Dez Bryant was the consensus best wide receiver in the draft, but he fell considerably on draft day. He ended up in the lap of the Dallas Cowboys, who didn't particularly need a wide receiver but couldn't pass up on the opportunity to draft Bryant. But Bryant brings about more questions than answers in fantasy circles. How will he perform as a rookie? What does this mean for Miles Austin? Will Bryant keep defenses honest or steal targets, or both? Was the Cowboys' decision to draft him a positive for the fantasy value of anyone besides Tony Romo?

Since the merger, there have been 19 instances where a wide receiver ranked in the top five in one season and then watched as his team selected a wide receiver in the first round of the following draft. How did the established player -- the Miles Austin for the Cowboys -- fare the following year?

What can we take from this above list? It's hard to say, as the sample isn't particularly large. Reggie Wayne "improved" despite the Colts drafting a receiver in the first round, but that had more to do with Marvin Harrison only playing in five games in 2007. Jerry Rice jumped from 305 FP to 353 FP in J.J. Stokes' first year in SF, but that's Jerry Rice. On the other hand, Marlin Briscoe may have dropped off considerably after Buffalo drafted a receiver with the 4th pick in the 1971 draft, but it wasn't because of Hill, who had only 11 catches all season long. Gary Clark dropped from 229 FP to 155 FP, but he (in large part because of his quarterback) was almost certainly playing above his head during the Redskins near-perfect 1991 season. Generally speaking, we see that drafting a receiver in the first round doesn't need to spell gloom for the stud receiver already on the team. The drop from 15.2 FP/G to 13.3 FP/G -- in an admittedly small sample size -- was very small. The next step, of course, is to compare those wide receivers to players in a control group.

From 1970 to 2008, there were, by definition, 195 wide receivers who ranked in the top five in a single season. Eighteen of those were listed above, as they played for teams that then drafted wideouts in the first round of the following draft. Another seven missed more than half of the season in the following year, leaving 170 wide receivers who ranked in the top 5 in one season, played in at least eight games in the next season, and didn't play for teams that drafted a first round receiver. On average, those wide receivers went from a 14.7 FP/G average and a 119 VBD grade to a 12.0 FP/G average and a VBD of only 69 points. So compared to the control group, the wide receivers who played on teams that added first round wideouts look pretty good, as they fell from only 15.2 to 13.3, and their VBD scores dropped from only 124 to 86. This doesn't necessarily mean that Miles Austin is in better shape than if the Cowboys didn't draft Bryant; the sample size probably isn't large enough to draw that conclusion. But there's little evidence that Austin's value should *drop* because of what the Cowboys did in the draft. More often than not, players like him retain their value better than the average top-five receiver.

But what about Bryant himself? There were 17 wide receivers who went to teams with an established, top-five receiver (remember above that Harrison and Wayne counted twice for Anthony Gonzalez). Outside of Randy Moss, none of those rookies had huge impacts. For what it's worth, Bryant has been compared to Moss by many analysts, and it's easy to see the similarities between Cunningham/Moss/Carter/Reed to Romo/Bryant/Austin/Witten. But, once again, we need to compare Bryant to a control group. On average, the 104 first round wide receivers who did *not* join teams with a top-five receiver didn't do much better than those who did. They played in about one more game, and posted slightly better averages, but had a lower VBD score (likely due to Moss' huge impact on the small group). The full table, below:

How do I read the tea leaves? Dez Bryant isn't in a worse position than the average rookie because he was drafted by a team with a stud wide receiver. Elite receivers may demand up a bunch of targets, but they're usually wearing the same colors as a very good quarterback, as is the case in Dallas. And that advantage more than makes up for having to share the load, in my view. Dez Bryant wouldn't be a more attractive fantasy option to me if he was the #1 WR in Cleveland. With Tony Romo throwing him passes, I feel pretty good about Bryant's chances.

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to stuart@footballguys.com.