4 touchdowns. That puts him on a season-long pace to be a poor man’s version of 2015 Richard Rodgers. Unfortunately for owners and pundits who are duped into taking Julius Thomas in their drafts, his name value lags far behind the actual situation in which he finds himself: he is a useful fantasy football commodity in any sense of the word. He does not have the explosive big plays that can find him hitting gold, and he is mostly used as a possession receiver in the Jags offense, with a 3/30 line being the norm. He doesn’t get targets in the red zone, either, with the Allens (Robinson and Hurns) chewing up all the targets there.
This whole mess of a fantasy situation takes on the Houston Texans this week, a team that has stymied tight end production this season, including a game against the Broncos where no tight end registered a single statistic against them. Only one TE (Jack Doyle) has scored a touchdown against them so far this year, and only he and Eric Ebron has surpassed the seven point threshold for a top-twelve tight end. That includes games against Travis Kelce, Martellus Bennett, Kyle Rudolph and Delanie Walker. Those are all considered to be some of the most talented tight ends in the league, and the Texans successfully shut them down.
Julius Thomas’ fantasy football production has fallen far behind where people think of his production being. He is not a good start this week as he takes on one of the best tight end defenses in the entire NFL. Unfortunately, if you own Julius Thomas, it might not be worth starting him this week, or at all for the rest of the season.