TheOak

I get it, you love Julia Jones, to the point that you are rationalizing that Matt Ryan is a bad QB... Ryan did make it into a Pro-Bowl with 3700 yards and 28 TDs before Julio Jones was ever drafted. You say that Julio Jones has a better long game than Michael Thomas, I say Matt Ryan has a longer arm than Brees. Julio might be big to his advantage and relies on his power but he does not cut or evade like Thomas and certainly doesn't catch as many passes thrown his way..

Do not get me wrong, I am no fan of Matt Ryan and Julio Jones for all intentional purposes performs at a level that is nearly tied with Michael Thomas for best WR in the league. But its not completely apples to apples either, they are different receivers with different QBs.

You can have Julio, I will take Thomas as my #1 all day, every day.

hitta

I'm going to go against the grain here with my opinion. I love Michael Thomas, he's one of the best WRs in the league. He's just not Julio Jones though in overall skill set, who I believe to be one of the best receivers ever but got stuck with Matt Ryan. Michael Thomas may be a bit better on the short ball, which goes well with Brees, but I just can't say with a straight face that I believe Michael Thomas is better than Julio Jones, cause he isn't.

CHA_CHING

You're right, he don't have Julio's overall skill set, he's better.

And what's so bad about being stuck with Matt Ryan? I know we rag on the Falcons as Saints fans, but Ryan has established himself as a legit QB and has given us nightmares where he's carved us to pieces. He had the best season of a QB who didn't make the playoffs last year (a stat that Brees owned in all of our 7-9 seasons). Ryan has far more comebacks and 4th quarter game winning drives than media darling Aaron Rodgers. I compared Julio to Herman Moore, an elite WR whom was truly stuck with some truly mediocre QBs like Rodney Peete, Erik Kramer, old Dave Krieg and Scott Mitchell. Matt Ryan is easily better than all 3 of them.

As I posted that article on the first page of this thread, Julio has a lot of flaws in his game when you start looking at him beyond the receiving yards numbers he puts up. He has huge yardage gains, but don't have the TDs to back it up. He's pretty much a non-threat entirely in the red zone. How many times did you see him drop TDs in the red zone last year? Go back to the season opener vs Philly and count how many times, or even their playoff loss where he dropped what would've been the game winning TD.

He was getting outplayed by Ridley several points in the season whom had more TDs than him, but half less yards.

MT was the only real weapon we had on our WR corps last year and despite being double and triple teamed in the final month of the season, he was still making clutch catches and marching us down the field.

If I need a game winning drive and could choose JJ or MT, I'm going MT all the way. At least I know he can trusted in the red zone.

jeanpierre

Okay, know this is coming from a fantasy football perspective, but there's one thing in the numbers that is pertinent to this discussion...

Learned very early on that when you're examining a guys stats, look for consistency on a weekly basis and not total fantasy points (accrued through actual) for the season...

Julio had slightly better total yardage numbers, but @CantGuardMike produced better on a weekly basis...

See, some guys get theirs in bunches 25 - 30 pt monster games, but aren't always there every week for you, giving you dud weeks like 30 ReYds and a fumble...

Winners have guys like Mike Thomas who're giving you 100 ReYds or 80 ReYds and a ReTd, have consistent higher floors - that's why their teams are winners in the Real World and Fantasy Football...

Mike was there every week for the Saints (and for some of my teams last year) - that's why I consider him the better WR...

It's not that my way is the right way, I just make the right way my way...

Rugby Saint II

Julio is good. I watched him play college ball. Still, Mike Thomas is better.