Michael Thomas is a 6-3, 210 lb starting wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints with 10 1/2” hands. He’s the nephew of former NFL receiver Keyshawn Johnson. Thomas worked his way up the depth chart at Ohio State. He only caught three passes for 22 yards in 2012 before redshirting in 2013. In 2014, Thomas would lead his team with 54 receptions for 799 yards and 9 touchdowns on the way to winning the National Championship. He’d follow up his redshirted sophomore season with a similarly productive season (56-781-9) while J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones split time playing QB for the Buckeyes.
Despite lackluster 4.57 (40th-percentile) 40 time, Michael Thomas found himself selected by the New Orleans Saints in the middle of the second round of the 2016 NFL Draft. As a rookie WR, he would become the 1A option in a Drew Brees’ passing offense, finishing with 92 receptions for 1137 yards and 9 touchdowns. Accomplishing this feat as a rookie is impressive, but to do that while playing alongside a 1100 yard second-year WR drafted in the first round the previous year in Brandin Cooks put Thomas on another level.
From his rookie season in 2016 to 2019, Thomas would finish top-7 each season in fantasy points per game. From 2017 to 2019, Thomas would finish inside the top-10 in targets and he would lead the league in receptions in back-to-back season in 2018 and 2019 (125 and 149, respectively). Tied to Drew Brees while the quarterback broke NFL records, Michael Thomas was impossible to knock off his pedestal as the top-drafted wide receiver in fantasy football.
Unfortunately for Thomas, Brees would be approaching retirement and the natural question would be, “how good is Thomas without the future hall-of-fame quarterback?” In Thomas’ last season with Brees in 2019, he would lead the league in receptions, yards (1725), Target Share (33.2-percent), Completed Air Yards (1175), Red Zone Target (26), and fantasy points per game (23.4).
Thomas had been blessed with excellent health in his NFL career up to this point too. Besides a minor ankle sprain suffered in the preseason of his rookie season in 2016, Thomas had no other documented injuries during his initial rookie contract. The wear and tear caught up to Thomas in 2020 when he ruptured his ankle deltoid ligament in Week 1. Since the injury, Thomas has played in seven total games. This includes opting for surgery late in the 2021 offseason that cost him the entire season. His 2020 season saw him finish with 40 receptions for 438 scoreless yards. Two years removed from being on top if the WR landscape, it’s fair to question how close can Thomas approach his glory years as he approaches his age-29 season.
