Throughout May, we will be layering in some additional context to go along with the player ranking tables.
After laying the groundwork this offseason with full dynasty player rankings, we are going to break that linear list down a bit into tiers with some added flavor.
You can also check out my full dynasty rookie rankings for those with rookie-only drafts on the horizon, and I have already published Dynasty tiers for quarterbacks, running backs, and tight ends.
Dynasty Fantasy Football Tiers:
Some really quick methodology here if you are new to how I do fantasy tiers.
I make my dynasty tiers based on a blend of age, fantasy performance, career arc, team situation, and fantasy archetype.
There is some overlap to actual player rankings, but these tiers do not specifically follow the rankings, instead following those archetypes.
The purpose of tiers is not to be a carbon copy of player rankings.
The purpose is to spot a potential arbitrage situation and shop in different buckets based on how you are constructing your team in startups as well as looking for trade opportunities.
One final bit of housekeeping here.
Since the wide receiver position is the densest position from a dynasty stance, I will do my best to highlight a number of the players individually, but there just is not enough room to do every single player.
With that in mind, a number of the tiers will be focusing on the tier itself over outright going through each player.
*Player Age = Age on 9/1/2024
Tier 1 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Justin Jefferson (Age: 25.2)
- Ja’Marr Chase (24.5)
- CeeDee Lamb (25.4)
We are starting with the elite tier of wideouts who are at the apex of their careers.
Justin Jefferson remains a premier talent at this position.
Even with missing seven games last season due to a hamstring issue, Jefferson managed to go over 1,000 yards receiving for the fourth consecutive season.
No player in league history has more receiving yards through four years of their career than Jefferson.
In 2023, he averaged 107.4 receiving yards per game, which was second in the NFL behind Tyreek Hill.
If you want to split hairs and bump Ja’Marr Chase over Jefferson based on his attachment to Joe Burrow while Jefferson makes a transition post-Kirk Cousins, I will not overly push back.
Jefferson has just 58 career targets from non-Cousins passers to this point while Jefferson was outside of the top-20 scorers in three of his five games without Cousins last season.
While we are hoping that J.J. McCarthy can be more efficient than the gaggle of backups Minnesota trotted out a year ago after Cousins went down, Burrow does provide a cozy blanket for Chase through a Dynasty lens.
Chase has yet to cash in a WR1 overall scoring season like the other two wideouts here, but he has the best quarterback attachment as noted plus added upside that we still have not gotten his best for a full campaign.
While Chase may not have a WR1 overall trophy yet, he does have the highest-scoring game for any wide receiver since he entered the league. He also has the second-highest-scoring game for any wideout over that span as well.
Chase’s full game is still coming on, something I believe that continue in 2024.
Chase has increased his slot rate each year in the league.
With Tyler Boyd now gone and the Bengals having several bigger bodies at wide receiver, I believe we will see Chase’s slot rate rise again this season, giving him even more access to receptions after he already has averaged 7.3 and 6.3 catches per game the past two seasons.
The Cowboys have unlocked CeeDee Lamb’s complete game.
Lamb ended last season as the WR1 in overall points in all formats.
His targets, catches, receiving yards, and receiving touchdowns have all gone up from the season prior in each of his years in the league.
If he tops them all again in 2024, he will have a monster season since he is coming off a major campaign.
Lamb led the NFL with 135 receptions last season, turning those into 1,749 yards and 12 touchdowns, adding a rushing touchdown to his totals.
Lamb accounted for 29.9% of the team targets (fourth in the NFL), 31.5% of the receptions (first), and 37.5% of the receiving yards (third).
Tier 2 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Amon-Ra St. Brown (24.9)
- Puka Nacua (23.3)
- A.J. Brown (27.2)
This group is just a stone’s throw away from the top tier.
Amon-Ra St. Brown was sensational again in 2023.
St. Brown pulled in 119 receptions for 1,515 yards and 10 touchdowns.
His targets, catches, yards, yards per catch, and receiving touchdowns have all risen from the year prior in each of his years in the league.
St. Brown was targeted on 28.5% of his routes, fifth in the NFL.
He has finished his first three seasons as the WR30, WR11, and WR4 in points per game.
The Rams look like absolute criminals in hindsight for the fifth-round selection of Puka Nacua.
Nacua made history this past season, setting records for receptions (105), receiving yards (1,486), and total yards (1,575) for a rookie wide receiver.
He also found the end zone six times.
For good measure, Nacua then caught nine passes for 181 yards and a touchdown in the Wild Card Round.
Nacua also was just as good with Cooper Kupp on the field as without him.
Nacua ran 397 routes last season with Kupp on the field, leading the team with 29.7% of the targets and averaging 2.66 yards per route run.
While gamers may be scared to go all in on Nacua based on his lower-end draft capital, one-year sample, and Matthew Stafford potentially having a shorter rope on his career, the history on wideouts that have been immediately great out of the box for fantasy has been a relatively safe proposition.
The only wide receivers in the top 20 of rookie seasons overall for fantasy that did not go on to have another WR1 scoring season were Kelvin Benjamin, Eddie Royal, Michael Clayton, and Tampa Bay's Mike Williams.
Jaylen Waddle pending from that list.
While gamers may not want to pay the iron price on Nacua in startups, those who ran into him as a lottery ticket last season in rookie drafts do not need to immediately try to sell him at his highest point.
A.J. Brown has closed his two seasons with the Eagles at the WR6 and WR5 in overall scoring.
He has been the WR8 or better in per-game scoring in three of his past four seasons.
After topping out 405 pass routes run as a high over his three seasons with the Titans, Brown has run 576 pass routes in each season with the Eagles, which has led to him receiving 145 and 158 targets in Philadelphia.
Tier 3 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Garrett Wilson (Age: 24.1)
- Marvin Harrison Jr. (22.1)
- Malik Nabers (21.2)
- Chris Olave (24.2)
- Drake London (23.1)
- Rome Odunze (22.2)
This is arguably the most interesting tier at the position, especially from a start-up stance.
None of these wide receivers have yet to post an elite scoring season, but all are perceived to have the talent to be elite commodities who can push their way into Tier 1 in their highest range of outcomes.
These wideouts do require a small step of faith in that regard since all of them are expensive to acquire.
This current draft class has some major firepower at the top from a profile perspective.
All three of Marvin Harrison Jr, Malik Nabers, and Rome Odunze graded in the 94th percentile or higher in my prospect model.
No wide receiver class in that database (going back to 2000) had had that many in the same year.
Early expectations are that all three of these wideouts are high.
I wrote about each of their landing spots after the opening round of the draft ended.
While gamers may have cooled to a degree on the landing spots for Nabers or Odunze versus Harrison, these wideouts should retain significant value next offseason even if they are slower out of the gates than anticipated.
Garrett Wilson has posted back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons in his first two seasons playing attached to the worst quarterback in the league.
We believe that the Jets have something special here. We are just praying that Wilson gets a full season playing with a functional passer.
16.5% of Wilson’s targets have been deemed inaccurate by TruMedia over the past two seasons.
The only player with a higher rate of inaccurate targets over that period with as many overall targets as Wilson is Davante Adams at 17.2%.
After a strong rookie season, Chris Olave took another step forward in year two.
Olave improved his receptions (5.4) and receiving yardage (70.2) per game, catching one more touchdown (five) than his rookie season.
Olave ranked 15th at the position in target rate per route run (25.5%).
Only five wide receivers that ran as many routes as Olave did average more yards per route run than he did.
Drake London has been targeted on 25.2% of his routes run since he was drafted in 2022.
That rate is 16th among wide receivers over that stretch.
The problem is that he has averaged only 27.3 pass routes run per game. That total ranks 70th among all wide receivers.
His 6.9 targets per game rank 33rd at the position over that span.
Rate stats provide context for analysis, but fantasy stats still stem from counting stats, something London has not had access to.
Going back to London’s game exiting USC, he was a wideout who thrived when forced manufactured production, something he has not had in the NFL.
London was excellent after the catch and working the shallow areas of the field, something he did not have access to in Arthur Smith’s offense.
It is not far-fetched to believe that London could thrive in this Zac Robinson offense to the degrees that we have seen from Cooper Kupp, Puka Nacua, and Justin Jefferson.
Not only forced to live on a low volume of opportunity, 16.3% of London’s career targets have been deemed inaccurate by his quarterback since entering the NFL.
For some context, Garrett Wilson is at 16.5%, a player London was selected ahead of in the NFL Draft two years ago but regarded in a different light in terms of average draft position in 2024 redraft leagues and dynasty circles.
I am not suggesting that London should outright jump Wilson in either department, but he should be close to the same tiering with this addition.
Kirk Cousins has a 10.1% inaccurate target rate throwing to wide receivers over that span, which is the fifth-best rate in the league.
Desmond Ridder has a 17.4% inaccurate target rate throwing to wide receivers, 34th on the same list.
What is even worse is that 21.9% of London’s career red zone targets have been inaccurate, an area of the field where his skill set should thrive.
Cousins does drop to a 12.0% off-target rate in the red zone (17th), but Ridder ranked 32nd in that department (17.9%).
While Cousins provides an immediate injection of stability for London, we will inevitably need Michael Penix to provide a similar safety net in the future given this cost.
Tier 4 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- D.J. Moore (Age: 27.4)
- Brandon Aiyuk (26.5)
- DeVonta Smith (25.8)
- Jaylen Waddle (25.8)
- DK Metcalf (26.7)
- Michael Pittman (26.9)
- Tee Higgins (25.6)
- Nico Collins (25.5)
- Deebo Samuel (28.6)
This is the strongest tier for the position in Dynasty, made up of a plethora of established NFL wide receivers.
By all accounts, all of these wide receivers are already more successful players than the previous tier.
But most of these wideouts have been better as fantasy WR2 options while moonlighting as WR1 options, whereas the market is currently folding in the potential upside of the previous group.
While the majority of this tier may have a wart or two, all have proven production while having plenty of years left in their careers. You should not be unhappy if you have multiple assets from this group.
The largest issue that the majority of this tier has is that nearly all of these wideouts play with another feature receiver on their roster.
D.J. Moore had his best NFL season in his first year in Chicago, posting career-highs with 96 receptions for 1,364 yards and nine total touchdowns.
Moore will be getting an attachment to the best quarterback of his early career with the selection of Caleb Williams. Even if Williams takes some time to develop in the league, the bar is that low for the passers that Moore has played with.
While we would love to suggest that Moore is now a stable WR1, we also do have to see how much of an impact the additions of Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze have on his opportunity share.
Moore had a career-high 28.5% of his team targets last season. He had 75 more targets than the next closest wide receiver on the team, something that will not reoccur in 2024.
I bring that up because playing alongside a viable teammate has held back a lot of this tier from reaching consistent highs for fantasy purposes.
Brandon Aiyuk’s yardage has climbed from the season before in each of his years in the league, punctuated by him producing 1,342 yards in 2023 to go with seven touchdowns last season.
Aiyuk led all wide receivers with a first down or touchdown on 58.1% of his targets in 2023.
His 3.06 yards per route run was third at the position.
The one rub with Aiyuk for fantasy football is that the San Francisco offense inherently invokes volatility for their players since the offense is predicated on efficiency over volume.
Despite Aiyuk’s impressive rate stats, he still had nine games with four or fewer receptions and nine with fewer than 60 yards receiving since he was 51st among all wide receivers in routes run per game (29.2).
We will see if one of Aiyuk or Deebo Samuel ends up getting squeezed out of San Francisco as their window gets condensed and they have to pay out higher-end contracts as a byproduct.
Samuel had 97 touches for 1,117 yards from scrimmage to go along with 12 touchdowns last season.
As a receiver, Samuel averaged 14.9 yards per catch and 59.5 receiving yards per game, both of which were the second-highest totals of his career.
His seven receiving touchdowns were a career-high.
Samuel remained a unique chess piece at his position as a rusher, running 37 times for 225 yards and another five touchdowns.
With the 49ers running a restrictive offense in terms of passing volume, these two separating at some point could benefit each from a fantasy stance since both have been better fantasy performers when the other has been off the field.
Over the past three seasons, Samuel has averaged a target on 23.8% of his routes with 2.12 yards per route run when Aiyuk has also been on the field.
With Aiyuk on the sideline, Samuel has bumped up to a target on 37.8% of his routes with a staggering 4.94 yards per route run.
Over that same stretch, Aiyuk has averaged a target on 19.2% of his routes with 1.97 yards per route run with Samuel on the field at the same time.
With Samuel off the field, Aiyuk has been targeted on 23.1% of his routes with 2.36 yards per route run.
DeVonta Smith has been rock solid, opening his career with three seasons averaging over 50.0 yards per game and posting seasons of 95-1,196-7 and 81-1,066-7 the past two seasons.
The only shade to throw at Smith is that he is not the best wide receiver on his current team. Otherwise, he may be a locked-in fantasy WR1.
Smith has been the WR15 and WR21 in points per game playing alongside A.J. Brown.
Smith has only run 115 routes the past two seasons with Brown off the field, but he has averaged a target on 27.8% of those routes with 2.49 yards per route run.
On 1,215 routes with Brown on the field, those rates dip to a 20.6% target rate per route with 1.91 yards per route.
The same thing has happened to Jaylen Waddle.
He has been excellent per opportunity but plays alongside one of the best receivers in the league.
Working through a core injury to start the season, sustaining a concussion in Week 2, and then suffering a late-season ankle injury, Waddle ended up missing three games in 2023, but he still managed to catch 72 passes for 1,014 yards and four touchdowns.
Waddle has now gone over 1,000 yards receiving in each of his three seasons in the league.
While Waddle has played more Robin to Tyreek Hill’s Batman in the past two seasons, we still have seen a glimpse of the upside he presents when tasked to be the lead option.
Waddle ran 101 pass routes last season with Hill off of the field.
On those plays, he was targeted on 35.6% of his routes while averaging 3.68 yards per route run.
When Hill missed Week 15 entirely, Waddle caught eight passes for 142 yards and a touchdown against the Jets.
Let’s keep that same train of thought going with Tee Higgins.
Higgins is coming off a career-low 656 yards and five touchdowns in 2023.
He missed five games due to injury, playing fewer than 60% of the snaps in another three games.
The highs for Higgins still showed up in spurts, but the consistency and staying on the field have been bugaboos.
We saw the spike moments even last year.
Higgins had two games with a pair of touchdowns in Week 2 and Week 15.
He also had 140 yards and a touchdown in Week 16, punctuated by an 80-yard catch and run for a touchdown.
Higgins has been a volatile WR2, but that is what happens when you play next to a megastar in Ja’Marr Chase.
On his routes run with Chase off the field the past two years, Higgins is averaging a target on 23.5% of those routes with 2.61 yards per route run.
With Chase on the field, that goes down to an 18.6% target rate with 1.53 yards per route run.
The one thing that Higgins has going for him is that he should be on the open market next offseason, potentially opening up a worse offensive environment but also an added pipeline to increased opportunity where he is the feature of a passing game.
We are waiting to see how the Houston target tree in 2024 shakes out and the impact that could have on Nico Collins after his breakout season.
Collins made a major jump in year three, catching 80 passes for 1,297 yards and eight touchdowns over 15 games in the regular season.
Collins was second in the league behind Tyreek Hill in yards per route run last season (3.11).
The quality of targets was the largest difference.
After 25.8% of his targets were inaccurate in 2022, that off-target rate dropped to 13.8% last season.
Staying on the same level as the previous wideouts, Collins also received a bump last year when Tank Dell was unavailable.
Collins ran 258 routes with Dell off the field.
On those routes, Collins was targeted on 30.2% with 3.32 yards per route run (with six of his touchdowns).
On 210 routes with Dell on the field, that target rate dipped down to 22.9% of his routes with 2.88 yards per route run.
Not only having to contend with sharing work with Dell in 2024, but the Texans are also folding Stefon Diggs into the equation.
DK Metcalf has gone over 1,000 yards in three of his five NFL seasons (with a low season of 900 yards), but it feels like we have been waiting for him to kick that final door down for fantasy.
Metcalf has finished as a WR1 in points per game in just one of those five seasons.
He averaged only 4.1 receptions per game in 2023, his fewest since his rookie season.
Metcalf was able to make up for that dip in receptions by averaging a career-high 16.9 yards per catch.
After seeing a career-low 12.4% deep target rate in 2022, Metcalf was back up to a 21.8% deep target rate last season. That contributed to a career-low 55.5% catch rate after a 63.8% catch rate last season.
His increased downfield usage coincided with the addition of Jaxon Smith-Njigba, who soaked up a lot of shallow targets in the offense when he was on the field.
Michael Pittman is the one guy here who is the clear lead target in his passing game.
Pittman has caught more passes than the year prior in all four of his seasons to kick off his career.
He ended last season securing 109 receptions for 1,152 yards and four touchdowns.
Pittman accounted for 28.6% of the Indianapolis targets, which ranked ninth among wide receivers last season.
He averaged a career-high 2.04 yards per route run.
Pittman looks a lot like a potential arbitrage on Amon-Ra St. Brown based on how he is used paired with his target share, but we still do need to see if Anthony Richardson can support assets in the passing game given his lackluster passing profile to this point of his collegiate and small pro career.
Pittman and Richardson only worked together on a small sample in 2023, but the duo only connected on 59.1% of their targets for 6.5 yards per target while Pittman secured 71.6% of his targets from Gardner Minshew for 7.5 yards per target.
Tier 5 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Davante Adams (Age: 31.7)
- Stefon Diggs (30.8)
- Cooper Kupp (31.2)
- Mike Evans (31.0)
- Keenan Allen (32.3)
- DeAndre Hopkins (32.2)
The oldies but goodies.
All of these wideouts have multiple WR1 seasons in their ledger, but all are also past the age apex at their position.
These are options best used for rosters currently competing for league titles.
If they are still on rosters that are not, then those gamers are likely going to have to take less than 100% market value moving them if they do not want to ride off into the sunset with them.
Age 32 has always been the “no man’s land” age for elite wide receivers where things can just fall completely apart without any gradual decline.
Both DeAndre Hopkins and Keenan Allen will be in their age 32 seasons this year.
Both were heavy targets in 2023, but each will be playing alongside more target competition this season.
Allen was targeted on 28.6% of his routes last season (WR5) while Hopkins was at 27.1% (WR9).
Davante Adams will not enter the season at age 32 but will get there in December.
Adams caught 103 passes last season, his fourth consecutive season grabbing 100 or more passes.
The Raiders did everything that they could to try and feed Adams in 2023. He led the NFL with 33.0% of his team’s targets and 45.0% of his team’s air yards.
Adams was targeted 175 times overall, second in the league behind CeeDee Lamb.
Only Tyreek Hill (36.6%) was targeted at a higher rate per route than Adams was (30.2%) last season.
Unfortunately, not all of those targets were on the mark, which led to volatility for fantasy.
Adams had eight weeks as a WR3 or lower with five games as the WR45 or worse.
18.9% of the targets that Adams had last season were deemed as inaccurate throws per TruMedia.
The only wide receiver with a higher rate of inaccurate targets who also had over 100 targets last season was Marquise Brown (19.0%).
29.7% of the targets Adams had on throws 10 or more yards downfield were inaccurate. The league rate for wide receivers was 21.8%.
After scoring 10 touchdowns from outside of the red zone in 2022, Adams had two of those touchdowns in 2023.
Struggling to successfully get Adams the ball downfield regularly, he ended the season averaging just 11.1 yards per reception, his fewest yards per grab since 2015.
But even when he caught the ball short, Adams averaged only 3.3 yards after the catch per reception last season, his fewest since 2015.
As noted above with Michael Pittman, Gardner Minshew should be better at facilitating targets to a lead wideout should he beat out Aidan O’Connell this summer, but we should expect both Las Vegas quarterbacks to play in 2024.
Just when it looked like Mike Evans may be slowing down, he came back last season to catch 79 passes for 1,255 yards and 13 touchdowns in 2023.
His 15.9 yards per catch was his highest in a season since 2019. His 2.34 yards per route run was his highest in a season since 2018.
Evans and Mayfield had a connection. He was targeted on 25.3% of his routes, his highest rate in a season since 2016.
Reeling off his 10th consecutive 1,000-yard season, Evans and the team worked out a two-year extension to keep him in Tampa Bay through his age-32 season.
If I am looking to buy any of these wideouts at a discount for a winning roster, I am turning over some stones on Cooper Kupp still.
Kupp suffered a hamstring injury during the preseason that forced him to miss the first four games of the season.
He came back with eight catches for 118 yards in his first game off of injured reserve in Week 5, but his performance was more uneven than over the remainder of the season.
Playing in 13 total games last season, Kupp had four 100-yard games, but also six games with fewer than 30 yards receiving.
Kupp is still a focal point of this passing game despite the emergence of Nacua.
He ran 399 pass routes with Nacua on the field, receiving 27.1% of the team targets.
No other Rams player had a target share higher than 11.6% with both Kupp and Nacua on the field at the same time.
While he does carry the risk of being on the wrong side of the age spectrum, Kupp will enter the offseason fully removed from his injuries while the Rams have not added any serious threat in the passing game to suppress Kupp seeing another strong opportunity.
I will be honest.
I don’t have a firm opinion on what you should do with Stefon Diggs this offseason.
Diggs started 2023 on fire. He went over 100 yards in five of his first six games of the season.
His hot start suggests that he is not completely washed and ineffective.
Then the bottom fell out, however.
He never had another 100-yard game the rest of the season.
Over the final 13 games of the season, he had fewer receiving yards than Khalil Shakir, who had 59 fewer targets over that span than Diggs.
We expect a player as good as Diggs to produce at a higher level than he did to close the season.
Bar none, he is the first finger to point in his decline.
But there were several other contributing factors such as an offensive coordinator change, a reduction in his depth of the target, and the Bills facing a rogue’s gallery of defenses that were good against the pass last season.
Over that same span, Josh Allen was 15th in completion rate, 18th in yards per pass attempt, and 13th in accuracy rating.
Regardless of how his 2023 season ended, Diggs still commanded a high rate of targets.
He was targeted on 27.0% of his routes, which was 12th among wide receivers.
At the very least, we have to knock that target opportunity down entering 2024, we are just flying blind on how far.
The question is can he retain that target share joining Nico Collins and Tank Dell, two players who also commanded targets and impacted each other based on the availability of both?
Tier 6 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- George Pickens (Age: 23.5)
- Tank Dell (24.8)
- Zay Flowers (24.0)
- Rashee Rice (23.4)
- Jaxon Smith-Njigba (22.5)
- Jordan Addison (22.6)
- Brian Thomas Jr. (21.5)
- Xavier Worthy (21.3)
- Jayden Reed (24.3)
Our next batch of wideouts have already shown enough on their rookie contracts to warrant an upside outcome or come with the cache as prospects to keep the lights on that they can be hits for fantasy.
I did write up the landing spots for both Xavier Worthy and Brian Thomas coming out of the draft.
Both of those wideouts have had even more positive momentum since the draft.
The Jaguars released Zay Jones while Rashee Rice continues to remain in a negative feedback loop this offseason.
Through 10 games as a rookie, Rice was the best wideout on the Chiefs per opportunity but had yet to lock in consistent snaps.
He was averaging a team-high 2.21 yards per route run over that stretch but had only run a route on 44.5% of the team dropbacks and received 12.6% of the team targets.
Over the final 10 games, Rice jumped up to 2.59 yards per route run in a larger role. He ran a route on 69.4% of the team dropbacks with a 23.9% share of the team targets to close the year.
He had at least 19.0% of the team targets in each of the final 10 games of the season with over 25.0% of the targets in seven of those 10 games.
By the end of the season, Rice caught 79 passes for 938 yards and seven touchdowns in the regular season, adding another 26 catches for 262 yards and a touchdown in the postseason.
Rice found his niche by production after the catch.
70.8% of his receiving yards came after the catch, the highest rate among qualifying wide receivers.
Rice only averaged 4.6 air yards per target, ahead of only Parris Campbell and Kadarius Toney.
83.7% of his targets as a rookie were fewer than 10 yards downfield, which led the league.
There is room for Rice’s route tree and role to expand, but everything has gone wrong for him off the field this offseason while the Chiefs added both Worthy and Marquise Brown to compromise his target immediate opportunity if he does come out of things unscathed without a suspension.
George Pickens increased his production across the board in his second season compared to his rookie year.
Pickens caught 63-of-106 targets for 1,140 yards and five touchdowns in 2023, leading the NFL with 18.1 yards per reception.
With the trade of Diontae Johnson, Pickens should receive a larger boost in usage.
Pickens ran 188 routes last season with Johnson off the field.
He was targeted on 23.9% of those routes, accounting for 27.6% of the targets and averaging 2.94 yards per route run.
On 349 routes run with Johnson on the field, Pickens was targeted on 17.5% of those routes, accounting for 20.5% of the team and averaging 1.68 yards per route run.
We also could see a spike in quarterback play.
At worst, the skill set that Pickens provides downfield does line up with where both Russell Wilson and Justin Fields want to throw the football vertically.
We will be getting a potential low-volume passing offense under Arthur Smith, but Pittsburgh already had that in 2023.
Pickens was already the WR44 in routes run per game (32.1) last season and still turned in enough splash plays to increase his output from his rookie season.
Tank Dell was third among all rookie wide receivers in yards per route run (2.22), trailing only Puka Nacua (2.60) and Rashee Rice (2.41).
He ranked fifth among all rookie wideouts in target rate per route run (23.5%) and fourth in the rate of targets to result in a first down or touchdown (45.3%).
Both Dell and Collins had fantasy bumps during moments when the other player missed time, but on 210 passing plays with both players on the field at the same time, Collins averaged 2.88 yards per route run and Dell averaged 2.26 yards per route.
When both players were on the field, they combined for 49.7% of the team targets. The next closest player on the team had 15.8% of the targets.
That is surely going to change with the arrival of Stefon Diggs.
The Ravens selected Zay Flowers in the first round last spring, and he immediately led the team in receiving.
Flowers caught 77-of-108 targets for 858 yards and five touchdowns, adding a rushing touchdown to his totals.
He ended the season third among rookie wide receivers in route participation, running a route on 85.6% of the team dropbacks.
Flowers finished seventh among rookies in yards per route run (1.65) and sixth in target rate per route (20.7%).
He did receive a bump as a rookie with Mark Andrews missing so much time.
Flowers ran 273 routes with Andrews on the field.
On those routes, he was targeted on 19.0% of them with two touchdowns.
On 314 routes with Andrews absent, Flowers was targeted on 22.0% of his routes with four touchdowns.
Flowers also will have to overcome one of the longest-running streaks in the league to fully get over as a WR1 in fantasy.
The Ravens have not had a WR1 scorer since Michael Jackson in 1996.
Jordan Addison had a successful rookie campaign, catching 70 passes for 911 yards and 10 touchdowns.
Minnesota also had a look at Addison being the lead wideout for a stretch when Jefferson missed the crux of the middle of the season.
On 323 routes run with Jefferson off the field as a rookie, Addison averaged 1.50 yards per route run, carrying 22.3% of the team targets with a target on 19.5% of his routes.
On 283 routes run with Jefferson on the field, Addison still averaged 1.50 yards per route run despite only seeing 13.9% of the team targets with a target on 15.9% of his routes.
He had more touchdowns (six) with Jefferson on the field at the same time as him.
The quarterback change for the Vikings places some uneasiness for Addison in year two, but he should be tasked to take on a larger role in year two paired with the potential that T.J. Hockenson will miss time or be limited to start the season due to his late-season ACL injury.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba failed to answer any of the questions that we had entering last year’s draft that he was a true WR1 in the NFL.
Selected as the first receiver in last year’s draft. Smith-Njiba caught 63 passes for 628 yards and four touchdowns.
He was seventh among all rookie wideouts in routes run (475), ranked 10th in target rate per route (16.8%), and 13th in yards per route run (1.32), which was the same yards per route run as fellow rookie teammate Jake Bobo.
For fantasy, he had just three weeks as a top-24 scorer and was outside of the top 40 scorers in 10 of his games.
Smith-Njiba’s usage as a rookie was largely nondescript.
He averaged only 6.1 air yards per target, ranking 25th out of 27 rookie wide receivers last season to run 100 or more routes.
35.5% of Smith-Njigba’s targets were at or behind the line of scrimmage, which was the highest rate of all rookie wide receivers. For added context, YAC merchant Rashee Rice was at 26.5%.
Smith-Njigba did flash some special isolated plays toward the end of the season to provide hope that his rookie season usage was more of a growth season and schematic issue as opposed to any talent limitations in the NFL.
Tier 7 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Amari Cooper (Age: 30.2)
- Calvin Ridley (29.7)
- Terry McLaurin (29.0)
- Diontae Johnson (28.2)
- Christian Kirk (27.8)
- Marquise Brown (27.2)
- Chris Godwin (28.5)
- Courtland Sutton (28.9)
- Mike Williams (29.9)
- Tyler Lockett (31.9)
- Adam Thielen (34.0)
Another grouping of established veteran receivers, this pack of wideouts is older than the previous tier while not having the requisite WR1 overall upside that the Tier 5 receivers have shown over their careers.
There is a solid amount of value with this tier, however, as many of the receivers here are viable fantasy starters.
If you have an established dynasty roster, these are all candidates to add to your roster while their price is discounted based on the stage of their careers and the perception that they lack true upside.
Amari Cooper had another solid season amidst all of the quarterback changes last year, catching 72-of-128 targets for 1,250 yards and five touchdowns over 15 games played.
Cooper averaged 17.4 yards per reception, the highest rate of his career.
His 83.3 receiving yards per game were also a career high, anchored by a 265-yard performance in Week 15.
That was Cooper’s fourth 200-yard game of his career, more than any player since he entered the league in 2015 and just one short of the record for any wideout in NFL history.
Marquise Brown did not live up to the compensation he was traded for in Arizona, but he has a new lease on regaining value by joining the Chiefs.
Brown is coming off a career-low 41.0 receiving yards per game while his 3.6 receptions per game were his fewest since 2020.
Brown did still provide fleeting moments of success in Arizona, and the drop-off in production there was not completely his doing.
21.6% of Brown’s targets in Arizona were deemed inaccurate per TruMedia. No wide receiver with as many overall targets over that span has a higher inaccurate target rate.
Over his two seasons in Arizona, Brown played with six different quarterbacks. None of which were the caliber of Patrick Mahomes.
Terry McLaurin will turn 29 years old this September and we are still waiting for that one season where it all comes together for him via quarterback play, something we are hoping Jayden Daniels can provide.
McLaurin managed to just get to 1,002 yards last season, his fourth consecutive 1,000-yard season.
Despite hitting that arbitrary threshold, McLaurin only caught four touchdown passes. After scoring seven times as a rookie in 2019, McLaurin has caught five or fewer touchdown passes in each of the past four seasons.
He also averaged a career-low 12.7 yards per catch and a career-low 58.9 yards per game last season.
His 1.56 yards per route run was also the fewest of his career while his 16.7% inaccurate target rate was the highest rate of his career.
Tier 8 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Christian Watson (Age: 25.3)
- Jerry Jeudy (25.4)
- Jameson Williams (23.4)
- Keon Coleman (21.3)
- Jahan Dotson (24.4)
- Ricky Pearsall (24.0)
- Xavier Legette (23.6)
- Ladd McConkey (22.8)
- Quentin Johnston (23.0)
- Ja’Lynn Polk (22.4)
This tier of receivers is made up of a group of wideouts who still carry upside as well as the next wave of rookie wideouts who were selected at the end of Round 1 or the opening of Round 2.
You can go back and hit the prospect profiles for the rookies here.
I still am leaving the door open for Christian Watson.
Watson had a season marred by hamstring issues for the second straight season.
When Watson was a full-go, we did get to see some of the upside that he still brings to the table.
He had 91 yards in his first game of the season playing at least half of the team snaps.
Before re-injuring his hamstring in Week 13, Watson was on a three-game run of scoring four touchdowns, going for 5-94-1 on Thanksgiving Day and then 7-71-2 against a stingy Kansas City defense the night he got hurt.
The only thing in Watson’s way is staying on the field.
Watson has missed various times across two seasons with three different hamstring injuries, a knee issue, and a concussion.
To potentially get ahead of Amari Cooper leaving after this season while giving the team another potential weapon for the short-term to work alongside Cooper, the Browns traded for Jerry Jeudy this offseason.
They then immediately signed him to a three-year contract that runs through the 2027 season.
Jeudy failed to live up to his first-round draft status in Denver.
Through four years in Denver, Jeudy has yet to hit 1,000 yards in a season, catching 11 total touchdowns over that span.
In 2023, his 3.4 receptions per game were his fewest since his rookie season while his 47.4 yards per game were the second-lowest mark of his career.
With Elijah Moore on the roster, Jeudy should play more outside receiver than he has to this point in the NFL.
Since playing 69.0% of his snaps outside as a rookie in 2020, Jeudy has since played 74.6%, 48.5%, and 54.3% of his snaps in the slot the past three seasons.
Jeudy has averaged 1.77 yards per route run when lined up in the slot compared to 1.88 yards per route run when lined up outside.
Detroit will need Jameson Williams to take on a large role for the first time since drafting him 12th overall in 2022 after losing Josh Reynolds in free agency.
Williams has only played in 18 regular season games through two seasons, limited by injuries, suspensions, and Dan Campbell asking for Williams to earn his playing time.
Williams has just two career games with more than two receptions.
Williams ran a route on 86.7% and 81.4% of the team dropbacks versus the Rams and 49ers .ast year in the playoffs, the two highest rates of his early career.
Before that, he had only hit 70% in one other career game.
Quentin Johnston ran the fifth-most pass routes among rookie wideouts last season, but among the 27 rookie wide receivers to run 100 or more pass routes in 2023, he was below the fold in every department.
After a solid rookie campaign, Jahan Dotson was arguably the biggest disappointment in this offense in 2023.
Dotson went from 14.9 yards per catch as a rookie down to 10.6 yards per grab last season.
As a byproduct, he went from 43.6 yards per game down to 30.5 per game in his second season.
After scoring seven times as a rookie, he found the end zone four times in 2023.
Dotson was fifth in the NFL among wide receivers in routes run last season (37.3 per game), but he ranked 115th among wide receivers in target rate per route run (13.1%).
After averaging 1.39 yards per route run as a rookie, Dotson fell all of the way down to 0.82 yards per route run in his second season, which was 118th in the league at his position.
His production was so poor that it is hard to entirely let him skate free without some blame himself, but Washington is still committed to Dotson after taking him in the first round in 2022.
Tier 9 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Gabe Davis (Age: 25.4)
- Rashid Shaheed (26.0)
- Romeo Doubs (24.4)
- Josh Palmer (24.9)
- Darnell Mooney (26.8)
- Jakobi Meyers (27.8)
A smaller subset of wideouts who have all flashed at certain points but have never found stable ground as full-season starters for fantasy.
Rashid Shaheed is the most intriguing player here from this group.
With the Saints forgoing spending high capital during the draft or free agency on a wide receiver, Shaheed should have a path to increasing his targets for a third straight season.
After coming on at the end of his rookie season in 2022, Shaheed caught 46-of-75 targets for 719 yards and five touchdowns in 2023.
He has averaged 17.4 and 15.6 yards per reception in his first two years in the NFL.
Shaheed was targeted on 21.2% of his routes run without Michael Thomas on the field last season (193 routes) compared to only a 14.3% rate when Thomas was on the field (238 routes).
Darnell Mooney has a new pulse with the Falcons after being limited in Chicago due to quarterback play.
16.4% of Mooney’s were inaccurate per TruMedia over his four seasons with the Bears.
The only wide receiver with as many targets as Mooney and a higher inaccurate target rate over that stretch is Marquise Brown (18.5%).
38.9% of Mooney’s targets on throws 20 or more yards downfield were inaccurate over that span. No wide receiver has a worse rate with as many targets over that period. The NFL average was 29.1%.
Tier 10 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Adonai Mitchell (Age: 22.9)
- Khalil Shakir (24.6)
- Josh Downs (23.1)
- Marvin Mims Jr. (22.5)
- Dontayvion Wicks (23.2)
- Jermaine Burton (23.2)
- Jalin Hyatt (22.9)
- Jonathan Mingo (23.4)
- Michael Wilson (24.5)
- Malachi Corley (22.4)
- Demario Douglas (23.7)
- Troy Franklin (21.6)
- Jalen McMillan (22.7)
- Roman Wilson (23.2)
- Devontez Walker (23.2)
- Javon Baker (22.5)
- Luke McCaffrey (23.4)
Our 10th tier of wide receivers is made up largely of players on their rookie contracts that are we giving some rope to in hopes of an early career breakout.
Almost every wideout here has a path to opportunity or was selected with tangible draft capital.
You can find full prospect profiles from the names here that were in the 2024 draft class.
Khalil Shakir is the lone player here who is not in his first or second season but has his best path to opportunity this upcoming season with both Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis leaving the Bills this offseason.
Among all wide receivers to run 100 or more routes in 2023, Shakir had a first down or touchdown on 57.8% of his targets, which was second among those players.
Shakir took on a larger role to close the season, running a route on 74.3% of the team dropbacks over the final 10 games of the season after an 18.7% up until that point of the season.
Over that span, he led the team in receiving yards (536) despite having 46 fewer targets than Diggs, 28 fewer than Dalton Kincaid, and 10 fewer than Davis.
Dontayvion Wicks was pressed into the lineup and was hyper-efficient for the Packers in the same ilk as Shakir for the Bills.
Wicks ended up running 285 pass routes in the regular season, which was third on the team.
But on those routes, Wicks had a first down or touchdown on 50.0% of his 58 targets, which not only led the Packers but was tied for fourth among all wide receivers in the league last season to see 50 or more targets come their way.
Josh Downs stepped in and was immediately second on the Colts in targets (98), receptions (68), and receiving yards (771), adding two touchdowns.
Out of 27 rookie wideouts to run 100 or more routes in 2023, Downs was eighth with 1.60 yards per route run and ninth in target rate per route run (20.3%).
One thing that did aid Downs was that Gardner Minshew targeted him on 21.0% of his routes run while Anthony Richardson only targeted him on 16.7%.
It was a much smaller sample, but something to keep an eye on if Richardson cannot support multiple pass catchers or Adonai Mitchell commands targets as a rookie.
Marvin Mims ended his rookie season with massively uneven production, catching 22 passes for 377 yards and a touchdown.
Mims only had 135 of those yards over his final 12 games of the season.
Even though Mims shared playing time with both Brandon Johnson and Lil’Jordan Humphrey last season, Sean Payton was vocal about how hard it was getting Mims on the field at the same time as Jerry Jeudy.
Now with Jeudy traded away, Mims should have a larger runway in 2024.
We know Mims can be explosive, he just needs to round out the rest of his game to show that is not the only spade he has.
Tier 11 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Rashod Bateman (Age: 24.8)
- Wan’Dale Robinson (23.6)
- Treylon Burks (24.4)
- Elijah Moore (24.4)
- Tyquan Thornton (24.1)
- Rondale Moore (24.2)
- Skyy Moore (24.0)
- Jalen Tolbert (25.5)
- Kadarius Toney (25.6)
- Alec Pierce (24.3)
- John Metchie (24.1)
This tier carries some name-brand cache based on either their profile as a prospect or some fleeting NFL production on their rookie contract but is probably more hopium-fueled options than ever fully popping as fantasy options at this point.
If looking at things through an optimistic lens we should still most of these players hang around the league as their cache should award them multiple chances to fail at least.
Most of these players could use a change of scenery, but if we are using the cases of Elijah Moore and Kadarius Toney as examples of not having expectations too high, we should take a player at face value based on what they have shown us multiple seasons into their careers.
Tier 12 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Curtis Samuel (Age: 28.1)
- Darius Slayton (27.6)
- D.J. Chark (27.9)
- Tyler Boyd (29.8)
- K.J. Osborn (27.2)
- Kendrick Bourne (29.1)
- Demarcus Robinson (29.9)
- Michael Gallup (28.4)
- Josh Reynolds (29.5)
- Zay Jones (29.4)
- Odell Beckham (31.8)
- Marquez Valdes-Scantling (29.9)
- Noah Brown (28.7)
- Hunter Renfrow (28.7)
- JuJu Smith-Schuster (27.8)
- Michael Thomas (31.5)
Here is a tier of veteran wideouts that have flirted with past production for fantasy but are no longer wideouts who are regular starters for fantasy football.
These wideouts are more NFL contributors than carrying a ton of fantasy weight.
Many of these wideouts are at best the WR3 on their current roster, with a few remaining available in free agency.
A few of the more intriguing players here are Curtis Samuel and Demarcus Robinson.
Samuel is now attached to Josh Allen and had his best season in the NFL playing with offensive coordinator Joe Brady in Carolina in 2020.
Robinson took the WR3 job from Tutu Atwell over the final quarter of last season.
No team in the NFL plays 11 personnel more than the Rams at 94.5% of their snaps.
Unlike other WR3 options, Robinson is nearly a 100% player in this scheme if he retains the job.
Over his final games played with Matthew Stafford, Robinson posted lines of 4-55-1, 3-46-1, 2-44-1, 6-82-0, 6-92-0, and 3-44-0.
While there is some touchdown dependency here, Robinson had eight end zone targets on his small sample this season, which was more than Cooper Kupp (seven) and only two behind Puka Nacua over that span.
Tier 13 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Tre Tucker (Age: 23.5)
- A.T. Perry (24.8)
- Trey Palmer (23.4)
- Andrei Iosivas (24.9)
- Malik Washington (23.7)
- Cedric Tillman (24.4)
- Brenden Rice (22.5)
- Jacob Cowing (23.6)
- Anthony Gould (23.4)
- Ryan Flournoy (24.8)
- Bub Means (23.6)
- Charlie Jones (25.8)
- Ainias Smith (23.3)
- Tyler Scott (22.9)
- Bo Melton (25.3)
- Johnny Wilson (23.4)
- Parker Washington (22.4)
- Jha'Quan Jackson (24.3)
- Calvin Austin (25.4)
- Kyle Philips (25.2)
- David Bell (23.7)
- Jake Bobo (26.1)
- Dyami Brown (24.8)
- Xavier Hutchinson (24.3)
- Tahj Washington (23.3)
- Jordan Whittington (23.9)
- Derius Davis (24.0)
Scouring wide receiver depth charts with players on their rookie contracts.
None of these wideouts are projected to be starters on their rosters, with many making up the back end of their depth charts.
I have prospect profiles from the 2023 and 2024 draft classes that you can go back to if looking for a longer writeup on a specific player.
My favorite wideouts here to take shots on are A.T. Perry, Tre Tucker, Malik Washington, and Ryan Flournoy.
Perry only caught 12 passes as a rookie, but four of those went for touchdowns while averaging 20.5 yards per catch.
Tier 14 Wide Receivers, Dynasty Fantasy Football:
- Terrace Marshall (Age: 24.2)
- Tutu Atwell (24.9)
- Isaiah Hodgins (25.9)
- Parris Campbell (27.1)
- Greg Dortch (26.3)
- Donovan Peoples-Jones (25.5)
- KJ Hamler (25.1)
- Allen Lazard (28.7)
- DeVante Parker (31.6)
- Van Jefferson (28.1)
- Robert Woods (32.4)
- Cedrick Wilson (28.8)
- Kalif Raymond (30.1)
- Kavontae Turpin (28.1)
Bringing this to a close is a grouping of guys who have been in the league and will continue to hang around but are extremely thin sources of fantasy production unless multiple things align for them.