Equanimeous St. Brown (WR, GB) - Week 13 Waiver Wire Pickups

BALLER MOVE: Add in 14-Team PPR Leagues

OWNED IN: 1% of Leagues

ANALYSIS: At first glance, buying stock in Equanimeous St. Brown would appear to be an unwise choice, even in deeper formats. In eight games played this season he has ranked seventh on the Packers in targets with 24, eighth on the team in receptions with 13, and sixth on the team in receiving yards with 215 without a single trip to the end-zone. He hasn't even seen a single red-zone target from Aaron Rodgers this season, with 22 of his targets this year coming between the Green Bay 21 and opponent 20-yard lines. However, a deeper investigation indicates that St. Brown has interesting upside proceeding forward into the last five weeks of the regular season.

For one thing, St. Brown has been targeted at a respectable clip by Rodgers. The Notre Dame rookie has averaged four targets per game over the last four weeks, and his best game came in week five against the Lions in Detroit when he went for 89 yards on three receptions out of five targets. Now, over the those same last four games in which he was targeted four times a game, he also only caught 1.75 balls per contest. That would be a huge issue, if it wasn't for the fact that he has been consistently deployed in big-play situations for big yardage. His 16.5 yards-per-receptions is tied for first place among qualified Packers with Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and that suddenly makes his encouraging target-volume that much more dangerous. When he played in college, this guy averaged 16.1 yards-per-reception and totaled 1,476 yards and 13 touchdowns over his last two years with the Fighting Irish, and it appears that coach Mike McCarthy plans on utilizing St. Brown in a very similar way. He has even explored new avenues with the sixth round draft pick, as demonstrated by St. Brown receiving a carry this past week against the Minnesota Vikings for five yards. With his consistent (albeit modest) volume of targets from one of the best quarterbacks in the game coupled with his expanding repertoire and big-play explosions, Equanimeous St. Brown is a sneaky acquisition in deeper PPR formats.