Jarius Wright, WR, Carolina Panthers
With Greg Olsen out for an unknown period of time, things are once again murky outside of Christian McCaffrey as far as who will step up in the passing game. Devin Funchess finished last season with a solid showing as the WR21 in fantasy football, but there are a lot of new faces who pose as competition this season. One of those faces is former Viking, Jarius Wright.
Wright is a bit of a speedster with a 4.42 40-yard dash who’s best comparable player on PlayerProfiler.com is Golden Tate. Wright never amounted to much in Minnesota after being a fourth round draft pick in 2013 but seems to be getting cozy in Carolina.
Funchess is currently leading this wide receiver group with 14 targets, 10 receptions and 118 yards but Wright is right behind him with 12 targets and 8 catches for 85 yards and 1 TD. This is especially impressive due to the fact that Wright is actually running as the WR3 technically behind Torrey Smith who has an 81% snap share compared to Wright’s 56%.
This passing game remains funneled through Christian McCaffrey, which doesn’t leave a lot of volume behind whomever is the teams WR1. In his tenure as head coach of the Panthers, Ron Rivera has never had a WR2 finish better than WR47 in fantasy according to FFStatistics.com. Dating back to 2011, Rivera’s WR1 has even only finished inside the top-15 once. That doesn’t leave a lot of upside for Wright but his performance warrants monitoring regardless as a potential WR3 on an offense that saw Funchess nab 8 receiving TD’s last season.
