What You Need To Know:

• With A.J. missing all of last season, Boyd set career highs in targets (148), catches (90) and yards (1,046).
• He did most of his damage from the slot, a position he projects to stick in this fall.
• Boyd’s a regression candidate with Cincy’s WR corps looking deep, but not enough to depart WR3 range.

A one man show

Volume was the theme of Boyd’s 2019 — and it almost had to be.

A.J. Green missed the entire season; John Ross made only 8 appearances. Minimal depth helped Boyd attract 148 targets across 16 games, including 7+ looks in 13 of 16 games.

Naturally, he notched career highs in catches (90) and yards (1,046), which helped overcome a low TD count (5). Two of his scores surfaced in Week 16 at Miami; all but 1 of his TDs came over the final 6 games.

The Bengals continued using him in the slot. Only 4 WRs recorded more slot catches, while only2 saw more slot targets. Boyd wasn’t very elusive, though, recording only 3 total broken tackles (per Pro Football Reference).

With Andy Dalton now in Dallas, it was clear that Cincy needed an upgrade to boost Boyd’s low catch rate (60.7% despite a very low aDOT of 8.0).

QB upgrade, reinforcements

The Bengals made the obvious pick by selecting QB Joe Burrow #1 in April’s NFL Draft.

Burrow’s 2019 was off-the-charts statistically, and our film review turned up equally as impressive intel. We’ll see how much practice time he’s able to get, but it wouldn’t surprise us to see him match Andy Dalton’s peak play right away.

If he can, Boyd’s efficiency should increase significantly. Burrow made a habit of targeting 2019 LSU slot Justin Jefferson (111-1,540-18), who’s almost identical in size to Boyd.

Making the most of his opportunities will be critical. We have Boyd’s targets coming down by 20, as the Bengals are expecting a healthy A.J. Green to return. He was still an elite player the last time we saw him, although it was for…