Fantasy Football: One Breakout Candidate From Every NFL Team
Cameron Meredith, WR, Chicago Bears
In truth, Cameron Meredith sort of broke out last season, but considering he has an ADP of WR42 (9.10), I'm not sure many people noticed. Either that or everyone is so terrified of Mike Glennon and Mitchell Trubisky that they're staying away.
Starting in Week 5 last year, the first game in which he saw more than five targets, Meredith was a bad, bad dude.
| Week | Catches | Yards | Touchdowns |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 9 | 130 | 1 |
| 6 | 11 | 113 | 0 |
| 7 | 1 | 12 | 0 |
| 8 | 1 | 24 | 0 |
| 10 | 1 | 50 | 1 |
| 11 | 4 | 49 | 0 |
| 12 | 2 | 19 | 0 |
| 13 | 3 | 67 | 0 |
| 14 | 6 | 72 | 1 |
| 15 | 9 | 104 | 0 |
| 16 | 9 | 135 | 1 |
| 17 | 4 | 61 | 0 |
Over that span, Meredith posted five WR1 (top-12) weeks. That's more than DeAndre Hopkins (1), Amari Cooper (4), Stefon Diggs (4), Michael Thomas (4), Jarvis Landry (4), Jamison Crowder (2), Demaryius Thomas (3) and Davante Adams (3) had all season.
His per-game averages during that stretch come out to 5.0 catches, 69.8 yards and 0.3 touchdowns. If we extrapolate those to a 16-game campaign, it comes out to 80 grabs for 1,117 yards and 4.8 scores -- which is 220.5 PPR points. That would've been good enough for WR18 last season.
It's not that simple, obviously. For one, it's an extrapolation. Two, Meredith was catching passes last season from Brian Hoyer and Matt Barkley, both of whom have bounced. Three, outside of Meredith's five top-12 weeks, he didn't have any other top-24 performances, so he was an all-or-nothing asset.
While time will tell if Glennon or Tribusky are any good, we can pretty safely say Meredith is coming into the year as the only known commodity in the Bears' receiving corps (sorry Kevin White truthers), and he showed us last season that he capable of putting up quality fantasy numbers.
