Falcons over/under: How many yards will Calvin Ridley get in 2020?

Calvin Ridley is entering the critical third year of his career. This is generally considered the season where receivers really hit their stride in the NFL and all signs point to Ridley having a breakout year in 2020, which is impressive given how good he has been to this point.

While his touchdown totals have been great so far, we’re going to hone in on his yardage. With both Austin Hooper and Mohamed Sanu gone, is this the year Ridley finally breaks 1,000? Let’s take a look.

The baseline

In his first two years, Calvin has averaged 58.2 yards per game. He was pulling in 51.3 in 2018 and increased that to 66.6 in 2019, even after missing 3 games. His yardage totals were 821 yards and 866 yards, respectively. If we go by his career average, that puts him a little over 930 yards. His 2019 average, however, would put him at 1,065 yards over 16 games. Given the fact that both Sanu and Hooper are gone, Ridley should get a lot more looks this year. We’re going to set his baseline to 1100 yards, or roughly 69 yards per game. Nice. (Editor’s note: Nice.)

The case for the over

Unlike his rookie year and a good bit of 2019, Ridley will undoubtedly be the second most targeted player in the passing game. Calvin finished behind Hooper in 2019 and behind Sanu in 2018. An increase in targets should lead to an increase in yardage. The 1100 yards we’re going with is only slightly higher than his yards per game average in 2019, when he still split targets with Hooper and Sanu (for part of the year at least). This should be a relatively easy target to hit.

The case for the under

That said, Calvin needs to stay healthy for all 16 games. He doesn’t have a long injury history to be worried about, but missing just one game could throw his average off and miss that target. On top of all of that, the addition of Todd Gurley - who is a very good receiving back - could keep Calvin’s targets from really sky rocketing, especially since teams are likely going to zero in on him more with Sanu and Hooper gone. Plus, it’s really hard for teams to put up two receivers with over 1000 yards, though this does seem like the duo to do it.

Your thoughts?

Ridley has been a welcome addition to the offense in the past two years and this could be a big year for him. He’s already earned the trust of Matt Ryan and Dirk Koetter will be forced to pay attention to him this year - hopefully. What do you think he’s going to do in 2020?