Fantasy Football Wide Receiver Tiers, 2024

One remaining obstacle we still face in the fantasy community as content providers and consumers is understanding that rankings, projections, tiers, and average draft positions are all different and serve different purposes.

My season-long rankings and projections focus on the probable outcomes for a player based on top-down team production and projected game script.

Then player opportunity production is based on that team volume.

We can tweak volume and efficiency for a range of outcomes per player, but that is the simplest explanation of how the projection sauce is made.

While those projections give us a range of season-long numbers and have implications for listing players in a linear format (rankings), the one thing that is missing is that even when those full-season numbers are accurate, they fail to capture the overall weekly impact and the pockets of production that are relevant to our weekly game of fantasy football.

Projecting Davante Adams for 103 receptions, 1,144 yards, and 8 touchdowns (his 2023 totals) paints a nice picture of his season-long outlook, but any gamer that rostered Adams last season will also tell you that there was a lot of weekly variance.

That is an anecdotal example to make a larger point, but there is a litany of other examples we can lay out that fit into the top-down point I am making.

There are very few players at each position that just smash weekly throughout the fantasy season at the highest level, and we are hopeful to be in on the remainder of players when they strike the hottest.

That is where player tiers come in.

2024 Fantasy Football Tiers

• Quarterbacks
• Running Backs
• Wide Receivers
• Tight Ends

A lot of fantasy football tiers that you will find out there are just rankings chopped up into sections.

While the rankings are more focused on a probable tally of season-long output for a week-to-week game, I prefer to structure my tiers based on how similarly players accrue their fantasy points and by their archetypes.

By doing this, it allows me to notice actionable gaps in player pricing per tier which in turn allows for arbitrage in fantasy drafts while also highlighting some longer-odds players who have more potential than originally perceived.

Arbitrage in fantasy football is driven strongest by how production is accrued, and the order of those players (rankings) is driven by the opportunities (on a player and team level) that each player receives.

Our projections are inherently going to be wrong on those projected opportunities often.

Team situations are influenced by a plethora of things.

The game script, injuries to the player himself, injuries to surrounding teammates, ineffective play, player breakouts, and so on. That is just the game through injuries, performance variance, and fluctuation.

Understanding how a player is used allows us to find prospects who target that variance in performance and opportunities. If we are wrong on the opportunity projection, then a lower-tiered player could be an arbitrage opportunity.

While there is not a direct overlap to the individual player rankings, the order of these tiers is how I prioritize drafting the positions from an archetypical stance.

While that may be confusing for a player ranked highly on a linear list versus a specific tier he is in, I will do my best to incorporate detailed thoughts regarding draft capital in those events throughout the player breakdowns.

One final bit of housekeeping, I will be updating and adding analysis to these tiers all summer long,

With that intro to the methodology used with tiers in place, let us roll into the actual player analysis.

• Tier 1
• Tier 2
• Tier 3
• Tier 4
• Tier 5
• Tier 6
• Tier 7
• Tier 8
• Tier 9
• Tier 10
• Tier 11
• Tier 12
• Tier 13

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Tier 1 Fantasy Football WRs:

• CeeDee Lamb
• Tyreek Hill
• Justin Jefferson
• Amon-Ra St. Brown
• Ja'Marr Chase
• A.J. Brown

The opening tier is made up of the best of the best.

These are the wideouts who I believe have the best odds to lead the position in overall scoring.

We have not had a player lead the position in overall PPR points in back-to-back seasons since Antonio Brown did so every season from 2014-2017.

Not only have we not had a player go back-to-back as WR1 since that season, but six different wide receivers have been the WR1 overall over that stretch.

CeeDee Lamb

BYE: Week 7

Lamb’s 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. He also added a rushing touchdown to his total.

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).

Lamb had 181 targets last season. The next closest player on the Cowboys had 81. The next closest wide receiver after that had 57.

Not only does Lamb have another clear path to dominating the Dallas passing game again in 2024, but he may also have the best path to complete opportunity in the league.

Lamb plays everywhere and gets every type of target.

Tier 1 WR Usage:

Short Tgt%= 10 yards and shorter, Deep Tgt% = 20+ air yards

He played 53.3% of his snaps in the slot, the highest rate of any receiver in this tier. Even Amon-Ra St. Brown, who was at a 49.4% slot rate.

Lamb led all wide receivers last season in receptions (69), yards (907), and touchdowns (eight) from the slot in 2023.

While that increased slot rate allows Lamb to access efficient targets that elevate his fantasy floor, it also does not preclude him from accessing the types of targets that can elevate a ceiling as well.

Even though Lamb stacked slot opportunities, he still averaged more air yards per target than three other wideouts here in the opening tier while seeing a deep target rate right in the middle of this group.

Lamb averaged 3.18 yards per route run when he was not in the slot last season, second in the NFL behind Tyreek Hill (4.10).

When we are splitting hairs among the elite options at the position, Lamb checks the most boxes.

He has the best composite outlook here when factoring in where he is on the age spectrum, usage, quarterback play, and target competition.

Tyreek Hill

BYE: Week 6

Hill has been the steadiest fantasy WR1 asset since Antonio Brown.

He has been a top-12-scoring wide receiver in points per game in each of the past seven seasons.

We thought Hill had it made playing in an Andy Reid-led offense with Patrick Mahomes at quarterback.

It turns out that there was an even better offensive climate for Hill’s fantasy outlook in Miami playing under Mike McDaniel.

Hill has been incredible over his two years in Miami.

At one point in 2023, he was pacing to challenge the single-season record for receiving yardage, but a late-season ankle issue caused him to just miss that record.

Hill still ended up leading the NFL with 1,799 receiving yards and 13 touchdown receptions.

He has been so good over his two seasons in Miami that he has even been top-10 in MVP voting in each season as a wide receiver.

Hill has been targeted on 32.0% and 36.6% of his routes the past two seasons, the highest rates of his career, setting a new career-high in receiving yards per game each year with the Dolphins.

He is the only wide receiver in the league to average a 30% target rate per route run against both man coverage (34.6%) and zone coverage (34.8%) over the past two seasons.

He has finished as the WR3 (20.4) and WR2 (23.5) in PPR points per game in those seasons.

Hill gets all of the fantasy-rich targets in Miami.

He led the NFL in targets coming with pre-snap motion (137) and targets coming off play action (56), the two most valuable types of targets for a wide receiver in fantasy football.

In 2023, wide receivers saw a roughly 15% increase in yards per route run with pre-snap motion on the play and a 31% increase with the use of play action compared to a play without motion or play action.

Hill had the most routes (127) and targets (48) with both on the same play.

On those plays and targets, he averaged 4.94 yards per route run, posting 627 receiving yards.

The next closest wide receiver in the league had 364 yards on those opportunities.

Hill just turned 30 this March but has shown zero signs of slowing down.

In fact, he could have been even better last season.

He was third in red zone expected points but finished 16th in actual points scored in that area of the field.

Just 16.0% of Hill’s red zone opportunities resulted in a touchdown, the lowest rate of his career.

That rate was 27.3% in his first season with Miami and his career rate entering last season was 28.8%.

41.7% of Hill’s end zone targets (5-of-12) went for a touchdown, his lowest conversion rate in a season since 2019.

Expecting Miami to have more balance in their split of passing touchdowns compared to rushing scores, paired with an expected rebound for Tua himself in the red zone based on his career rates, it is scary how there is still potential meat on the bone for Hill to be even better in 2024.

Justin Jefferson

BYE: Week 6

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.

Through four seasons, Jefferson has closed the year as the WR9, WR4, WR2, and WR5 in fantasy scoring per game.

Jefferson has averaged 9.6 targets per game over his career, which is fifth among all wide receivers since he joined the league.

Not only does Jefferson get a lot of counting targets, but he gets the most downfield targets among this front-end group.

He led this tier in air yards per target (12.6) and rate of targets coming 20 or more yards downfield (24.0%) last season.

We know Jefferson is going to see a wealth of targets again in 2024, especially since Minnesota did not upgrade their WR3 position and is expected to be without T.J. Hockenson for a piece of the season.

Jefferson was targeted on 29.2% of his 137 routes run with Hockenson off the field last year, an uptick from the 25.9% rate he had on 232 routes run with Hockenson on the field.

The quality of those targets is the question since he has the shakiest quarterback attachment among the front-end wideouts.

Justin Jefferson with and without Kirk Cousins

Jefferson has a small sample size playing without Kirk Cousins.

His yards per route run are just fine, but there has been increased volatility in that sample size.

When Jefferson returned to a Cousins-less lineup last season, he ended those weeks as the WR63, WR22, WR7, WR34, and WR1 in overall scoring those weeks.

We just went through an NFL season where we saw a high number of talented WR1 options impacted by limited quarterback play.

Jefferson for the small sample without Cousins, Davante Adams and Garrett Wilson over the full season, D.J. Moore for a run with Tyson Bagent, and Ja’Marr Chase without Joe Burrow, just to highlight a few.

Most of those wideouts still posted strong counting stats last season, but their week-to-week production was a roller coaster ride for fantasy gamers.

With the injury to J.J. McCarthy, we now are expected to see Jefferson log a full season with Sam Darnold.

The last time that we seen Darnold as a start was Weeks 12-18 with Carolina.

Over that stretch, D.J. Moore averaged 2.46 yards per route run and 14.2 PPR points per game.

Moore had spike weeks, logging three WR1 scoring weeks over those six games.

He also had weeks as WR93 and WR96 over that span playing full games.

There is just an added layer of volatility in his range of outcomes compared to the other wideouts in this tier, but we have a strong idea that Jefferson is going to be smattered with targets.

Even when Darnold took over in 2022, Moore received 30.3% of the team targets.

Kevin O'Connell has shown his hand in generating targets for Jefferson, and we have a run where he plays a chunk of this season without Hockenson and Jordan Addison.

Amon-Ra St. Brown

BYE: Week 5

St. Brown was sensational again in 2023.

He 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.

He has gone from WR30 in points per game as a rookie in 2021 up to WR11 in 2022 and climbed up to WR4 in points per game last season.

St. Brown was a target hog again, receiving a look on 28.5% of his routes, fifth at the position.

Detroit is asking Jameson Williams to take a step forward this upcoming season, but St. Brown is once again locked into leading this Detroit wide receiver group by a wide margin.

Sam LaPorta is his primary target competition.

There is absolutely an outcome in which St. Brown can lead the league in receptions this season.

Brown gets a ton of fantasy-smoothing target opportunities in the Detroit offense. We can pick some nits with his usage compared to other wideouts here, but St. Brown has shown that he can win inside and out in the NFL.

St. Brown was second in this tier in rate of snaps coming from the slot (49.4%), but that has trended down to open his career. He had a 74.9% slot rate as a rookie and a 54.0% rate in 2022.

As a byproduct, St. Brown’s deep target rate trickled up to a career-high 9.1% last season.

We would prefer to see that continue to rise, but make no mistake that St. Brown can win outside and after the catch.

Last season, St. Brown averaged 3.09 yards per route run when lined up out wide, which was fifth among all wide receivers with 100 or more routes run outside.

St. Brown’s yards after the catch have gone up each year in the NFL, which helped create more splash plays despite a lower-end deep target rate.

After just 22 receptions of 20-plus yards over his first two seasons in the league, St. Brown had 24 catches of 20-plus yards last season (eighth among wideouts).

St. Brown had eight touchdowns on targets that were not in the end zone, tied for the most in the league with Tyreek Hill.

Yards after the catch and relying on running in non-end zone targets can be volatile, so we would prefer to see St. Brown’s role near the end zone spike.

His 16.7% share of the Detroit end zone targets ranked 57th among wide receivers last season, and that was a career-high rate through his three seasons.

St. Brown has 13 end zone targets through his three NFL seasons, which is the same number that Nick Westbrook-Ikhine has over that span.

Josh Reynolds had eight end zone targets compared to just four for St. Brown in 2023, so hopefully we see St. Brown absorb those opportunities left behind.

While we would prefer to see St. Brown’s downfield and end zone opportunities match his peers in ADP, he still has been a fantasy WR1 without them, which says a lot.

We have already highlighted that Detroit has a sensational game environment outlook when dissecting Jared Goff (Quarterback Tiers) and Sam LaPorta (Tight End Tiers) so far in these tiers.

Detroit will not even play a game outdoors until Week 9, the only outdoor game on their schedule through Week 15.

St. Brown will get two outdoor games to close the fantasy playoffs in Chicago and San Francisco, but we are going to get a full season of the best types of splits from Goff.

St. Brown has followed suit with Goff in those environments, averaging 17.8 PPR points per game for his career indoors compared to 15.4 points per game outdoors.

Ja’Marr Chase

BYE: Week 12

Chase has yet to cash in a WR1 overall scoring season but has opened his career as the WR5, WR4, and WR12 in points per game.

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.

His 2023 season went along for the ride with the Cincinnati quarterback situation.

Joe Burrow opened the season with a calf injury that impacted his play.

Over the opening four weeks, Burrow was dead last in the NFL with 4.8 yards per pass attempt and had completed only 57.6% of his passes (32nd) with two touchdowns.

Over that stretch, Chase was the WR21 in fantasy scoring despite being the WR8 in expected points.

Burrow got on track and completed a league-high 74.1% of his passes for 7.5 Y/A (10th) with 12 touchdowns over the next five games.

Chase was the WR3 in overall points and expected points during that run.

Burrow then suffered a season-ending wrist injury in Week 11.

From Week 11 on, Chase was the WR33 in fantasy points and the WR35 in expected points.

With Burrow on the field last season, Chase was targeted on 26.0% of his routes run.

With Jake Browning on the field, that rate dipped down to 20.8% of his routes run.

An interesting component of Chase’s production to kick off his career is that he has seen a steady transition from deep-ball asset to more of a full-field type of role.

With Burrow on the field, Chase’s air yards per target have gone from 12.9 as a rookie, down to 9.1 yards and 8.6 yards downfield the past two seasons.

Chase had a career-high 24.5% of his targets at or behind the line of scrimmage from Burrow last season.

His rates over the previous two seasons were 9.8% and 12.7%.

His slot rate has continued to rise with Burrow on the field, going from 14.3% as a rookie up to 20.6% in 2022 and then 28.0% last season.

With Tyler Boyd now gone and only Charlie Jones profiling as a true slot asset on a team that inherently runs 3WR sets at the league’s highest rates, I would anticipate that Chase sets another career-high in slot usage this season.

For a player that has averaged 7.3 and 6.3 catches per game the past two seasons, that can provide Chase an opportunity to also contend for the reception crown in 2024.

There is reason to believe that Chase can have a season like CeeDee Lamb had a year ago in terms of full-field usage.

That usage opens the door for Chase to have a higher floor through what appears to be a rough gauntlet on the surface for the Bengals this season.

We covered this with Burrow in the QB Tiers, but the Bengals have our toughest passing schedule in the NFL.

That means more for Burrow than Chase at their positions and how the game is scored for each (especially if Chase is stacking receptions), but Chase has tailed Burrow’s AFC North splits that we covered in that post.

Chase has been a WR1 in just five of 15 inter-division games since entering the league with nine of those games outside of the top 30 scorers.

He has just nine other weeks over his entire career outside of the top 30 scorers in 30 games outside of the division.

A.J. Brown

BYE: Week 5

Brown has closed his two seasons with the Eagles at WR6 and WR5 in overall scoring.

He has now 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.

There was a stretch last season in which Brown appeared as if he would rival Tyreek Hill as the WR1 in fantasy.

Through nine weeks, Brown was the WR2 in overall scoring and the WR3 in expected points per game.

The Eagles then had a team-wide collapse over the back half of the season that was impacted by play calling, schedule, and a knee injury to Jalen Hurts.

From Week 10 on, Brown was the WR33 in overall scoring and was the WR19 in expected points per game.

Brown went from 3.04 yards per route run over that front split down to 1.84 yards per route run over the back half.

His inaccurate target rate increased to 12.1% over that latter period after a 10.9% rate before.

Despite the uneven splits from last year, Brown still totaled a career-high 106 catches for 1,456 yards.

The only other wide receiver with over 1,400 receiving yards in each of the past two seasons has been Hill.

One thing we talked about with Hurts in the QB Tiers was the transition of going from Shane Steichen to Brian Johnson created a stale element to this passing game.

The Eagles saw their use of play action dip from 30.0% in 2022 down to 25.8% last season.

They went from a 33.1% rate of pre-snap motion in 2022 down to 27.9% last season.

Kellen Moore has had mixed results as a playcaller, but we should see more passing creativity from this offense in 2024.

Moore's Chargers were fourth in the league at a 57.5% rate of pre-snap motion.

In 2022 with Dallas, the Cowboys were 10th at 44.8%.

Brown has averaged 2.80 yards per route run on plays with motion since he entered the league, which is fifth among all wideouts.

Tier 2 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Garrett Wilson
• Chris Olave
• Drake London
• Marvin Harrison Jr.
• Malik Nabers
• George Pickens

This next tier of wideouts is where things get interesting.

These wideouts do not have the safety of career performance in delivering front-end fantasy seasons but are believed to be the best talents to get there, are all on the early-career age apex, and all are the clear WR1 targets on their rosters.

These are the wideouts that you are going to have to force the issue of being early on because there can be no being late.

That said, that also does create a thinner margin of error and a thinner margin of ceiling potential versus some of the costs here.

That is true for the first four guys here, but the latter two do represent some strong value opportunity despite still carrying draft cost that is still near the opening of drafts.

Garrett Wilson

BYE: Week 12

Like most of the community, I believe we have something special with Wilson, we are just looking for functional quarterback play to bring it all together.

Wilson has posted back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons in his first two seasons playing attached to the worst quarterback in the league.

Over the past two seasons, 16.5% of Wilson’s targets have been deemed inaccurate by TruMedia.

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%.

Last season, Wilson caught 95 passes for 1,042 yards and three touchdowns.

The rest of the Jets wide receivers caught 57 passes for 654 yards and three touchdowns.

Aaron Rodgers is going on 41 this season and is returning from an Achilles injury, but the bar is set extremely low for Wilson to receive the best quarterback play of his early career.

Even looking at a lesser version of Rodgers in 2022 with a middling wide receiver unit, he was still above the league rate in inaccurate throws (10.3%).

If we are considering age, target competition, and competent quarterback play, you can make the case for Wilson looking as good as anyone outside of CeeDee Lamb on paper.

Mike Williams and Malachi Corley are improved additions in comparison to Allen Lazard and Mecole Hardman from last offseason, but Wilson still projects to have a massive target share edge over the rest of his passing tree.

Wilson was fourth among all wide receivers with 29.8% of his team targets and second in the league in share of his team’s air yards (45.0%).

Wilson had 47.3% of his team targets of 20-plus air yards (WR5) and 50.0% of his team end zone targets (WR2).

These are the areas where Rodgers can give Wilson the jolt we are chasing.

Over the past two seasons, Wilson has had 36 red zone targets, which is 8th among all wideouts.

His 32.1% team target share in the red zone is fourth in the league.

But 25% of Wilson’s red zone targets to open his career have been inaccurate throws.

No wide receiver in the league with as many targets as him has a higher rate.

Wilson has 21 end zone targets over the past two seasons and just four have resulted in touchdowns.

A staggering 38.1% of his end zone targets have been inaccurate throws.

The next closest rate of inaccurate end zone targets with as many overall targets as Wilson is 28.0%.

34.1% of Wilson’s targets on deep passes have been inaccurate.

Only three other wide receivers have a worse rate of off-target deep balls with as many targets as Wilson.

While we are banking on Rodgers, there is good reason to lean into the potential of a spike outcome.

You can make a case that Wilson is the best raw talent entering the NFL that Rodgers has ever had.

The Packers never selected a wide receiver in the first round with Rodgers on the team.

Davante Adams and Jordy Nelson were second-round players.

The highest draft pick that Green Bay used on a wide receiver with Rodgers was Christian Watson at No. 34 in his final season with the team.

Do you remember what a healthy version of Watson did for fantasy over the best run of his rookie season with what is believed to be a lesser version of Rodgers?

Chris Olave

BYE: Week 12

After a strong rookie season, Olave took another step forward in year two.

Olave improved his receptions (5.4) and receiving yardage (70.2) per game in year two, catching one 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 posted more yards per route run than he did.

Olave improved despite this passing game playing one hand tied behind their backs.

In 2023, the Saints were dead last in the NFL in the use of play action (14.4%) and pre-snap motion (22.8%).

On top of a lack of creativity, the Saints had their wide receivers running vertical routes among the highest rates in the league. Olave had almost zero “free squares” in the offense. Everything was a struggle with low chances of success rate from the start.

Among all wide receivers to run 400 or more pass routes last season, 25.5% of Olave’s pass routes were Go routes, ninth in the league.

23.2% of his targets were over 20 yards downfield. The only players with as many targets as Olave on the season with a higher deep target rate were Mike Evans and DeAndre Hopkins.

New Orleans wide receivers averaged 12.6 air yards per target, which was the third-highest rate in the NFL.

Their wide receivers were 27th in the league in the rate of targets behind the line of scrimmage (7.8%) and third in the rate of targets on deep passes (22.2%).

Serving as passing coordinator in San Francisco last season, we are hoping Klint Kubiak brings over more of what Kyle Shanahan was doing offensively.

San Francisco was second in the NFL in use of pre-snap motion (67.3%) and 16th in play action rate (23.2%).

Kubiak only has one year of calling plays in the NFL, back in 2021 with the Vikings.

In that season, Kubiak’s offense was 12th in the NFL in pre-snap motion (43.4%) and 18th in the use of play action (25.5%). Even if those held up for 2024, there would be huge positive shifts compared to the 2023 rates for New Orleans.

Over the past two seasons, Olave’s 3.23 yards per route run with pre-snap motion are second behind only Tyreek Hill.

His 3.38 yards per route run with the use of play action is seventh at the position.

Drake London

BYE: Week 12

Since he was drafted a year ago, London has been targeted on 25.2% of his routes run.

That rate is 16th among wide receivers over that stretch.

The problem is that he has averaged only 27.3 pass routes 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.

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 based on the same top-down premise we are pushing for Wilson.

Desmond Ridder has a 17.4% inaccurate target rate throwing to wide receivers, 34th over the past two seasons.

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.

The Falcons are turning over to a new regime and the first thing they did was go out and lock in Kirk Cousins as their quarterback during the free agency period.

The Falcons also will transition from Arthur Smith to an offense led by Zac Robinson paired with Cousins.

Robinson has been a part of the Rams coaching staff since 2019, where Cousins’ previous head coach Kevin O’Connell came from before taking over Minnesota’s offense.

Over the past three seasons under Smith, the Falcons ranked 30th in the NFL in dropback rate (55.1%).

They ranked dead last in the NFL in rate of passing plays in 11 personnel at 30.1%. The league average over that span was 70.8%.

The entire coaching tree from Sean McVay has deployed more 3WR sets compared to the league average over that span. Additions of Darnell Mooney and Rondale Moore this offseason also signal more 3WR sets on the horizon for this offense.

Cousins has a 10.1% inaccurate target rate throwing to wide receivers over that span, which is the fifth-best rate in the league.

Cousins does drop to a 12.0% off-target rate in the red zone (17th), but Ridder ranked 32nd in that department (17.9%).

Nearly all of the iterations of this offensive system have elevated the WR1 of those rosters.

The system is designed to create more of those “easy buttons” we have talked about heavily so far in this post.

London has only played 17.0% of his early-career snaps in the slot with only 8.4% of his targets behind the line of scrimmage.

As a byproduct, his 2.9 yards after the catch are 42nd out of 48 wide receivers with at least 100 receptions over the past two seasons.

This was a calling card for London entering the league as a prospect.

USC just wanted to get the ball into London’s hands.

24.4% of his targets were on screen passes (second in that draft class).

43.5% of his yards were after the catch while averaging 5.4 yards after the catch per reception.

Marvin Harrison Jr.

BYE: Week 11

Coming from premier NFL bloodlines at the position, Harrison Jr. posted back-to-back monster seasons at Ohio State, going for 1,295 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2022 and then coming back for 1,237 yards and 15 touchdowns this past season when he was the Biletnikoff Award Winner and a Heisman finalist.

Harrison accounted for 30.0% of the Ohio State targets (WR4 in this class among D1 players), 41.2% of their air yards (WR3), and 53.9% of their receiving touchdowns (WR1).

His 3.44 yards per route run were second to only Malik Nabers while his 2.99 yards per team pass attempt ranked fifth.

Harrison was one of just five prospects in this draft class to average over 3.0 yards per route run against both man coverage (3.03) and zone coverage (3.51).

When defenses did play man coverage against Ohio State this season, Harrison was targeted on 40.0% of his routes, which was the highest rate in this class.

20.0% of Harrison’s career receptions were touchdowns, the highest rate in this class.

What is noteworthy about Harrison is that he came back and posted all of that efficiency after C.J. Stroud left.

While the Buckeyes have been on a strong of putting quarterbacks in the first round of the NFL Draft, Harrison was excellent playing attached to Kyle McCord. McCord ranked 62nd in passing grade at Pro Football Focus in 2023 and transferred to Syracuse this spring when he was not guaranteed the starting gig in 2024.

Among the top three wideouts in this class, the other two wideouts in this tier fared far better in quarterback attachment this past season as Jayden Daniels was third in passing grade and Michael Penix was ninth.

Harrison also has next to zero manufactured production in his profile.

Only 7.0% of his targets were behind the line of scrimmage (26th in this class).

Among landing spots for the top receivers in this class, going to Arizona provides an immediate pipeline for targets coming from a viable quarterback.

A major problem area for this offense, Arizona wide receivers were 30th in the NFL in receptions (157), 30th in receiving yards (1,790), and tied for 23rd with 10 touchdowns in 2023.

Arizona wideouts combined for 11.4 yards per reception (27th) and a 56.7% catch rate (30th).

As a unit, their 1.39 yards per route run ranked ahead of only the Patriots (1.36) and Jets (1.27).

With Kyler Murray back in Weeks 10-18, Greg Dortch led the wide receiver group with only 278 yards.

Harrison immediately vaults up to WR1 status in this offense and carries an expensive rookie price tag.

Harrison currently is being selected as the WR11 in fantasy drafts, the highest ADP for a rookie wideout I have collected since 2010.

There is not a ton of upside at that cost while we are counting on him delivering at that capital with next to zero margin for error.

The only wide receiver who was a top-10 NFL selection in the 2000s and was also a WR1 in PPR points per game as a rookie has been Ja’Marr Chase.

That includes players such as A.J. Green, Julio Jones, Calvin Johnson, and Larry Fitzgerald. Players in the Hall of Fame or will be pushing there.

While I am not going to be overly aggressive at those costs outside of auctions, I understand why Harrison Jr. is there. I have dabbled with him, but only when I am going WR-WR to open at that back-end turn or the few occasions where he slides closer to the middle of the second round.

If I am opening with only one wide receiver, I am doing so with more career insulation.

Malik Nabers

BYE: Week 11

Nabers and Harrison Jr. are extremely close and both elite prospects.

Nabers does not have multiple elite collegiate seasons (his 2022 was good but not as great) as Harrison does, but he is right in line with him in immediate projection.

If you look at the top receivers in production (which leads to fantasy points), we are no longer seeing the prototypical X receiver from yesterday at the front of the leaderboards. We are seeing players that can win everywhere in all alignments.

Defenses are playing man coverage at an all-time low paired with more two-high coverage.

NFL offenses are forced to attack the middle of the field more than ever with the current approach to the game.

It is no surprise that we are seeing guys like CeeDee Lamb, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Tyreek Hill crushing.

Look at that table posted in Tier 1 and the usage of those players.

All of them are seeing diverse usage and getting to the slot at a tangible rate.

I don’t believe Harrison will struggle to win inside in the NFL, but he does take projection whereas Nabers did a lot of everything in the LSU offense.

From a top-down perspective, Nabers averaged a class-high 3.64 yards per route run and 3.81 yards per team pass attempt.

Nabers was second in this class among D1 prospects in target share (32.5%) and third in the share of receptions (31.1%) while playing alongside another wide receiver projected to be selected in the first round of this draft.

Nabers forced a missed tackle on 33.7% of his receptions (second in this class) while averaging 6.6 yards after the catch per reception (WR9).

He ran 52.9% of his routes from the slot, where he caught a class-high 12 touchdowns and averaged 4.35 yards per route run (third in this class).

He averaged 3.22 yards per route run against man coverage (WR7) and a class-high 4.42 yards per route against zone coverage.

Although Nabers did have access to more slot routes in college than Harrison did, do not make the mistake he was stacking output on free squares.

He only had 14 targets on screens. That 10.9% share of his season total was WR19 in this class.

Nabers had nine touchdowns on throws over 20 yards downfield, which was second in this class behind teammate Brian Thomas.

To top that all off, Nabers is the youngest wide receiver available in the draft.

He will not turn 21 years old until late July.

Nabers can immediately stack targets in a Giants offense lacking a receiver that commands targets.

Now, Nabers does have to work with Daniel Jones while Harrison gets attached to a passer we have seen feed a WR1.

That is being priced into the current market for both players.

Still, that is an area where guys like DeVonta Smith, Michael Pittman, DK Metcalf, and Cooper Kupp are going.

Those are all established players I would be on before Nabers in a vacuum in 2024, but those are also all players (outside of Kupp) who have struggled to retain a high weekly ceiling, keeping the price tag more palatable for Nabers.

To at least give Jones some benefit of the doubt, Nabers is at least the best wide receiver that he has played with by a wide margin.

Jones also can be nursed by Brian Daboll and get short-area targets to Nabers, something we saw from this offense to close 2022, when players such as Darius Slayton and Isaiah Hodgins carried serviceable fantasy production.

George Pickens

BYE: Week 9

Pickens is an example of the early value that stands out when tiering this way.

He is not priced or regarded near most of this tier despite having just as strong of a claim based on career arc, target opportunity, and potential quarterback upgrade.

If Pickens ended up outscoring any of these guys, how much of a surprise would it be?

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.

Those splash plays to boost his yards per route run right behind Chris Olave among second-year wideouts we have covered to this point.

The dependency on vertical shots also hampered the quality of targets as Pickens had the highest rate of inaccurate throws among this group.

The one area where he lagged was drawing targets at the same rate as his year two cohorts, but that is something elevated with the trade of Diontae Johnson.

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.

Johnson missed four games outright last season.

In those games, here is the opportunity that Pickens had…

• WK2: 34.5% targets, 4-of-10 targets for 127 yards, 1 TD
• WK3: 22.2% targets, 4-of-6 targets for 75 yards
• WK4: 25.9% targets, 3-of-7 targets for 25 yards
• WK5: 32.3% targets, 6-of-10 targets for 130 yards, 1 TD

In two of those weeks, Pickens was a WR1 scorer.

Those lines also came attached to Kenny Pickett.

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.

But last season, Wilson had the seventh-lowest inaccurate throw rate to wide receivers (10.1%) while Pickett was 42nd (18.3%).

Fields was 30th at 15.1%.

We will be getting a potential low-volume passing offense under Arthur Smith as noted as a limitation for Drake London earlier.

But Pittsburgh already had that in 2023.

The Steelers were below the Falcons with a 54.8% dropback rate last season.

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.

What we need from Pickens is more diverse usage, something that is harder to question under Smith paired with where Wilson and Fields are at their best throwing downfield compared to attacking zones and throwing over the middle of the field.

Last season, Pickens was targeted on 29.2% of his routes against man coverage compared to just 18.2% against zone coverage.

London had similar splits in Atlanta, drawing a target on 31.5% of his routes versus man coverage and then dipping down to a 21.1% rate versus zone coverage.

We also saw similar splits between Courtland Sutton with Wilson.

Sutton was targeted on 24.3% of his routes against man coverage compared to a 17.6% rate versus zone coverage.

Pickens also only ran 17.0% of his routes from the slot while Pittsburgh should be expected to have a significant reduction in 3WR sets under Smith.

This was a thorn for London in his second season, who only had an 18.8% slot rate and was tasked to win heavily outside, something playing into the hands of how NFL defenses are operating.

Pickens should still carry some weekly volatility in having a similar outcome as year two London and 2023 Sutton, but his upside is extremely high in the outcomes where he hits.

Tier 3 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Puka Nacua
• Nico Collins
• Deebo Samuel
• Brandon Aiyuk
• D.J. Moore
• Jaylen Waddle
• DeVonta Smith
• Tee Higgins
• Tank Dell

This is a stronger tier than the previous one based on what these players have already accomplished in the NFL.

By all accounts, all of these wide receivers are already more successful players than the previous tier.

If you are a more risk-averse drafter, you are going to be grabbing players here over those early-career bets.

While the previous tier is elevated through hopeful ceiling potential, this tier is flatter and offers more stability in terms of floor outcomes.

But most of these wideouts have been better as fantasy WR2 options while moonlighting as WR1 options. The majority of the outcomes in which these wideouts deliver steady WR1 production stems through contingency upside.

You will not be unhappy landing multiple assets from this tier, but a large portion of the group will also leave many wondering why we did not get more juice from the squeeze.

That in itself is part of the reason why we have seen the wide receiver draft position rise in recent years.

There are just a finite number of elite options before things disperse, but when that dispersal occurs at wide                receiver, the strength of the position is just far greater than when the dispersal occurs at the running back position.

Puka Nacua

BYE: Week 6

The Rams look like absolute criminals in hindsight for the fifth-round selection of 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.

You can easily make the case for Nacua to belong in Tier 1 and that is where his ADP is.

Nacua had an initial runway to success due to the absence of Cooper Kupp.

On 207 routes run with Kupp off the field, Nacua was targeted on 31.4% of his routes while posting 2.96 yards per route run.

He was the WR2 in expected fantasy points per game (21.9) over the opening month of the season.

Nacua ran 397 routes last season with Kupp on the field, leading the team with a target on 26.4% of his routes and averaging 2.66 yards per route run.

Nacua was the WR10 in expected points per game (16.1) in Weeks 5-17 when Kupp returned.

Nacua was still strong with Kupp on the field, but he was elite without him.

On the field together, Nacua had 105 targets while Kupp had 104.

Kupp also edged Nacua 5-to-4 in touchdowns with both on the field.

If Kupp is healthier this season, he should be able to be more effective on his opportunities than a year ago, but if Kupp ever misses any action, Nacua is immediately vaulted into the front end of the position.

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 versus running backs that come out of nowhere and then are drafted highly.

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.

As has been a theme with these wideouts so far, Nacua gets access to the type of fantasy targets we want.

65.3% of Nacua’s targets came with the use of pre-snap motion (sixth among wideouts).

**INJURY UPDATE**

Nacua picked a knee injury in training camp, which the team is calling “week to week”.

While not expected to be serious, this something to monitor creeping into the start of the season.

Nacua did have a plethora of injuries during his collegiate career, which is why his overall playing time was so limited.

As someone who is hesitant to draft players while entering the serious with an injury, I will want to see Nacua log some practice time before the start of the season before being extremely bullish on him at the 1-2 turn.

Nico Collins

BYE: Week 14

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.

The breakout season for Collins came at the right time, cashing in a monster extension this offseason.

All of the Houston passing game is being aggressively drafted right now.

We will see the target tree shaken up compared to a year ago, providing some fragility to any of the wide receivers at their cost.

Both Collins and Tank Dell had significant fantasy spikes during moments when the other player missed time, which was scattershot last season.

Both Collins and Dell were on the field together for just 34.4% of C.J. Stoud’s dropbacks on the season.

On 210 passing plays with both players on the field at the same time, Collins was targeted on 29.5% of his routes with Dell off the field compared to a 22.9% rate with Dell on the field.

That is the difference between the WR3 in target rate over the full season versus WR30.

Collins had five WR1 scoring weeks last season.

Two of those games were weeks Dell missed outright. One was a week in which Dell played just nine offensive snaps.

That also came without Stefon Diggs as part of the equation.

When both players were on the field last season, Collins and Dell combined for 49.7% of the team targets. The next closest player on the team had 15.8% of the targets.

That is not going to be the way things shake out when all three wideouts are healthy this season.

I am following the money, career arc, and archetype of wide receiver for Collins when it comes to forecasting the target dispersal for the Houston pass catchers, but I have rarely paid the price for Collins while I have taken more frequent swings on Diggs and Dell at much cheaper costs.

Deebo Samuel

BYE: Week 9

Samuel had 97 touches for 1,117 yards from scrimmage to go along with 12 touchdowns.

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.

After averaging a career-low 6.7 yards per target in 2022, Samuel bounced back with 10.0 yards per target last season, which was also the second-highest rate of his career.

As a rusher, Samuel remained a unique chess piece at his position, rushing 37 times for 225 yards and another five touchdowns.

When Samuel has been available, he has been more of the driver of the San Francisco offense among the wide receivers since the 49ers can get him the ball in an easier fashion than Brandon Aiyuk.

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.

Samuel ran 62 routes last year with Aiyuk off the field.

On those plays, he was targeted on 37.1% of his routes.

When Aiyuk missed all of Week 3, Samuel had 35.3% of the team targets.

With both Samuel and Aiyuk on the field at the same time, Samuel edged out Aiyuk 88-to-83 in targets

When you layer in the rushing component for Samuel, he has been the better bet to make between the two players, but they continue to pull each other’s floor down.

Over the past two seasons, there has not been a week in which both Samuel and Aiyuk were WR1 scorers in the same week.

There have been just six weeks over that span in which both players were top-24 scorers at their position in the same week.

Samuel is a unique player because of how he is used in the running game compared to others in the position.

He has more rushing touchdowns in the red zone than receiving scores in each of the past three seasons.

The wild part is that Samuel only had two rushing attempts inside of the 10-yard line, the same number as CeeDee Lamb.

He has had 11 rushing touchdowns over the past three seasons of 10 or more yards (three more in 2023).

The next closest wide receiver has two.

Only Derrick Henry has more (12) across the entire league.

As a receiver, Samuel had only three total targets in the end zone, the same number as Ronnie Bell.

That is not an anomaly, either.

Samuel has 15 total targets over his career while in the end zone. The most he has ever had in a single season is five.

For some context, that is the same number of end zone targets that Justin Watson, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Keelan Cole, and Jalen Guyton have over that same stretch.

Samuel has just 11.7% of the team's end zone targets since entering the league.

That said, at least his overall usage was still in the top 10 among the position.

Brandon Aiyuk

BYE: Week 9

Aiyuk just continues to get better each season in the league.

Aiyuk’s yardage has climbed from the season prior in each season, punctuated by him producing 1,342 yards in 2023 to go with seven touchdowns.

Currently only contract on his fifth-year option, Aiyuk has been a buzz-worthy name as a trade candidate, but expectations are still that he will play 2024 with the 49ers.

Aiyuk has been one of the best wide receivers in the league per opportunity.

In 2023, Aiyuk led all wide receivers with a first down or touchdown on 58.1% of his targets.

His 3.06 yards per route run was third at the position.

Since entering the league in 2020, Aiyuk has the highest EPA per target (0.43) among wide receivers to play multiple seasons.

The rub with Aiyuk from a fantasy stance stems from that reliance on efficiency over volume.

Without Deebo Samuel, Aiyuk is a fantasy WR1.

Over the past three seasons, 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.

In 2023, Aiyuk had a 21.2% target rate per route with Samuel on the field and a 25.8% rate with him off.

Because of the nature of this passing game, the core assets of the 49ers tend to cannibalize each other.

San Francisco was 32nd in the NFL in dropbacks per game in 2023 (33.0). They ranked 28th in 2022 (32.1), and 32nd in 2021 (32.1).

As hyper-efficient Aiyuk has been, he still was WR39 in targets per game in 2023 (6.6).

Aiyuk was 51st in expected red zone points from last season, below players such as Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Josh Palmer, and Demarcus Robinson.

He was third on that same list in points scored over expectations, however.

He had only nine total red zone targets in 2023, tied for 48th at the position.

Aiyuk made up for things by converting 5 of his 7 end zone targets for touchdowns (71.4%).

No wide receiver with more than 5 targets in the end zone converted at a higher rate.

The league conversion rate for wide receivers was 36.2%.

Even when we know a player is in a top-down situation for them to outproduce their opportunity, it is very hard to pull the draft card in the second round for a player inherently drawing a raw target total that low.

Over the past two seasons, there has not been a week in which both Samuel and Aiyuk were WR1 scorers in the same week.

There have been just six weeks over that span in which both players were top-24 scorers at their position in the same week.

Aiyuk carries a high weekly upside but carries more volatility than his ADP peers because of the other players in this offense.

D.J. Moore

BYE: Week 7

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.

That came with an attachment to not only Justin Fields but also a five-week stretch in which Tyson Bagent played the crux of the snaps.

Over those five weeks, Moore did not have a single week inside of the top-20 scorers with four of them as WR33 or lower.

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.

His overall target share was WR10, but his 23.0% target rate per route was firmly in the WR2 zone for fantasy expectations (WR25) while having the passing game to himself.

Jaylen Waddle

BYE: Week 6

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.

That was Waddle’s highest-scoring fantasy game since Hill joined the team.

With both Waddle and Hill sharing the field for 312 routes, Waddle was targeted on 23.4% of those with 2.16 yards per route run.

The difference between Waddle and someone such as Aiyuk or Samuel is that Miami does not have a third wheel while the 49ers have not only George Kittle but also Christian McCaffrey.

DeVonta Smith

BYE: Week 5

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.

Smith has been the WR15 and WR21 in points per game playing alongside A.J. Brown for the past two seasons.

The only shade to throw at Smith is that he is not the best wide receiver on his current team, or he may be a locked-in fantasy WR1.

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.

In 2023, Smith ran 562 routes with Brown on the field at the same time, accounting for 22.3% of the targets while Brown was at 33.8%.

That created a target gap of 155-to-102 in favor of Brown.

Tee Higgins

BYE: Week 12

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.

Even last year, we saw the spike moments.

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 WR1 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.

Tank Dell

BYE: Week 14

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%).

I have taken more swings on Dell among the Houston pass catchers because he is the cheapest, but he is also the cheapest for a few objective reasons.

As was the case with Nico Collins, Dell received a fantasy boost when he was the clear lead target in the offense.

Dell was targeted on 29.1% of his routes with Collins off the field, compared to a 20.6% rate when Collins was on the field.

That was nearly an identical overlap to the split we highlighted with Collins earlier.

With both players on the field at the same time, Collins edged Dell in target 48-to-43.

The next player on the team had just 29 targets on those plays, something Stefon Diggs can compromise.

Dell also had more of a spike in scoring touchdowns, which is tougher to lean on than Collins.

Dell caught seven touchdowns as a rookie, but his expected total was 3.8.

He converted 80% of his end zone targets (4-of-5), the highest rate for a wide receiver with five or more targets.

He also caught four of his seven touchdowns from outside of the red zone.

Collins also outkicked his touchdown expectation, but his eight scores were closer to the 6.7 expected scores based on his opportunities.

The last part of things is that Dell is coming back from a fractured leg that required tightrope surgery.

Dell is not expected to miss any preseason work, but that was the same injury that Tony Pollard returned from a year ago and stated that it took nearly two-thirds of the season to feel 100%.

Tier 4 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Davante Adams
• Mike Evans
• Cooper Kupp
• Amari Cooper
• Stefon Diggs
• DeAndre Hopkins
• Keenan Allen

All of these wideouts are highly decorated fantasy assets, but all of them are on the wrong side of the age apex.

This is the toughest tier to gauge yearly for proper draft capital.

You can make the bull case for any of these players because they have been good players over the course of their careers.

Adjusting for player age is not something new in this space, but we have several players who are not only approaching the age apex but are also coming off of down seasons in 2023.

While there is no shortage of excuses as to why those players had the seasons that they did last year, we should also be prepared for the potential turbulence that the exit may not be smooth.

I have taken players here over players above but under the context of creating roster insulation around them.

That is also easier to do in best ball versus going back in and out every week starting a potentially declining player when something is not working.

When we are talking about non-best ball rosters, there is an added opportunity cost here.

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

BYE: Week 10

Adams will not enter the season at age 32 but will get there in December.

He 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.

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.

Adams finished sixth at the position in red zone points scored but was the only wide receiver in the top 10 in red zone points scored to finish below his expected points total.

Adams had 29 targets inside of the red zone, second to only CeeDee Lamb.

The downside was that 20.7% of those were charted as inaccurate throws, the highest rate for any wide receiver with more than 15 targets in the red zone.

Quarterback play has been an issue for Adams moving away from his attachment to Aaron Rodgers.

Adams leads the NFL with 51 red zone targets over the past two seasons but has secured only 50.9% of those targets after a 65.6% rate with the Packers.

He has a touchdown on 19.6% of those targets after posting a 35% rate with Green Bay.

How much of an upgrade will Gardner Minshew be over Aidan O’Connell, if any?

Last season, O’Connell was 31st in inaccurate throw rate to wide receivers (17.5%) among the 32 qualifiers for passer rating while Minshew was 16th (14.1%).

The average rate for those passers was 13.4%.

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.

In the fantasy playoffs, Adams had two top-10 scoring weeks in Week 15 (8-101-1) and Week 17 (13-126-2).

While Adams still showed that he was a target earner and we can overlook his efficiency and just chase volume, his yards per route run and yards per route run have each dropped from the season prior in each of the past two seasons while his yards after that catch last season were his fewest in a year since 2015.

As a byproduct paired with quarterback play, he had eight scoring weeks outside of the top 24.

That all makes him tough to go all in on, but someone who still is going to represent potential value if things run hot.

When I take Adams, it is almost always paired with one of the Tier 1 wideouts when he slides into the back half of the second round.

Paired with Lamb, Hill, Jefferson, Chase, Brown, or St. Brown could mean we are banking well over 300 total targets from our top two picks while those opening-tier picks offer more of a safety net to smooth out any down weeks from Adams should his quality of targets continue to suffer.

Rarely do I tap him at the opening turn in WR-WR starts when I am taking a Tier 2 or Tier 3 wideout (outside of Chris Olave correlation darts for best ball playoffs) or as my WR1 when taking a running back.

Mike Evans

BYE: Week 11

Just when it looked like Evans might 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.

The demise of Evans was likely always overstated.

Even in 2022, he still closed that year as the WR14 in points per game.

We could get some recoil on his touchdown production from last season after he caught a career-high eight touchdown passes from outside of the red zone.

He had eight combined over the previous two seasons and had not had more than six such scores in a season since his rookie year.

That said, I believe there is a chance for Tampa Bay to be worse this season in terms of game scripts.

Even if Mayfield regresses himself and this offense changes under Liam Coen, it is hard to believe that Evans will give away being the lead target in this offense and shave a high number of targets away from him.

The Buccaneers were 11th in the NFL in rate of snaps spent trailing in 2023 despite being 20th in scoring as an offense.

Even after his 2023 season, it appears that Evans is once again undervalued in the third round of fantasy drafts.

Cooper Kupp

BYE: Week 6

2023 was not a complete loss for Kupp, but he ended up being one of the larger letdowns of the fantasy season based on his cost.

Paired with missed time and the emergence of Puka Nacua, Kupp ended the season as WR24 in points per game.

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.

That said, Kupp was still a focal point of this passing game despite the rise 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.

The Rams did little of note to change the dynamics of this offense for 2024.

Kupp turned 31 this June, so we are far from out of the weeds, but a cleaner bill of health entering the summer gives him the potential to bounce back for gamers at a cheaper cost.

Amari Cooper

BYE: Week 10

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 shared by Calvin Johnson and Lance Alworth.

Cooper will turn 30 this summer and is a potential holdout, but he remains a potential value once again for fantasy at his current cost as long as an agreement is reached.

He was one of the few Cleveland players who had positive splits with Deshaun Watson.

Cooper averaged 2.67 yards per route run with Watson on the field on 23.6% of the team targets.

He did have a lower inaccurate target rate with Joe Flacco (12.8%), but Watson’s 15.4% off-target throw rate to Cooper was a stark difference from the 21.4% rate with P.J. Walker and the 26.3% rate from Dorian Thompson-Robinson.

In his five full games played with Watson, Cooper had the following weeks:

• WK1: 24.1% of the team targets, 3-of-7 for 37 yards
• Wk2: 25.0% of the team targets, 7-of-10 targets for 90 yards
• WK3: 25.8% of the team targets, 7-of-8 targets for 116 yards, 1 TD
• WK9: 17.9% of the team targets, 5-of-5 for 139 yards, 1 TD
• WK10: 28.1% of the team targets, 6-of-9 for 98 yards

I do believe that the Browns have wanted to throw the football more, but we do have a new cog in this offense for Cooper to potentially share opportunities with Jerry Jeudy.

Stefon Diggs

BYE: Week 14

The difference between the way that Diggs started last season compared to the way he closed the year could not have been more disparate.

Diggs started 2023 on fire.

He went over 100 yards in five of his first six games of the season.

He was the WR2 in fantasy points and expected points at the position through that hot start.

It is hard to believe that a player who posted those starting numbers just became bad at the game.

Then the bottom fell out.

He never had another 100-yard game despite still receiving 27.0% of the team targets.

Over the final 13 games of the season, Diggs had fewer receiving yards than Khalil Shakir, who had 59 fewer targets over that span than Diggs received.

Diggs fell to WR18 in expected points per game over that span and was even worse in results as the WR38 in actual points scored per game during that run.

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 not as good himself, ranking 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.

Now, we are wondering where that target share fits in alongside Nico Collins and Tank Dell, who each broke out in 2023, but only shared the field for just 34.4% of C.J. Stoud’s dropbacks on the season.

Regardless of how his 2023 season ended, Diggs had his fewest yards per game in a season since 2018.

Diggs will turn 31 this November and is a strong bet to fall well shy of his 27.0% target share in Houston.

Houston has the best WR1-WR3 depth chart in the NFL, but there is only one football and it was already tough to project the potential target share for Collins and Dell together, let alone the arrival of Diggs.

Keenan Allen

BYE: Week 7

Unlike the majority of this tier, Allen had a great 2023 campaign.

He is coming off catching a career-high 108 balls in 2023 for 1,243 yards and seven touchdowns while missing four games.

Allen was aided by all of the missing components in the Charger offense, paired with a weak running game and being attached to a plethora of negative game scripts.

He ended the season leading all wide receivers in routes run per game (40.3), targets per game (11.5) and catches per game (8.3) while sitting fourth in receiving yards per game (95.6).

On the field, Allen is a tremendous fit with D.J. Moore and Rome Odunze.

In 2023, Moore played 80.6% of his snaps out wide and 18.6% in the slot.

Allen played 58.2% of his snaps in the slot compared to 41.0% outside.

Moore has struggled versus zone coverage while Allen has thrived.

Allen has struggled a bit more against man coverage at this stage of his career whereas Moore has smoked man coverage.

In 2023, Moore was fourth among all wide receivers in yards per route run against man coverage (3.88). In 2022, he was WR17 in that area (2.54).

Against zone coverage, however, Moore ranked 34th in 2023 (1.86) and 46th in 2022 (1.60).

Moore has never had a season yet in his career where he has averaged more yards per route run against zone coverage than man coverage.

Allen on the other hand was the inverse.

This past season, he was 10th among receivers in yards per route run against zone coverage (2.57) and 13th in that department in 2022 (2.23).

But against man coverage, Allen was 30th in 2023 (2.14) and 29th in 2022 (2.13).

Allen has not been inside of the top 25 wideouts in yards per route run versus man coverage in each of the past five seasons.

Allen just turned 32 years old this April and is only signed for this season.

We can bet on Allen holding off Odunze for 2024, but there is a non-zero chance we are just wrong about any projection for Chicago or even Caleb Williams.

DeAndre Hopkins

BYE: Week 5

After two injury-filled seasons in Arizona, Hopkins caught 75 passes in Tennessee for 1,057 yards and seven touchdowns, appearing in all 17 games.

Hopkins had his lowest catch rate (54.7%) since the 2016 season, but his 14.1 yards per catch were his highest since 2017 since this offense was predicated on vertical shots as laid out above.

Hopkins averaged 14.1 air yards per target, his most since the 2015 season. 26.3% of his targets were on throws over 20 yards downfield, the highest rate of his career.

He ranked 19th among all wide receivers in yards per route run (2.09) and that climbed to 2.22 yards per route run with Will Levis on the field.

Hopkins received 28.7% of the Tennessee targets (WR8), 42.8% of the team air yards (WR4), and was targeted on 27.1% of his routes run (WR9).

Hopkins proved that he was not washed last season, but he still only managed to end the year as the WR30 in points per game.

He had three WR1 scoring weeks, but also another eight weeks as a WR4 or worse in weekly scoring.

The Titans have a lot of moving parts, which makes them another team hard to project, which has ripple effects on Hopkins.

Hopkins just turned 32 in June.

We know his usage rates are going to dip to a degree this season.

The team made a significant move in acquiring Calvin Ridley to pair with Hopkins at the front of this depth chart.

We have a new offense that should lean more pass-heavy paired with a conceptual change that offers a shorter passing game and more efficient targets.

But we also still need Will Levis to show a massive improvement in his second season as a passer.

When it comes down to the two Tennessee pass catchers, I do favor Hopkins.

I do have it tight between the two, but Hopkins already has a built-in rapport with Levis and has been a better player than Ridley, which included last season.

The bull case for Ridley would be where he is on the age spectrum and chasing the money based on his signing, but Hopkins was a better player in his age 31 season, in a worse offensive environment, playing with a rookie quarterback who was not even a first-round pick on a run-first offense.

Ridley played with Trevor Lawrence in a Doug Pederson offense.

Lawrence did not play his best football in 2023 (as evidenced by Ridley’s on-target rate), but I am confident in subjectively saying that Lawrence is a better quarterback than Levis.

While it does not carry much weight, Hopkins also had the receiving grade per Pro Football Focus.

**INJURY UPDATE**

Hopkins suffered a knee strain in training camp that is going to sideline him for the entire preseason. His status for Week 1 is also in jeopardy.

As someone who is already at the age cliff, Hopkins has added risk. Even with a palatable ADP, Hopkins is someone to tread lightly with.

Tier 5 Fantasy Football WRs:

• DK Metcalf
• Michael Pittman
• Zay Flowers
• Terry McLaurin
• Diontae Johnson
• Christian Kirk
• Rashee Rice

Our next tier of wideouts may not carry the sex appeal that Tier 3 has going for it, but several players here are going to compete with that group in the scoring column.

Each may have an issue or two that is keeping their ADP suppressed, but here we have options that are still the WR1 target in their offenses and are on the right side of the age curve, which makes option here more appealing and better objective bets at cheaper costs than some of the wideouts in the previous tier that gamers may pursue attempting to catch a falling knife.

DK Metcalf

BYE: Week 10

Metcalf has always looked the part of a true NFL Alpha WR1 but has yet to have everything consistently come together in getting over that hump for fantasy purposes.

After closing his second season in the NFL as the WR10 in points per game in 2020, Metcalf has ended the past three seasons as WR23, WR26, and WR23 in per-game output.

Metcalf averaged only 4.1 receptions per game last season, his fewest since his rookie season.

He was able to make up for that dip in receptions by averaging a career-high 16.9 yards per catch, but his top-down usage was an issue.

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 with Jaxon Smith-Njigba arriving and soaking up shallow opportunities in the offense.

That spike in downfield targets contributed to a career-low 55.5% catch rate after a 63.8% catch rate last season despite the increase in yards per grab.

He has always been a man coverage demon in the NFL, but Metcalf’s usage against zone (which teams are running more than ever) was the lowest of his career.

Metcalf was targeted on 35.9% of his routes against man coverage as opposed to a 17.0% rate against zone coverage.

Against man coverage, he averaged 2.42 yards per route run, accounting for 35.4% of the team targets and 47.3% of the team’s air yards.

Against zone looks, Metcalf did average 1.95 yards per route run, which was his highest since his rookie season.

But he only received 16.7% of the team targets with 33.9% of the team’s air yards versus zone.

How the new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb deploys Metcalf (and in turn, Smith-Njigba and Tyler Lockett) will be the deciding factor in where he ends up as a fantasy asset.

We need Metcalf to draw more of the shallow-to-intermediate targets and the routes that are beating the current defensive landscape across the league.

Michael Pittman

BYE: Week 14

Pittman has caught more passes than the season 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.

There are only nits to pick with Pittman that he has been used almost exclusively near the line of scrimmage, but he has been used in a fashion similar to Amon-Ra St. Brown but just played in a worse offense.

Michael Pittman vs Amon-Ra St. Brown in 2023

Pittman also looks good in drawing the second-most targets among wide receivers with the use of play action (50), something that could rise with the return of Anthony Richardson.

Only Tyreek Hill (56) had more targets with the use of play-action, something that has been discussed throughout this post as relevant.

We are going to need some help with the quality of targets.

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.

If Pittman falls into spots where I can land him as a WR3 on my roster in aggressive WR-heavy builds, that insulates him where we can chase the target share and mitigate any volatility he may have playing alongside Richardson. If he is a spike-week-dependent player on those rosters, no real worries.

But in situations where he has to be my WR2 or better on a roster, I am working with some trepidation.

I rattled off all of the troubling passing stats that Richardson had over his limited sample in the QB Tiers.

Grain of salt for sample size, but also this is something that tracks back into his profile as a prospect, so it cannot be outright ignored.

Richardson only completed 26-of-45 (57.8%) of his passes to wide receivers last season, which was 45th in the league.

Zay Flowers

BYE: Week 14

The Ravens selected 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.

Terry McLaurin

BYE: Week 14

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.

McLaurin managed to just get to 1,002 yards last season, his fourth consecutive 1K 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.

We are looking for Jayden Daniels to be the key to unlocking McLaurin.

While overall using trepidation on players playing with rookie passers, Daniels does have a low bar to reach in being the best passer that McLaurin has had to this point of his career.

To this point in his career, McLaurin’s targets have come from…

• 194 targets from Taylor Heinicke
• 133 targets from Sam Howell
• 98 targets from Dwayne Haskins
• 52 targets from Alex Smith
• 43 targets from Carson Wentz
• 41 targets from Case Keenum
• 31 targets from Kyle Allen
• 7 targets from Colt McCoy
• 5 targets from Jacoby Brissett
• 4- targets from Garrett Gilbert
• 1 target from Logan Thomas

Daniels is coming off a season in which he just put up video game output, throwing for 11.7 Y/A with 40 touchdowns to just four interceptions through the air.

Daniels threw for a class-high 11.2 Y/A on throws that did not come with play action or an RPO.

On throws 10 yards or further downfield, Daniels sported a class-high 68.3% on-target throw rate with an insane 23.8% touchdown rate on those passes.

On 122 passes 10-plus yards downfield last season, Daniels threw 29 touchdowns with just one interception.

Add in now that Washington has moved on from Jahan Dotson on top of Washington running a lot of plays with a potential QB upgrade, McLaurin should be given as much translatable target opportunity for fantasy points as ever to this stage of his career.

Diontae Johnson

BYE: Week 11

Johnson has been a player who has bested his ADP in four of his five seasons in the league.

The way things are trending right now in current drafts, there is not going to be a high bar for him to do it again this season.

Playing with questionable quarterback play has limited Johnson since the opening of this career, but he was able to set career-highs in yards per route run (1.97), yards per target (8.2), and depth of target (12.7) last season despite catching passes from Kenny Pickett, Mitchell Trubisky, and Mason Rudolph.

Johnson ranked 11th among NFL wide receivers in ESPN’s Open Score last season after ranking first, fourth, third, and second in their metrics the previous four seasons.

Johnson provides Carolina with a wideout that can separate on the perimeter, something they lacked a year ago.

He played more in the slot last season than previously over his career, but he still found the most of his success on the outside.

After slot rates of 12.9%, 7.9%, and 12.5% from 2020-2022, Johnson moved inside for 21.3% of his snaps last season.

But Johnson only averaged 1.34 yards per route run with one touchdown from the slot as opposed to 2.06 yards per route run with five touchdowns outside.

Dave Canales has worked in DK Metcalf and Mike Evans over the past two seasons in a full-field capacity that neither had seen in previous seasons without him. Without Canales, Metcalf reverted right back to being a field stretcher in 2023.

If Canales can keep the trend going in turning around Bryce Young in year two as he did with veterans Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield the past two seasons, Johnson will be a bet to make having that come to fruition.

Christian Kirk

BYE: Week 12

Kirk missed five games last season but was right on part with 2022 production when he was on the field.

After averaging 4.9 receptions for 65.2 yards per game in 2022 after joining Jacksonville, Kirk averaged 4.8 receptions for 65.6 yards per game when available last season.

When on the field, Kirk led the team with 26.2% of the team targets and sported a team-high target rate on 22.4% of his routes.

When both Kirk and Calvin Ridley were on the field together, Kirk out-targeted him 79-to-62.

Things get interesting for Kirk with all of the roster movement Jacksonville has had in their wide receiver room this offseason.

Ridley and Zay Jones are gone while Gabe Davis was signed in free agency and Brian Thomas Jr. was selected in the first round of the draft.

Kirk is the betting favorite to earn the most targets here among the wideouts, but his ceiling is dependent on the role of those latter two receivers added this offseason.

The bottom line is that Kirk being a difference-making draft value versus a “don’t go broke” pick will come down to touchdowns.

Kirk has been inside of the top-30 scoring wideouts per game just one time over his career, which also coincided with his career-high in touchdowns.

In 2022, Kirk found the end zone eight times and closed as the WR19 in points per game.

That year is sandwiched by two seasons as the WR34 in points per game.

Kirk only had five red zone targets and four end zone targets last season after seeing 24 red zone targets and 13 end zone targets in 2022.

In 2023, Ridley accounted for a league-high 41.3% of the Jacksonville red zone targets.

Ridley had a league-high 52.2% of the team targets that went into the end zone as an extension of those targets.

Both Davis and Thomas Jr. project to be the type of players that can take on Ridley’s vacated red zone role, which makes me believe that Kirk has more fragility crushing his draft cost in an area where there are higher ceilings to chase and rosters already have floors in place.

But we are also only a year removed from Kirk not only having those red zone opportunities but having more success with them than the direction the Jags went a year ago.

Rashee Rice

BYE: Week 6

After a draft drought hitting on the Chiefs failing to hit on wide receivers since Tyreek Hill, Rice found a consistent role later into his rookie season and never looked back.

Through 10 games, Rice was the best wideout on the team 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.

While that could be viewed as something unstable moving forward. Rice caught a ton of screens in college. The Chiefs found where Rice succeeded and used him in that capacity to maximum effectiveness.

There is room for Rice’s route tree and role to expand.

The questions surrounding that expansion, however, will only be enhanced by the additions of Marquise Brown and Xavier Worthy this offseason.

Brown is a player with true downfield ability proven in the NFL.

Worthy is more of a wild card because he was never great downfield in college despite his measured speed.

He won more in the areas where Rice had his success as a rookie, which could siphon some of Rice’s overall opportunities if we don’t see his usage expand.

The Chiefs could have used the selection of Worthy to insulate them from the potential for Rice coming down before the season while getting Worthy groomed for a larger role after the season if Brown is not retained.

But right now, it is trending towards any potential suspension for Rice being something down the line versus getting one before the start of the season.

Tier 6 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Christian Watson
• Marquise Brown
• Calvin Ridley
• Chris Godwin

This mini pocket of wideouts is filled with players who have shown themselves to be talented and successful wideouts, but also are coming off seasons in which they underperformed.

There is an upside component to each player here, but also a “fool me twice or even three times” aspect that is pricing in a component of risk for each of them as well.

Christian Watson

BYE: Week 10

Watson was marred by hamstring issues for the second straight season.

Watson missed eight regular season games and played only 46% of the snaps in another game.

Watson has missed various times across two seasons with three different hamstring injuries, a knee issue, and a concussion.

He put in extensive work this offseason to correct the issue he has had with his hamstring.

This offseason, Watson went to the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine, which was given a $4 million grant by the NFL to study the prevention and treatment of those injuries.

The report from this visit was that he had a 20% difference in muscle strength between his right and left legs, which they have shaved down to 8-10%.

While we will not fully know if this year will be the first full season we get from Watson, there are reasons to keep the lights on for him and the upside he has shown when healthy.

Even in a crowded receiver room, when Watson was on the field at full strength, this passing game was going through him.

In his first game of the season playing at least half of the team snaps, he had 91 yards.

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.

When he was on the field for 270 routes last season, Watson received a team-high 22.8% of the targets.

From Weeks 5-13 when he was at full capacity, Watson led the team with 49 targets and four touchdowns.

There were 159 passing plays last season in which Green Bay had all of Watson, Romeo Doubs, and Jayden Reed on the field at the same time.

On those plays, Watson led the team with a 25.9% target share and 2.11 yards per route run.

Where the Packers got him heavily involved was in the end zone.

Watson only ended up running a route on 43.1% of the team dropbacks including the playoffs, but he amassed 14 targets in the end zone on those plays.

For context, Romeo Doubs led the team with 17 end zone targets and then the next closest player on the roster (Jayden Reed) had nine.

26.4% of Watson’s targets were in the end zone, which was the highest rate for any wide receiver in the NFL who had 50 or more targets on the season.

Marquise Brown

BYE: Week 6

Brown did not live up to the compensation he was traded for in Arizona, posting 709 and 574 receiving yards over 24 games the past two seasons.

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.

We are now five seasons in Brown’s career and he has yet to finish as a WR2 or better in points per game for fantasy.

His career path feels eerily similar to Torrey Smith at this point.

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.

Here are his inaccurate target rates per quarterback while in Arizona…

• Kyler Murray: 95 targets, 17.9% inaccurate
• Joshua Dobbs: 69 targets, 23.2% inaccurate
• Colt McCoy: 16 targets, 37.5% inaccurate
• David Blough: 12 targets, 16.7% inaccurate
• Trace McSorley: 8 targets, 37.5% inaccurate
• Clayton Tune: 8 targets, 12.5% inaccurate

Patrick Mahomes is on a different level than all of those guys.

Brown is betting on himself for one season in Kansas City.

The one thing I do like about Brown’s chances is that he does already have downfield success and nuance winning on actual routes in the NFL while both Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy have questions in that regard.

There is a world in which Brown is second on this team in targets, especially if there ends up being a suspension for Rice at some point.

Just by proxy, if Brown takes over the snap opportunity that Marquez Valdes-Scantling had, he will be a more successful player for the Chiefs while Brown himself will be in a far greater offensive environment.

Even last year, Valdes-Scantling led the Chiefs in routes run with 444.

**INJURY UPDATE**

Brown suffered a shoulder injury in the first preseason game that is expected to sideline him for 4-5 weeks.

Calvin Ridley

BYE: Week 5

After missing all of the 2022 season due to a suspension, Ridley caught 76 passes for 1,016 yards and eight touchdowns with the Jaguars last season.

While he was a volatile performer, no team got a better look at what upside is still here than the Titans did.

In his two games against Tennessee, Ridley had games of 7-103-2 and 6-106-1. He had just two other 100-yard games on the season outside of facing the Titans.

Ridley ended the season ranking 51st among wide receivers in yards per route run (1.58).

What is interesting is that Ridley and Trevor Lawrence were not always on the same page.

18.4% of Ridley’s targets were deemed inaccurate by the quarterback, the highest rate of his career.

Will Levis was 25th in inaccuracy throw rate to all wide receivers (15.7%), which was above Lawrence (17.0%).

The questions for Ridley will be how does the target dispersal between him and DeAndre Hopkins shake out, and can Levis support multiple receiving assets if there is a tight split between those two?

I do believe that the target share will be close between the two, but I made my case earlier in why I am favoring Hopkins between the two.

The second part of that question is much tougher to answer.

The system change should incorporate more passing volume that comes with throws that carry a higher success rate, but the history of betting on non-first-round quarterbacks who played to the level of Levis in his rookie season is flimsy at best.

The days of chasing Ridley as a premier WR1 are done.

He will be 30 years old this December and has one season in his career finishing higher than WR19 in points per game.

But even if Ridley does end up as a boom-or-bust asset, he still carries potential value at his current cost.

He has never finished lower than WR28 in points per game over his five NFL seasons.

Chris Godwin

BYE: Week 11

Godwin was not peppered with shallow targets from Baker Mayfield in the same fashion that he was from Tom Brady, but Godwin still managed to accrue solid counting stats last year, catching 83 passes for 1,024 yards.

Godwin had a career-high 23.6% of his team targets, but his 4.9 receptions and 60.2 yards per game were his fewest in each department since 2018.

His two receiving touchdowns were his fewest in a season since his rookie year in 2017.

He had double-digit targets in three of his final five games of the regular season after just two before that point, but it was not enough to flip his fantasy season.

That cocktail had him end the year as WR37 in points per game, his lowest finish since his rookie year.

Godwin moved back outside in the offense last season, playing 65.9% of his snaps lined up out wide after rates of 36.8%, 36.8%, and 33.5% the previous three seasons.

New offensive coordinator Liam Coen has already expressed that Godwin will play more in the slot this season.

Even if Jalen McMillan jumps Trey Palmer on the depth chart, Godwin has a study distance on the third pass catcher in this offense while still holding contingency upside should anything happen to Mike Evans.

Godwin will not only be getting more slot snaps, but he is due for a scoring bounce back.

Godwin was 13th among all wide receivers in expected points in the red zone yet closed the season 46th in points scored.

Godwin converted just 1 of his 16 red zone targets for a touchdown last season, the lowest rate for any wide receiver with double-digit targets in the red zone.

His career rate in converting red zone targets for touchdowns was 28.2%.

Godwin had 10 targets in the end zone (the same number as Puka Nacua, Nico Collins, and Chris Olave), but just one of those resulted in a touchdown.

That was also the lowest rate for any wide receiver with double-digit targets in the end zone last season.

His career rate in converting end zone targets before last season was 40.5% (40.6% without Tom Brady).

Tier 7 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Jayden Reed
• Ladd McConkey
• Keon Coleman
• Brian Thomas Jr.
• Xavier Worthy
• Jaxon Smith-Njigba
• Jordan Addison
• Rome Odunze

This is our upside WR4/bench tier of wideouts being selected based on upside.

In this tier, we are betting on first and second-year wideouts that come with tangible draft capital and the ability to deliver greater fantasy seasons than what is being priced into their costs.

Ladd McConkey

BYE: Week 5

McConkey’s raw stats in college were not gaudy.

His 3.1 career receptions per game ranked 25th in this class.

His 43.3 career receiving yards per game rank 27th.

He had just two career games with 100 yards receiving.

That said, things look better and followed the scouting profiles on him when going under the hood.

He averaged 3.26 yards per route run, which trailed only Malik Nabers, Marvin Harrison Jr., and Troy Franklin in this draft class among D1 prospects.

His 4.27 yards per route against zone coverage were second in this class to only Nabers.

McConkey forced a missed tackle on 30.0% of his receptions, which was seventh in this class. Nabers is the only wide receiver we have covered to this point with a higher rate.

After garnering praise at the Senior Bowl, McConkey showed up to the NFL Combine and ran a 4.39 40-yard dash while logging a 65th percentile explosion score.

If anything does hold McConkey back from front-end production versus leaning on play-by-play efficiency as he did in college is that his physical profile is still slightly below the marks we look for WR1 output.

At 5-foot-11 and 186 pounds, McConkey also had shorter arms (30.25 inches) and smaller hands (8.6 inches) than Xavier Worthy. Those rank in the eighth and fourth percentile.

McConkey draws comparisons to Puka Nacua from a year ago due to his route running and sprinkle of rushing production, but Nacua was also 201 pounds at the combine while his wingspan was larger with 31.5-inch arms and 9.5-inch hands.

I do believe he can win outside, but McConkey’s size may archetype him into a slot role in the NFL.

He can thrive as a slot player but landing in Los Angeles can represent a potential problem in that regard if he does not completely jump to No. 1 on the depth chart this season.

The Chargers also do not have many bodies that offer the slot potential of McConkey.

D.J. Chark, Josh Palmer, and Quentin Johnston are all players that profile to play more snaps on the outside, which is why McConkey needs to get ahead of those players in 2WR sets.

When Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman were together in San Francisco from 2011-2014, the 49ers were 30th in the NFL in dropback rate (54.0%) and 31st in passing plays per game (30.7).

Justin Herbert is a better passer than Alex Smith, Tyrod Taylor, and Lamar Jackson to open up more passing potential, but even when Harbaugh had an elite quarterback prospect in Andrew Luck at Stanford, he only threw the ball 27.1 times per game.

With their top-down philosophy, Harbaugh and Roman’s wide receivers have not been fruitful for fantasy production.

McConkey’s current ADP as a top-40 wideout feels aggressive if he cannot command full-time snaps in 2WR sets. During Roman’s tenure in San Francisco, those teams were 30th in the NFL in the rate of 11 personnel. In Buffalo, those offenses were 29th. In Baltimore, they were 32nd.

Keon Coleman

BYE: Week 12

Coleman was one of the more polarizing prospects in this draft class.

He has a lacking production profile, but his draft capital, age, and high-end range of outcomes cannot be ignored.

His 3.3 career receptions per game ranked 21st in this class.

His 44.3 career yards per game was 24th.

On the positive end, 16.5% of Coleman’s career receptions went for touchdowns, which is ninth in this class.

That is where I believe the primary appeal comes from Coleman landing with the Bills.

It would be foolhardy to believe that Coleman will get anywhere close to the target share that Stefon Diggs had in this offense, but he can get close to where Gabe Davis was in terms of overall target count and as a player with a role near the end zone.

At 6-foot-3 and 213 pounds, Coleman is one of the prototype builds in this draft class that NFL scouts have chased.

But Coleman struggled to create open targets in college, which is why we should not expect him to be thrust into a large role where Buffalo views him as a player to take over their passing game like Diggs did.

34.5% of Coleman’s targets in 2023 were contested catches, the highest rate in this class.

Coleman ran 27.9% of his routes from the slot (20th in this class), but 11 of his 23 targets from the slot were also contested catches (47.8%).

43.7% of Coleman’s targets came against man coverage as well, the highest rate in this class.

Even if Buffalo deploys a rotation and forces Coleman to earn snaps as the season progresses, he can provide a scoring impact near the end zone. Davis leaves behind a 38.6% end zone target share, which was WR8 in the NFL.

Brian Thomas Jr.

BYE: Week 12

After catching 59 passes for 720 yards and seven touchdowns over his first two seasons at LSU, Thomas erupted in 2023 with 68 receptions for 1,177 yards and 17 touchdowns.

Thomas is leaning on his gaudy 2023 campaign to carry his production profile.

53.5% of his catches, 62.1% of his yards, and 70.8% of his touchdowns came in his final season, rates that rank fourth, second, and second in this class.

Thomas played with the Heisman Winner and alongside an all-world wideout that allowed Thomas to excel, which does at least place some trepidation that his 2023 was lightning in a bottle.

Nabers took all of the creative usage in this offense last season, which allowed Thomas to eat on the outside and downfield.

Thomas was only targeted on 19.3% of his routes, which was 34th in this draft class.

Only 13.3% of the routes that Thomas ran came from the slot, 30th in this class.

68.2% of the receptions Thomas had were on throws 20 or more yards downfield, fourth in this class.

He led all of college football with 12 touchdowns on throws.

He also led all of college football last season in yardage (577) and touchdowns (13) gained on only go, post, and fade routes per Sports Into Solutions.

We are still looking for more body of work that Thomas can win everywhere on the field, and his fit with the Jaguars does have some overlap with where Gabe Davis is successful, who was added in free agency.

That said, Thomas offers that upside of being a full-field wide receiver that could have just been road-blocked from those opportunities by Nabers in college.

Calvin Ridley accounted for 22.4% of the Jacksonville targets with a target on 21.2% of his routes run.

Davis has never been a major target earner to that degree, which we are hoping Thomas shows.

Over his first four seasons in the NFL, Davis has been targeted on 13.4%, 18.7%, 16.0%, and 14.6% of his routes.

In 2023, Ridley accounted for a league-high 41.3% of the Jacksonville red zone targets.

Ridley had a league-high 52.2% of the team targets that went into the end zone as an extension of those targets.

Thomas Jr. is a strong bet to fight with Davis over those targets.

We do need Trevor Lawrence to provide a higher quality of target as well.

Lawrence was 30th in the NFL in inaccurate throw rate to wide receivers last season (17.0%) after ranking 26th in 2022 (14.6%).

That does provide some volatility for the types of targets Thomas Jr. projects to earn while fighting to jump Christian Kirk and Evan Engram on this target tree as a rookie while also contending with Davis.

That said, Thomas does have the avenue for talent to win out in the big picture.

Thomas will be an upside bench stash, but none of these other wideouts so far in this tier have the raw upside that Thomas has in his apex outcome.

Xavier Worthy

BYE: Week 6

Worthy hit the ground running (literally) at Texas.

As an 18-year-old freshman in 2021, Worthy caught 62 passes for 981 yards and 12 touchdowns.

He caught at least 60 passes in all three seasons in college, His 5.1 receptions per game over his career ranked sixth in this class.

Worthy did score fewer touchdowns than the season prior in all three years at Texas. His breakout score is one of the best in this class, but his final season production score is one of the weakest.

A few other college prospects who had similar drop-offs in the discrepancy between entry and exit are Jalen Reagor and Marqise Lee, players with similar draft capital to Worthy.

And no player helped himself more than Worthy at the NFL Combine, who ran a 4.21 time in the 40-yard dash, the fastest time for a wide receiver ever.

And even as someone who likes the context of what speed score provides, 4.21 is still 4.21.

The other wideouts that have run sub 4.30 times in the forty at the combine in the 2000s are John Ross, Jacoby Ford, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Marquise Goodwin, Henry Ruggs, Stephen Hill, Tyquan Thornton, Trindon Holliday, J.J. Nelson, Stephen Hill, Johnny Knox, and Mike Wallace.

We are working with one player hitting from that group in Wallace.

To give Worthy some credit, most of those players had next to no college production, they were just fast.

Ross was the lone wideout here with decorated production coming into the league.

Worthy also backed up that juice in straight-line speed by posting a 95th percentile explosion score, posting a 41-inch vertical and a 10-foot-11-inch broad jump.

We know we are working with an explosive player.

What hurts Worthy overall, though, is banking on his physical profile outside of his speed.

He is small at 5-foot-11 and 165 pounds.

Worthy did average 16.9 yards per punt return this past season but lacks the rushing profile out of college that we saw in someone like Tyreek Hill, who would be the pie-in-the-sky, hopium-fueled comparison here.

Going to the Chiefs will not slow down those hopes.

Worthy’s 31 1/8-inch arms are in the 21st percentile at the position while his 8-3/4-inch hands are in the sixth percentile.

This shows up in his on-field results as Worthy only pulled in 5-of-21 contested catches (23.8%) in 2023, which ranked 31st in this draft class.

He also only converted 1-of-11 red zone targets for touchdowns.

34.7% of Worthy’s 2023 receptions were screen passes, which was seventh in this class.

The hope is that with his speed and paired with Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, Worthy will not have to live in that capacity at the next level.

That said, where Worthy won in college is more of an overlap with where Rashee Rice won as a rookie in the NFL.

Any potential suspension for Rice in 2024 now appears to be unlikely, while Marquise Brown has more experience as an NFL route runner on the outside.

All of that puts Worthy in a boom-or-bust profile when you also account for Travis Kelce still projecting to be the No. 1 target in this offense.

I will value Worthy’s upside potential when his ADP aligns as a potential value, but I am almost certain he is going to be a player that other gamers in my leagues value more than I do.

Jaxon Smith-Njigba

BYE: Week 10

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.

That was a concern that I had with him entering the league.

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 teammate Jake Bobo.

Smith-Njiba’s usage as a rookie was largely non-descript, which makes it harder to gauge.

Was his usage based on his physical profile, surrounded by established wideouts, or just poor coaching?

I believe there is truth in all of those courses when looking to excuse his rookie season.

At the end of the season, 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 NFL wide receivers to have 50 or more targets last season. For added context, the average rate for those players across the league was 10.7% of their targets behind the line of scrimmage.

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 an issue in creating middling production as opposed to any talent limitations in the NFL.

When targeted 10 or more yards downfield, Smith-Njigba converted a first down or touchdown on 58.3% of those targets, which was WR16 on the season on those types of opportunities.

We are counting on Ryan Grubb to open up a better role for Smith-Njigba in his second season.

When Smith-Njigba was on the field last season with both DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett, the target dispersal was tight.

Lockett had 79 targets, Metcalf, 77, and JSN had 71 on those snaps.

Metcalf prevents placing high odds that Smith-Njigba can stack target outcomes that are present with the best outcomes for some players in this tier.

He still has to contend with Lockett as an obstacle playing in 2WR sets, but moving Lockett to a slot role at this stage is a potential outcome.

Jayden Reed

BYE: Week 10

Reed had a solid rookie season, ending the year as WR27 in points per game.

Among all rookie wide receivers last season, Reed was fourth in yards per route run (2.05) behind only Puka Nacua (2.60), Rashee Rice (2.41), and Tank Dell (2.22).

Reed was third in target rate per route (24.4%), behind only Nacua (28.0%) and Rice (26.2%).

Reed only was in a pass route for 61.0% of the Green Bay dropbacks as a rookie, but still led the team with 64 receptions and 793 yards through the air, matching Romeo Doubs with a team-high eight touchdowns receiving.

Reed then added 119 yards and another two scores on the ground.

While setting the table to build on a strong rookie season, we still need Reed to gain full-field usage and a full-time role in the offense.

While his rate stats were strong, Reed was 10th among all rookie wideouts in route participation (61.0%) and was limited to only playing in the slot. His 72.3% slot rate was second among all rookies behind Josh Downs (77.9%).

Jordan Love had 179 dropbacks last year with 1-2 wide receivers on the field.

Reed was only the field for four of those plays.

What pushed Reed over was that he ran hot in the touchdown department.

He had 10 total touchdowns on 6.5 expected scores based on his usage.

Reed was sixth among all wideouts last season in points scored over expectations in the red zone.

He was 10th at the position in red zone points scored despite sitting 26th in expected points.

Reed only had 14.7% of the team's red zone targets including the postseason.

He was targeted on 18.8% of his routes in the red zone, while Romeo Doubs was at 22.6% and Christian Watson was at 27.7%.

Reed was only on the field for 70.8% of the team's dropbacks in the red zone.

Watson was only on the field for 41.6% of red zone dropbacks due to his injuries, but he only had two fewer targets in the red zone than Reed had in that area.

Reed was targeted on 18.4% of his routes with 1.45 yards per route run when Watson was on the field last year as opposed to a 29.2% target rate per route with 2.55 yards per route run with Watson absent.

Watson has yet to play a full season, so Reed still holds contingency upside when and if he misses any action, but we do need Reed’s role in the base offense to grow in year two to remain a steady fantasy player.

Jordan Addison

BYE: Week 6

Addison had a successful rookie campaign in the counting department, catching 70 passes for 911 yards and 10 touchdowns.

Underneath the surface, things are more questionable.

Addison was just 10th among all rookie wideouts in yards per route run (1.50) and 11th in target rate per route run (17.8%).

Minnesota did have 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, but Addison also greatly achieved his expected touchdown production.

Seven of his 10 scores came 20 yards or longer, trailing only Mike Evans.

With the quarterback changes in Minnesota, his increased splits with and without Jefferson, and likely touchdown regression, Addison has a ton of fragility in year two.

But to be fair to him, most of those are being priced into his cost this summer. Addison still has a clear path to opportunity this year.

We still do not have a timetable for when the Vikings will get T.J. Hockenson back this season or if he will ever even be 100% the same player this year when he does return.

Minnesota also did not upgrade the rest of their wide receiving room this offseason, potentially getting worse with K.J. Osborn leaving in free agency.

As it stands right now, Addison has a straight-line path as the No. 2 target in this offense to open the season.

This is still a player who was a first-round pick and showed spike-week potential as a rookie in the NFL.

We cannot just throw those out.

Addison had two weeks last season in which he was the outright WR1 in weekly scoring.

One of those weeks was with Jefferson on the field while playing with Nick Mullens.

The only other players to have multiple weeks as the WR1 overall last season were Tyreek Hill, Keenan Allen, and CeeDee Lamb.

Rome Odunze

BYE: Week 7

In several previous seasons, Odunze would have been the clear WR1 in the class.

Odunze got better all four years at Washington, capped by a 2023 season in which he caught 92 balls for 1,640 yards and 13 touchdowns, adding a rushing score for good measure.

Odunze’s 81.8 receiving yards per game over his college career rank first in this draft class among Division 1 prospects.

He played alongside two other wide receivers selected in this draft, still accounting for 26.2% of his team targets (WR8).

His 2.85 yards per team pass attempt was seventh in this draft class.

Odunze shredded man coverage for 3.75 yards per route run (third in this class) paired with 2.93 yards per route against zone (WR10).

Odunze can get open on his route-running ability, but he dominated when asked to win in contested situations despite not being forced to live on contested catches alone.

20.0% of his targets were contested catches in 2023, below the 26.3% rate for Harrison and above Nabers (17.2%).

On those contested targets, Odunze caught a staggering 21-of-28 (75.0%).

35.0% of Odunze’s targets came on throws 20 or more yards downfield, which was the fourth-highest rate in this class.

He had 15 more downfield targets than the next closest wide receiver in this class.

He played in the slot at a lower rate of his routes (17.5%) than both Marvin Harrison Jr. and Malik Nabers did in college, but Odunze had more created production despite winning downfield more than the others.

19.6% of his receptions were screens compared to 15.7% for Nabers and 11.9% for Harrison.

Despite that, only 31.4% of Odunze’s yards came after the catch compared to 35.3% for Harrison and 37.6% for Nabers because he drew so many downfield targets.

His 2.58 yards per route run from the slot (WR14 in this class) were far off from the destruction that both Harrison (5.22 YRR) and Nabers (4.35 YRR) posted when given those opportunities.

All of that put together puts Odunze in a bucket of having more projection in winning everywhere in the NFL than the previous two, but he has true spades to start with.

While both Harrison and Nabers will be tasked with carrying their wideout rooms as rookies, Odunze is allowed to work downfield out of the box playing alongside D.J. Moore and Keenan Allen.

We have seen players such as DK Metcalf, Tee Higgins, DeVonta Smith, and Jaylen Waddle play in that WR1B and WR2 role in their offenses and struggle to consistently operate as fantasy football WR1s.

Odunze will be fighting for targets against two established players this season.

His situation will draw comparisons to Jaxon Smith-Njigba from a year ago, but Odunze has added outs versus the outcome that JSN had as a rookie.

Even if Odunze is behind both Moore and Allen in targets, he plays a different position than JSN did as a rookie. Even if you layer in Shane Waldron coming over from Seattle to Chicago, Odunze is not going to get 35% of his targets behind the line of scrimmage as Smith-Njigba did as a rookie.

If Odunze does approach the 93 targets that Smith-Njigba did, I will wage he does a lot more with them because the types of targets that he will receive will come with more potential to produce viable fantasy points.

Odunze’s skill set vibes with where Caleb Williams wins and the Bears have our No. 1 ranked passing schedule in the league as added outs.

Tier 8 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Rashid Shaheed
• Jameson Williams
• Khalil Shakir

Another small tier of wideouts is made up of hopeful breakouts for third-year wide receivers.

Rashid Shaheed

BYE: Week 12

Shaheed 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).

With Thomas now officially gone, Shaheed will be tasked with a consistent role in the lineup.

Not only is the remaining depth chart at wide receiver lacking the talent to push targets to Shaheed in 2024 behind Chris Olave, but the transition to Klint Kubiak will be a welcome addition compared to the approach the New Orleans passing game took in 2023, something discussed with Olave earlier.

In 2023, the Saints were dead last in the NFL in the use of play action (14.4%) and pre-snap motion (22.8%).

On top of a lack of creativity, the Saints had their wide receivers running vertical routes among the highest rates in the league.

Among all wide receivers to run 400 or more pass routes last season, Shaheed led the NFL with 30.2% of those being Go routes.

32.0% of Shaheed’s targets were over 20 yards downfield, third in the NFL among all wideouts with 50 or more targets on the year.

Serving as passing coordinator in San Francisco last season, we are hoping Kubiak brings over more of what Kyle Shanahan was doing offensively.

San Francisco was second in the NFL in use of pre-snap motion (67.3%) and 16th in play action rate (23.2%).

Kubiak only has one year of calling plays in the NFL, back in 2021 with the Vikings.

In that season, Kubiak’s offense was 12th in the NFL in pre-snap motion (43.4%) and 18th in the use of play action (25.5%). Even if those held up for 2024, there would be huge positive shifts compared to the 2023 rates for New Orleans.

Outside of a path to being the WR2 here, Shaheed has added contingency upside should Olave miss any action.

Jameson Williams

BYE: Week 5

While Williams was stuck in what felt like a negative feedback loop the previous two offseasons, this year has gone in a more positive direction.

Everything has run out in his favor.

Detroit let Josh Reynolds walk in free agency and did not add another veteran or rookie who has an immediate edge on Williams serving a larger role in his third season.

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.

Last year in the playoffs, Williams ran a route on 86.7% and 81.4% of the team dropbacks versus the Rams and 49ers, the two highest rates of his early career.

Before that, he had only hit 70% in one other career game.

We still do not have any proof that Williams is a target earner in the NFL and we have a good idea that he is not going to jump ahead of either Amon-Ra St. Brown or Sam LaPorta on the target tree.

Even with an increase in playing time, Wiliams still projects to be a tough bet on getting right week-to-week, profiling as a “did he catch a long touchdown?” option.

Paired with the favorable Detroit passing schedule we keep laying out, that makes him a better swing in best ball drafts this summer, with his primary redraft upside coming from St. Brown or LaPorta missing action.

Khalil Shakir

BYE: Week 12

The Bills have a lot of moving parts at the wide receiver position and Shakir is their only wideout on the roster who has caught a pass from Josh Allen.

Among all wide receivers to run 100 or more routes last season, 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 Gabe Davis.

Through two NFL seasons, Shakir has averaged 15.8 yards per reception.

Now, the tricky part.

Shakir still only has 65 total targets through two years.

Extrapolating his efficiency on his small sample to a full-time role is just not sustainable production.

We should not anticipate his yards per reception as static, because his yards after the catch rates will surely stabilize on a larger sample.

The only players with more yards after the catch per reception than Shakir with as many targets as he has over the past two seasons are Deebo Samuel and Rashee Rice.

Shakir’s role is also tricky to project.

The Bills have added perimeter wide receivers in Keon Coleman and Marquez Valdes-Scantling, while Curtis Samuel is a hybrid option for the offense.

The team also expects to run their passing game through Dalton Kincaid.

Early whispers are that he is going to remain in the slot, where has played 62.0% of his career snaps.

There is a world in which all of these wideouts cannibalize each other in a rotation on a team that may not pass as much as we are hoping and also has one of the worst passing schedules in the league.

We covered the offensive splits for this team after Joe Brady took over last season with Josh Allen in the QB Tiers.

After Brady took over, the Bills were 3% below pass rate expectations and 7% below expectations on first downs.

Over those nine games, Buffalo was 31st in the NFL dropback rate (52.4%) and 27th in the rate of yardage gained via passing (60.7%).

Before that, they were seventh in the NFL in dropback rate (63.2%) and 68.5% of their yardage came through the air (13th).

All of that is being put into the offseason cost for Shakir, however.

Gamers are handling him, Coleman, and Samuel in equal capacity, with Shakir most often going off the board after those other two.

Not only would I rather swing on the cheaper option but Shakir also could outright be the best player at this stage of the three.

Tier 9 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Courtland Sutton
• Jerry Jeudy
• Curtis Samuel
• Tyler Lockett
• Gabe Davis
• Brandin Cooks
• Josh Palmer
• Darnell Mooney
• Romeo Doubs

We have moved past our primary upside bets still in the fledgling portion of their careers and are moving into the group of wideouts who have some pros that we can still squint to see, but also have let us down in terms of playing on their upside outcomes recently.

Most of these players were the same archetype of wide receiver as the Tier 6 and Tier 7 players in the previous few seasons but have now fallen in ADP to fantasy reserves we are looking to make a case for.

Courtland Sutton

BYE: Week 14

Sutton took the most advantage of the situation in Denver last season, leading the team in receptions (59), yards (772), and catching a career-high 10 touchdowns.

We are now six years into Sutton’s career, with a strong idea of what we are working with as a touchdown-based asset.

Even with 10 touchdowns last season, Sutton ended the year as the WR40 in points per game.

Since his breakout season in 2019, Sutton has failed to get inside of the top 40 wideouts in points per game.

He only averaged 48.3 yards per game despite the career spike in touchdowns, which was three full touchdowns over expectations.

31.2% of Sutton’s fantasy production came off those touchdowns, the highest rate for any receiver in the top 50 scorers at the position.

He was third in the league in red zone fantasy points despite ranking 20th in expected points.

47.1% of Sutton’s red zone targets (8-of-17) went for touchdowns, the highest rate of his career.

His previous career high was 25.0% as a rookie.

Sutton had eight red zone touchdowns last season after seven over his first five years in the league.

He converted 60.0% of his end zone targets after a 25.0% rate entering last season.

Sutton did the bulk of his damage against man coverage.

When 1-on-1, Sutton was targeted on 24.3% of his routes while averaging 2.37 yards per route run.

Against zone coverage, Sutton was only targeted 17.6% of his routes with 1.47 yards per route run.

What will be interesting to see is how this Denver offense changes transitioning from Russell Wilson to Bo Nix.

Denver wideouts lived on the long ball in 2023.

Their 23.3% target rate on throws 20 or more yards downfield was second in the NFL while their 21.8% deep route rate was also second.

Can Nix unlock Sutton as a full-field player or was the type of wideout who Sutton is just made for what Wilson did best last year?

Nix averaged only 6.3 air yards per pass attempt, the fewest in this draft class. The next closest was a full yard over him at 7.4 yards downfield.

If looking through the pro side of things for Nix, he is still a former five-star recruit who improved his yards per pass attempt in every season in college.

When tasked to push the football downfield, he did excel.

Nix had an on-target rate of 65.6% on throws 10 yards or further, which was second in this class. His 17.9% touchdown rate on those throws was also second.

On throws 10 yards or further and outside of the numbers, Nix was second in the class with an on-target rate of 61.8%.

Jerry Jeudy

BYE: Week 10

The Browns traded for 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, but he fits consistent criteria that this Cleveland regime has looked for in wide receivers, which is hyper-production at the collegiate level entering the NFL.

They did the same thing with Elijah Moore last offseason, while the draft selection of David Bell has yet to yield any results.

These are all players (including Amari Cooper) that pop in a ton of collegiate production models.

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 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.

When lined up in the slot, Jeudy has averaged 1.77 yards per route run compared to 1.88 yards per route run when lined up outside.

Jeudy has yet to show tangible upside for fantasy, but he is a player who has team commitment paired with a smidge of contingency upside should Cooper miss any action.

Curtis Samuel

BYE: Week 12

We have talked a lot about the Buffalo receiving room to this point and are finally getting to Samuel.

Samuel had his best season in the NFL playing with offensive coordinator Joe Brady in Carolina in 2020.

In that year, Samuel was the WR27 in points per game, setting career-highs in receptions (77), receiving yards (851), and rushing attempts (41).

Samuel still has never had 900 yards receiving in any of his seven NFL seasons while averaging 10.7 yards per reception.

It remains to be seen how Buffalo will utilize Samuel, but early expectations are that he is expected to play more outside than inside while Khalil Shakir remains a slot player.

If that ends up being true, Samuel has been a better player outside of the slot.

Samuel has been targeted on 25.2% of his routes with 2.01 yards per route run outside of the slot compared to a 19.0% target rate and 1.35 yards per route run inside.

Those splits also come from quarterbacks that are not Josh Allen.

Tyler Lockett

BYE: Week 10

Lockett restructured his contract to stay in Seattle for at least another season.

He will turn 32 this September and is coming off his lightest season since early in his career.

After five straight seasons as a fantasy WR2 or better, Lockett was the WR39 in points per game last season.

His 2023 season paired with his current layout is why I have him here as opposed to the earlier tier of aging wideouts.

His upside case is harder to make than those in that tier.

Lockett averaged 52.6 yards per game in 2023, his fewest in a season since 2017.

His five touchdowns were his fewest in a season since 2017 as well.

The quality of targets was a large culprit for his decline.

Lockett had a 13.1% inaccurate target rate last season after only a 7.7% rate in 2022.

We are hoping for improved offensive line play in Seattle paired with creative usage from new offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb, but the bull case for Lockett is thinner than ever.

He is more of a “miss small” pick at his draft cost.

Lockett averaged a career-low 1.05 yards per route against man coverage, which is concerning layering in his career arc.

If looking for a pro outcome outside of the potential changes in Seattle, against zone coverage, Lockett led the team with a target on 22.3% of his routes. He had 89 targets against zone looks while DK Metcalf was at 67 and Jaxon Smith-Njigba at 61.

Gabe Davis

BYE: Week 12

The Jaguars added Davis even before losing Calvin Ridley in free agency.

He will be reuniting with Chad Hall. Hall was the wide receiver coach in Buffalo 2019-2022.

It is not believed that Davis was added as a replacement for Ridley based on the timing of that signing, but in losing Ridley, the Jaguars are losing a player who was a huge part of their passing game.

Ridley accounted for 22.4% of the Jacksonville targets with a target on 21.2% of his routes run.

Davis has never been a major target earner to that degree.

Over his first four seasons in the NFL, Davis has been targeted on 13.4%, 18.7%, 16.0%, and 14.6% of his routes.

The addition of Brian Thomas Jr. in the draft keeps Davis as a boom-or-bust asset while both Christian Kirk and Evan Engram project to soak up shallow opportunities in this offense.

The one area where Davis has been at his best is creating splash plays.

43.5% of his career targets have resulted in a first down or touchdown, which is 12th among wide receivers since entering the league.

Davis has been more of a target earner in the red zone, which is an area where Ridley leaves a ton of opportunities on the table.

In 2023, Ridley accounted for a league-high 41.3% of the Jacksonville red zone targets.

Ridley had a league-high 52.2% of the team targets that went into the end zone as an extension of those targets.

For his career, Davis has converted 40.0% of his 55 end zone targets for touchdowns.

The only wide receivers with a higher conversion rate with as many targets as Davis over that span are Mike Evans and Davante Adams.

Brandin Cooks

BYE: Week 7

Cooks was unable to fully bounce back for fantasy in his first season with Dallas.

Cooks had eight touchdowns last season, but he also averaged a career-low 41.1 yards per game.

His 3.4 receptions per game were the fewest in a season since 2019. His 15.4% target rate per route was the lowest of his career.

Cooks has now caught fewer than 60 passes for fewer than 700 yards in each of the past two seasons with Houston and Dallas.

Turning 31 in September, Cooks is trending downwards, but if you are looking to make any case for him when penny-pinching in drafts, Dallas still has next to no competition for him at wide receiver.

That did not matter a year ago, but if CeeDee Lamb were to miss any time, this receiver room would have to run through Cooks.

Josh Palmer

BYE: Week 5

Palmer is an intriguing player because he has regularly taken advantage of playing time when the Chargers have been down to him as the lead wideout.

Palmer’s usage and production steadily have climbed based on who the Chargers have put on the field.

Josh Palmer Based on WR Availability 2022-2023

Palmer even had serviceable games of 4-113-1, 5-47-0, and 6-44-0 when Easton Stick was forced to play at the end of the season.

Palmer has only performed out of necessity for fantasy, which is a red flag.

There is a non-zero opportunity for him to be the lead wideout for the Chargers this season, but what is positive can also be seen as a negative if Ladd McConkey (or even DJ Chark) is better than the replacement-level wideouts that the Chargers put on the field with Palmer when both Keenan Allen and Mike Williams were absent.

We do believe that the Chargers are likely to give Quentin Johnston some rope in year two as well.

Palmer is in the final season of his rookie contract and was not drafted by this regime, which also makes it tricky factoring in everything paired with the expectation that this will be a low-volume passing offense to begin with.

Darnell Mooney

BYE: Week 12

Mooney has a new pulse with the Falcons after being limited in Chicago due to quarterback play.

Over his four seasons with the Bears, 16.4% of Mooney’s were inaccurate per TruMedia.

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%.

We covered the accuracy upgrade Atlanta is getting with Kirk Cousins earlier with Drake London.

You can make a case that Mooney has Tier 6 qualities for fantasy, but it is harder to find a clear route for Mooney to lead his team in targets without multiple dominoes falling.

Romeo Doubs

BYE: Week 10

Five different wide receivers ran over 100 pass routes last year for Green Bay, with only Doubs (80.1%) running a route on two-thirds of the team's passing plays.

Doubs led the team in targets with 96, catching 59 passes for 674 yards and eight touchdowns.

He was behind both Jayden Reed and Dontayvion Wicks in target rate per route run (19.5%), but he led the team in end zone targets (17) and playing time.

Doubs is likely more of a fly in the ointment for hopeful breakouts for Reed and Wicks but is best picked up as the best ball asset to chase touchdowns with.

In games in which Doubs found the end zone, he averaged 15.6 points per game for fantasy.

In the weeks without a score, he only averaged 5.5 points per game.

While Doubs lacks the efficiency metrics to lean in on him being a strong asset, he is a strong bet to keep earning playing time.

The closest comparison I can make to him is that he is Green Bay, Gabe Davis.

Right down to the strong playoff lines when Doubs had games of 6-151-1 and 4-83-0 in the postseason while leading the team in routes.

Tier 10 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Josh Downs
• Ja'Lynn Polk
• Marvin Mims
• Quentin Johnston
• Dontayvion Wicks
• Xavier Legette
• DeMario Douglas
• Ricky Pearsall
• Jermaine Burton

This is our secondary tier of first and second-year wide receivers.

They do not have the complete bull case as those who make up Tier 7, but that is also factored into the cost of these receivers.

Josh Downs

BYE: Week 14

Downs stepped in and was immediately second on the team 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.

Ja’Lynn Polk

BYE: Week 14

Selected this spring right in an area alongside other wideouts carrying much more cache. Polk also landed in a wide-open target situation to be underrated based on his investment compared to his rookie peers.

New England wideouts combined to catch 175 passes (25th) for 1,909 yards (29th), and just five touchdowns (31st).

Only Carolina wide receivers averaged fewer yards per reception (10.3 yards) than New England receivers (10.9).

Demario Douglas had a solid rookie season, but this target tree is wide open.

Polk is drawing live to lead the team in target as a rookie and his draft investment should earn him playing time.

Of course, how valuable the lead target in this offense ends up being is a significant concern.

New England should eventually play a rookie quarterback while having the hardest schedule in the league.

Overall, this has the makings of a building year for the Patriots as they reset their franchise.

After catching 74 passes for 1,072 yards and nine touchdowns over his first three years in college, Polk had 69 receptions for 1,159 yards and nine touchdowns (with an added rushing score) in 2023.

25.9% of Polk’s targets last season came on throws 20 or more yards downfield (11th in the class) while he caught 14 of those targets (sixth).

Like his teammate Rome Odunze, Polk was reliable in contested catch situations, securing 13-of-24 (54.2%) contested targets.

While Polk did live on a lot of work downfield, he also showed more ability in space than someone who received so many deep targets.

Polk forced a missed tackle on 21.7% of his receptions (12th in this class).

Polk has a solid frame (6-foot-1 and 203 pounds), so if that ability to break tackles translates then it provides added outs should he fail to win downfield in the NFL like he did in college.

Marvin Mims

BYE: Week 14

Denver was hoping that one of their younger assets to make a splash would be Marvin Mims, who they traded up to select in the second round a year ago.

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.

Quentin Johnston

BYE: Week 5

The Chargers have an open competition at wide receiver this summer.

The downside is that they just used the 21st pick last season on a player who underwhelmed in year one, which is why things are open.

Quentin Johnston 2023 Rookie Output

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.

The damning part is that Johnston had a runway for the opportunity once Williams was lost for the season.

When we ended the season, players like Alex Erickson were earning more targets than Johnston in the offense.

Johnston was objectively an extremely volatile prospect, so his rookie season will not invoke a sense of confidence or get many benefits of doubts gamers already had.

All of that said, Johnston had one of the better college games with Jim Harbaugh on the opposite sideline.

This is a new regime, but first-round picks typically get multiple opportunities to fail in the NFL.

Dontayvion Wicks

BYE: Week 10

The Packers found a potential hit with Wicks in the fifth round last spring.

When pressed into the lineup, Wicks was hyper-efficient.

Wicks ended up running 285 pass routes in the regular season, which was third on the team.

On those routes, Wicks was second on the team with 2.04 yards per route run (Reed was at 2.05).

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.

The rub for Wicks is finding playing time when this receiver room is at full strength.

He had only a 19.9% route participation rate on dropbacks with Christian Watson available.

That rate went down to 13.3% when both Watson and Reed were on the field and then down to just one route all season with Watson, Reed, and Romeo Doubs on the field, who still are projected to be the WR1-WR3.

Wicks looks like last year’s version of Rashid Shaheed, who still needed an injury to Michael Thomas to get a usable target spike for fantasy.

Xavier Legette

BYE: Week 11

The Panthers traded back into the final spot of the first round to grab Legette.

Legette is far from a complete product, which is what makes their aggressiveness in acquiring him intriguing.

The first thing is that Legette was a major fifth-year breakout.

He had 71 catches for 1,255 yards and seven touchdowns in 2023 after catching only 42 passes for 423 yards and five touchdowns over his first four seasons at South Carolina.

We have to be honest and question that if it were not for the added eligibility based on COVID, would Legette even have been invited to the NFL Combine or on anyone’s radar?

Whereas 62.1% of the yardage that Brian Thomas had in 2023 accounted for his career output, 74.5% of Legette’s 2023 yardage made up his career total.

Thomas did that in his third season at age 20.

Legette was in his fifth year at age 22.

Legette was primarily only a kick returner up until last season, converting from high school quarterback.

Legette showed up at the NFL Combine at 6-foot-1 and 221 pounds.

At that size, Legette ran a 4.39 forty. That was good for a 98th percentile speed score and is fast even without being adjusted for size.

We should expect a player with Legette’s physical profile paired with his age to crush in college to a degree, but he also did, so we should not completely throw it out with the bathwater.

While his stature would suggest that he just ran by defenders on the perimeter, Legette ran 34.4% of his routes from the slot, where his 3.23 yards per route run was seventh in this class.

His overall size, athletic, and production profile have more upside than other wideouts in this class, but Legette will take continued refinement in the NFL.

He is expected to be used creatively in year one while Diontae Johnson and Adam Thielen still are immediate target obstacles as he is groomed for a larger role.

That said, things change quickly and the Panthers need playmakers.

If Legette is more productive than expected early on, he can force more opportunities.

DeMario Douglas

BYE: Week 14

Douglas led the team with 561 yards receiving.

Douglas was a solid find in the sixth round of the draft last season, which at least gives them something.

Out of 27 rookie wide receivers to run 100 or more pass routes (he ran 330), Douglas ranked sixth in that group with 1.70 yards per route run and fourth in target rate per route run (23.9%).

Douglas only averaged 8.2 air yards per target (21st), which forced him to create 59.9% of his yardage after the catch. Only Rashee Rice generated a higher rate of yardage after the catch (69.7%) in the regular season among rookie wideouts.

At 5-foot-8 and 192 pounds, Douglas may never develop into an anchor at the position, but as far as recent New England wide receiver selections go, he was a win and a player who can contribute.

Ricky Pearsall

BYE: Week 9

Pearsall would be a Tier 7 player if Deebo Samuel or Brandon Aiyuk were to be traded before the season started, so keep that in mind as a potential outcome over the final two months before kickoff.

A first-round pick going to the 49ers' offense has upside, but as we have highlighted throughout the tiers, the San Francisco offense unfortunately has one football to give out per play and a plethora of great options.

Scrolling up to the sections on Samuel and Aiyuk, you can see how we already are not getting enough weekly opportunities for those established players, and we still have Christian McCaffrey and George Kittle here.

It is just extremely hard to find a viable path for Pearsall in 2024 unless a domino falls, and that may not even be enough with Jauan Jennings still lingering.

Since Shanahan joined the 49ers in 2017, the 49ers are 31st in the NFL in use of 11 personnel at 42.8%.

Only the Ravens are lower over that span (40.5%).

Pearsall was a popular player among both scouting and evidence-based analysts.

He did not have a massively glowing production profile, but solid underlying output that makes him more appealing than the first impression his counting stats provide.

After three years at Arizona State, Pearsall transferred to Florida where he led the team in receiving yardage in each of the past two seasons.

Yes, his 661 yards in 2022 led the team because of the limitations that the passing game had.

But Pearsall still averaged a robust 20.0 yards per grab in that 2022 season playing with Anthony Richardson.

His 80.4 receiving yards per game this past season were 18th in this class, but his 30.9% share of Florida receiving yards was ninth, providing added context to some of the top-down passing games he was a part of.

Pearsall was 12th in this class in yards per team pass attempt (2.44) in 2023 despite ranking 27th in yards per route run (2.23).

Overall, Pearsall lacks a rock-solid production profile, but it feels very similar to Jayden Reed from a year ago when he just appeared a lot better than his environment.

Like Reed, Pearsall has a wide range of usage on top of being a receiver.

He returned punts in 2023.

He rushed for 253 yards and five touchdowns over his college career.

Perhaps if you squint, you can talk yourself into that profile being something that could make up for the potential loss of Samuel, if the team did opt to move him.

But I am always cautious comparing anyone to Samuel, who is a one-of-one player, in my opinion.

When tasked to punch up, Pearsall had the most receiving yards (99) allowed in a game by Georgia this past season.

Pearsall can win in the slot right away in the NFL.

He ran 56.3% of his routes from the slot in 2023, where he caught 66.2% of his receptions and posted 58.1% of his receiving yards. Those rates were 10th and 15th in this class.

Jermaine Burton

BYE: Week 12

Burton maxed out in college with season highs of 40 receptions and 798 yards across four seasons at Georgia and Alabama, but he has some interesting tidbits about his profile that keep the door open for him as having Kenny Stills potential in the NFL.

For one, the pedigree of playing at both of those schools.

But as a sophomore at Georgia in 2021, Burton was second on the team in receiving yards behind Brock Bowers. That was on a team with both Ladd McConkey and Adonai Mitchell.

His 2.6 career receptions per game rank 30th in this draft class, but Burton’s 18.0 yards per career reception are the highest in this class.

17.4% of his career receptions went for touchdowns, eighth in this class.

No player in this class averaged more air yards per target than Burton’s 20.2-yard average depth of target.

Burton used those downfield looks to leverage 2.75 yards per route run, which sits 12th in this class.

His 2.45 yards per team pass attempt rank 11th.

Burton ran a 4.45 time at 196 pounds while pairing that with a 91st-percentile explosion score in the jumping drills.

If Burton can fight off Andrei Iosivas as the WR3 for the Bengals, we know that player is going to be on the field with Joe Burrow.

The Bengals were fifth in the NFL in rate of 11 personnel in 2023 (72.2% of snaps) and rank second in the rate of 3WR sets (76.4%) since Zac Taylor has been the coach.

Tier 11 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Mike Williams
• Demarcus Robinson
• Adam Thielen
• Jakobi Meyers

Another small tier comprised of late-round veterans who just may not quite be dead yet for fantasy.

Mike Williams

BYE: Week 12

Williams will turn 30 this October and will be returning from an ACL injury that ended his season in Week 3 last year.

He suffered the injury in a game in which he had already caught seven passes for 121 yards and a touchdown.

Williams has only played in 16 games over the past two seasons, but he has been hyper-productive on his snaps played going back to 2021.

Over the past three seasons, the Chargers have averaged 0.77 EPA per play with Williams on the field.

The only wide receiver with a higher EPA play with as many plays as Williams over that span is Brandon Aiyuk (0.96).

While Williams was a boom-or-bust swing to make, it is calculated based on thin wide receiver rosters grasping for late-round upside that could come later in the season.

Demarcus Robinson

BYE: Week 6

Robinson took the WR3 job from Tutu Atwell over the final quarter of the season.

Through 11 weeks, Robinson had run only 18 total pass routes.

Over the final seven games of the regular season, he was then on the field for 80.3% of the team dropbacks.

Over that run, Robinson was the WR28 in overall scoring and the WR43 in points per game.

He was tied for the team lead with four touchdowns, drawing 36 targets.

Robinson led the Rams with eight end zone targets over that span while Puka Nacua had six and Cooper Kupp had five.

No team in the NFL plays 11 personnel more than the Rams at 94.8% of their snaps.

The WR3 in this offense is nearly a 100% player in this scheme.

The Rams will also open this season without Tyler Higbee, with no guarantee that either Colby Parkinson or Davis Allen will inherit the same workload that he had.

Robinson will turn 30 this September and we have a larger body of work of him being an ineffective NFL wide receiver than a few fleeting moments, but the WR3 role in this offense does carry appeal.

Adam Thielen

BYE: Week 11

Thielen was one of the few bright spots in this Carolina offense a year ago, catching 103-of-137 targets for 1,014 yards and four touchdowns.

Theilen’s 6.1 receptions per game were his most in a season since 2018.

While Thielen was plenty serviceable and a surprise a year ago, there are plenty of signs that his counting stats were inflated due to the surrounding offense rather than being a target that added a wealth of production that elevated a passing game.

He did average a career-low 9.8 yards per catch, and his yards per catch have dropped from the season before in every season since 2020.

Theilen also tapered off as the season closed.

Theilen opened the season with three 100-yard games over the opening six games of the season.

He then topped 74 yards just once over the final 11 games of the season without a touchdown.

Over the final seven games of the year, he averaged just 3.9 receptions for 41.1 yards per game, producing fewer yards per game than D.J. Chark over that span.

For fantasy, he was the average weekly WR47 over that stretch.

Theilen can still be a solid player from the slot but turning 34 years old this August and his late-season decline, Carolina needed a more viable lead target over depending on Theilen to carry their passing game.

They added Diontae Johnson to be the favorite to pace the team in targets while trading up to grab Xavier Legette in the first round.

With the overall question of can Bryce Young support multiple players for fantasy?

Jakobi Meyers

BYE: Week 10

Meyers caught 71 balls for 807 yards and a career-high eight touchdowns in his first season with the Raiders. He also rushed for two touchdowns and threw for another.

Not spectacular, yet reliable, Meyers has been a steady producer, averaging at least 4.0 receptions for 50.0 yards per game in each of the past four seasons.

Like Thielen above, Meyers was a player with a cavernous split in his season.

Through seven weeks, Meyers had 23.7% of the Raider targets, posting 385 yards and five touchdowns.

Over his final 10 games of the season, he then dipped down to 16.9% of the team targets with 422 yards and three scores.

Meyers was the one player better off with Jimmy Garoppolo.

With Garoppolo, he was targeted on 25.5% of his routes with 2.15 yards per route run.

Only 5.3% of his targets from Jimmy G were inaccurate.

With Aidan O’Connell, Meyers was targeted on just 16.3% of his routes with 1.32 yards per route run.

14.5% of his targets were inaccurate.

While Meyers could find new life with Gardner Minshew in the intermediate area of the field, he will also now have to contend with Brock Bowers operating in the same area of the field where he has won.

Tier 12 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Adonai Mitchell
• Michael Wilson
• Malachi Corley
• Jalin Hyatt
• Roman Wilson
• Tre Tucker
• Luke McCaffrey
• Wan'Dale Robinson
• Troy Franklin
• Jonathan Mingo
• Jalen Tolbert
• Jalen McMillan
• Trey Palmer
• Devontez Walker

These final two tiers are made up of the late-round deep dart throws.

I am splitting them into two buckets based on where they are on the age spectrum.

The first is our early career wideouts.

Most of these players will not be drafted, but in your deepest formats, I wanted to have a few notes down.

Adonai Mitchell

BYE: Week 14

No wide receiver in this draft class has a larger discrepancy in high-end profile paired with a lack of on-field production to support it than Mitchell.

At the NFL Combine, Mitchell checked in at 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds, posting a 96th speed score and a 99th percentile explosion score.

He went to Georgia and was a four-star recruit.

On paper, this is a guy who should have a treasure trove of production in college, but that is not the case.

Mitchell’s 2.7 career receptions per game ranked 29th in this class.

His 40.1 career yards per game rank 31st.

Mitchell is one of just two wide receivers in this class to never have a season in which he averaged 2.0 yards per route run.

In 2023, his 1.72 yards per route run was ahead of just one wide receiver in this class.

While Mitchell lacks the top-down production profile to match his scouting projection, not all of it is bad.

He was great at finding the end zone.

19.4% of his career receptions went for scores, second in this class behind only Marvin Harrison Jr.

Mitchell should push Alec Pierce on the outside in Indianapolis, but we still have to question how many assets Anthony Richardson can keep afloat in the passing game.

Michael Wilson

BYE: Week 11

Wilson was fine as a rookie, catching 38-of-58 targets for 565 yards and three touchdowns.

His highlight performance came in Week 4 against San Francisco, catching all seven of his targets for 76 yards and two touchdowns.

Through eight weeks, Wilson was sixth among all rookie wide receivers in yards per game (50.1). He ranked first among that group with a first down or touchdown on 57.6% of his targets over that stretch.

Wilson then picked up a shoulder injury that sidelined him for four of the final nine games. He caught only 13-of-25 targets for 164 yards and a touchdown over the back half of the season but did close the year with six catches for 95 yards in the regular-season finale.

Wilson should compete with Zay Jones for a starting job at a minimum in 2024.

Malachi Corley

BYE: Week 12

Corley was selected in the third round by the Jets, where he will compete with Xavier Gipson for the slot gig in New York.

Corley is a brickhouse at 5-foot-11 and 215 pounds.

69.4% of Corley’s yardage last season came after the catch, by far the highest rate in this class.

Corley averaged 8.6 yards after the catch per reception, the most in this class.

Corley’s counting stats were aided by the environment he played in.

Over the past three seasons, Western Kentucky has averaged 41.7, 45.2, and 50.9 pass attempts per game, which were sixth, third, and second in the country.

He was the WR8 in this class in targets in 2023 and the WR7 in receptions, but playing in a pass-heavy offense, his 22.3% target share was WR18 in this class while his 22.9% share of team receptions was WR15.

He was 25th in yards per team pass attempt (1.82).

Only 2.8% of Corley’s routes were as an isolated receiver, the second-lowest rate in this class.

Corley’s 5.5 air yards per target were the lowest in this class.

36.5% of his targets were on screens, the highest rate in this class.

The next closest player was at 26.7%.

53.2% of his receptions this past season came on screens.

The next closest player was at 40.0%.

He had a class-high 36 targets behind the line of scrimmage.

This is what makes him so tough to project.

The size is there, but players who have lived on this level of a diet of manufactured production have been tricky bets for fantasy.

Jalin Hyatt

BYE: Week 11

Hyatt averaged 21.0 air yards per target in 2023, the most of any wide receiver in the NFL, let alone rookies.

45.0% of his targets were thrown 20 or more yards downfield, the highest rate among wide receivers in the league.

Paired with anemic quarterback play did Hyatt zero favors with his reliance on deep targets alone.

Hyatt only averaged 0.96 yards per route run, which was 17th among all rookie wide receivers last season.

Because he was only used as a one-trick pony as a rookie, Hyatt was only targeted on 10.3% of his routes, which ranked 25th out of 27 rookie wideouts to run 100 or more routes last season.

There is room for Hyatt to expand diversity in usage moving forward, but the addition of Malik Nabers paired with lower-end quarterback play leaves Hyatt as a boom-or-bust target.

Roman Wilson

BYE: Week 9

Wilson caught 48 passes for 789 yards and 12 touchdowns in 2023 after maxing out with a high of 25 catches and 420 yards in a season over his first three years at Michigan.

Over those first three seasons, Wilson had 10 total touchdowns.

While the counting stats here are not going to blow anyone away due to the restrictive nature of the Michigan passing game, there is a lot to like because of it as well.

Wilson was the WR14 in this class in yards per route run (2.68) and 15th in yards per team pass attempt (2.19).

Wilson had just one target off a screen pass while doing major lifting on targets that we like.

He caught 50% of his team touchdowns, second to only Marvin Harrison Jr. last season among D1 wideouts in this class.

19.4% of his targets came inside of the red zone, which was third in this class.

There, he converted seven of those 13 targets (53.9%) for scores, which was the highest rate for anyone in this class with double-digit red zone opportunities.

26.9% of his targets were on throws 20 or more yards downfield, which ranked 10th in this class.

On those targets, Wilson caught 66.7% (12-of-18), fourth in this class.

Wilson was also only credited with one drop on his 67 targets (1.5%).

While the Michigan passing tree allowed Wilson to showcase his upside on those targets that we covet in fantasy football, it did limit him in other areas.

His 4.6 yards after the catch ranked 31st in this class while forcing a missed tackle on just 4.2% of his receptions, second to last in this class.

Pittsburgh has hit plenty of gems at wide receiver and has a wide-open depth chart behind George Pickens.

Tre Tucker

BYE: Week 10

Tucker will compete with Michael Gallup as the WR3 in Las Vegas.

Tucker caught 19 passes for 331 yards and two touchdowns as a rookie.

Averaging a robust 17.1 yards per reception, Tucker averaged 18.4 air yards per target, second in the NFL.

41.2% of his targets were on throws 20 or more yards downfield, which was third in the league.

He is a solid speed threat to complement the veterans in Las Vegas, but we need to see more of a rounded game from Tucker paired with a potential hang-up at the quarterback position.

Luke McCaffrey

BYE: Week 14

McCaffrey took a unique path to this point.

He started his collegiate career as a running quarterback over his first three seasons at both Nebraska and Rice before making a full jump to wide receiver in 2022.

As a primary receiver in his first season at the position, McCaffrey caught 58 passes for 723 yards and six touchdowns while he still rushed for 148 yards and a score.

In 2023, he took another step up, catching 71 passes for 992 yards and 13 touchdowns through the air while adding 117 yards rushing.

In 2023, McCaffrey accounted for 29.6% of the Rice targets (WR6 in this class), 40.4% of the team’s air yards (WR6), 44.8% of the receiving touchdowns (WR5), and 26.5% of the team receptions (WR6).

McCaffrey is not small (he was attempting to play quarterback after all) at 6-foot-2 and 198 pounds, but as of right now he is still learning the position through the slot, where he ran 71.4% of his routes.

He checked out of the NFL Combine with almost identical measurements to his brother.

He ran a 4.46 time in the 40 with a 36-inch vertical and 10-foot-1 broad jump.

Christian ran a 4.48 with a 37.5-inch vertical and a 10-foot-1 broad jump.

Where both popped is in terms of agility scores.

Luke had a 91st-percentile agility score with a 6.7 3-cone and a 4.02 20-yard shuttle.

Christian had a 6.57 3-cone and a 4.22 20-yard shuttle.

No one is expecting Luke to be Christian in the NFL.

But we know his dad can play receiver and catching ability runs in this family.

McCaffrey still takes some squinting and projection in the NFL, but his fit in a Kliff Kingsbury offense could come together.

Wan’Dale Robinson

BYE: Week 11

Robinson has averaged 3.8 and 4.0 receptions per game over his first two seasons in the NFL but has only averaged 9.9 and 8.8 yards per catch with two total touchdowns.

Robinson has only averaged 5.5 air yards per target over his two seasons in the league. The only wide receivers with a lower depth of target to run as many routes as Robinson over the past two seasons are Deebo Samuel and Rondale Moore.

Robinson still has two more years on his rookie contract but is more of a contributor to an offense versus someone to funnel a passing game through.

Troy Franklin

BYE, Week 14

Franklin was a surprise faller in the NFL Draft, but he landed in a spot where the depth chart is relatively open while getting paired with his collegiate battery-mate Bo Nix.

Franklin made consistent jumps in production over his three seasons at Oregon, closing out this past season with 81 catches for 1,383 yards and 14 touchdowns.

He went from 11.6 to 14.6 and 17.1 yards per reception over his tenure.

Franklin averaged 3.32 yards per route run this past season, trailing only Malik Nabers and Marvin Harrison.

His 2.71 yards per team pass attempt ranked eighth in this class.

Only three wide receivers in this draft class were younger than Franklin.

Franklin is a leaner (6-foot-2 and 176 pounds) profile that did not check out as fast-fast for his size at the NFL Combine.

Only five wide receivers were lighter than Franklin at the combine.  The three that ran at the combine all were faster than Franklin, whose 4.41 time in the 40-yard dash was 10th in this class, but that was also good for a 27th percentile speed score.

Franklin picked up some ground with a 77th percentile explosion score, but also managed a 15th percentile agility score as one of the few wideouts that did participate in those drills.

Franklin also had a 7.9% drop rate in 2023, which ranks 34th in this class. His nine dropped passes per Pro Football Focus were the most in the class last season

Jonathan Mingo

BYE: Week 11

Mingo caught 43-of-85 targets for 418 yards and zero touchdowns as a rookie.

He ran the third-most routes (538) among rookie wide receivers last season, but Mingo was eighth in targets, 10th in receptions, and 13th in receiving yards among those first-year wide receivers.

Out of 27 rookie wideouts to run 100 or more pass routes in 2023, Mingo’s 0.78 yards per route run ranked 20th.

If you are looking for a potential excuse for Mingo’s lack of production, 24.7% of his targets were deemed inaccurate by his quarterback. The only rookie with a higher rate of inaccurate targets was Cedric Tillman (25.0%).

Selected 39th overall last season, Carolina will continue to allow Mingo to turn things around in year two, but the additions of Diontae Johnson and Xavier Legette should make earning targets tougher for Mingo in his second season.

Jalen Tolbert

BYE: Week 7

Tolbert made some growth in year two, but he still has only 24 catches through two NFL seasons. The opportunity is here for more in year three, but the ancillary wideouts next to CeeDee Lamb did not provide much runout for gamers overall in 2023.

Jalen McMillan

BYE: Week 11

After a breakout in 2022 with 79 catches for 1,098 yards and nine touchdowns, McMillan took a step back with 45 catches for 559 yards and five scores this past season.

McMillan battled a knee issue for the duration of the season, which played a role in his depressed output and allowed some of the runways that Ja’Lynn Polk capitalized on.

McMillan was limited to only 240 pass routes last season. Only three wide receivers in this draft class ran fewer.

Playing through injury, his 2.30 yards per route run still edged out Polk (2.29) and was in line with his 2022 production (2.32 YRR).

McMillan operated as nearly a full-time slot player at Washington.

He ran a class-high 90.8% of his routes from the slot which accounted for 86.7% of his receptions and 88.4% of his yardage.

Liam Coen has already stated that he wants to get Chris Godwin back into the slot more this season, which could stunt opportunity for McMillan out of the box.

But perhaps McMillan can push Trey Palmer outside in the NFL.

Despite playing heavily in the slot, McMillan has a sturdy physical profile.

McMillan has good size (6-foot-1 and 197 pounds with 10-inch hands) and ran a faster time (4.47) than Polk did at the NFL Combine.

McMillan also was impressive in jumping drills, posting an 80th-percentile explosion score.

Trey Palmer

BYE: Week 11

Palmer will fight with McMillan on the depth chart this summer.

The sixth-round rookie had a handful of splash plays as a rookie, but ultimately only caught 39 passes for 385 yards and three touchdowns.

Out of 27 rookie wideouts to run 100 or more routes, Palmer ranked 19th in yards per route run (0.84) and 16th in target rate per route (14.9%).

Devontez Walker

BYE: Week 14

After a 58-921-11 receiving season (with a rushing touchdown) at Kent State in 2022, Walker transferred to North Carolina where he caught 41 passes for 699 yards and seven touchdowns in only eight games played this season.

His 87.4 receiving yards per game in 2023 ranked 11th in this class.

We know what we have in Walker as a vertical playmaker and splash-play machine.

His 16.8 yards per reception for his collegiate career rank sixth in this class.

On 20 career touchdowns, the average length of those scores for 30.7 yards.

In 2023, he averaged 18.2 air yards per target, which was second in this class.

34.9% of Walker’s targets were on throws 20 or more yards downfield, which was the fifth-highest rate in this class.

At 6-foot-1 and 193 pounds, Walker ran a 4.36 40-yard dash and posted a 98th percentile explosion score in jumping drills with a 40.5-inch vertical and 11-foot-2 broad jump.

The question for Walker at the next level is if he can be more than that lid lifter in an offense.

We have long chased targets for the ancillary wide receivers in Baltimore and have come up empty.

With Mark Andrews and Zay Flowers clearly at the top of the pecking order, Walker is likely a touchdown-or-bust rookie.

Tier 13 Fantasy Football WRs:

• Elijah Moore
• Greg Dortch
• Zay Jones
• Darius Slayton
• Rashod Bateman
• Kendrick Bourne
• Brandon Powell
• Odell Beckham
• Josh Reynolds

The second half of the dart throws are the veterans.

Elijah Moore

BYE: Week 10

In his first season with the Browns, Moore caught 59 passes for 640 yards and two touchdowns.

Through three seasons in the NFL, Moore’s yards per target and yards per reception have dropped from the season before it.

For whatever it is worth, Moore was at his best with Deshaun Watson under center.

Moore caught 62.9% of his 35 targets from Watson compared to 60% from Dorian Thompson-Robinson (9-of-15), 52.2% from P.J. Walker (12-of-23), and 51.6% from Joe Flacco (16-of-31).

Moore enters this season in the final year of his rookie contract with Jerry Jeudy added as target competition behind Amari Cooper and David Njoku.

Greg Dortch

BYE: Week 11

With Kyler Murray back in Weeks 10-18, Dortch led the wide receiver group with only 278 yards.

Dortch has been a solid role player any time that Arizona has extended his playing time, but he is an ancillary pass catcher, not an anchor.

He should have an inline to the slot role in this offense, but it is hard to see Dortch jumping Marvin Harrison and Trey McBride on the target tree while still being potentially limited in 2WR sets.

Zay Jones

BYE: Week 11

Jones had an injury-riddled season in 2023, missing eight games and leaving another early.

Jones ended up catching just 34 passes for 321 yards and two touchdowns a year after catching 82 passes for 823 yards and five touchdowns.

Jones has only averaged 10.0 and 9.4 yards per catch for the Jaguars and only is at 10.6 yards per catch for his career.

Jones will compete with Michael Wilson for snaps on the outside and could find himself in a spot where he is even fighting for targets with Greg Dortch as an ancillary part of the Arizona passing game.

Darius Slayton

BYE: Week 11

Slayton led the team in receiving yards (770) for the second straight season in 2023. He has led the team in receiving yards now in four of his five NFL seasons despite never reaching 800 yards in any of those seasons.

With the addition of Malik Nabers, it is a good bet that Slayton’s run as the WR1 in production is at the end of its run.

Slayton has never been a huge target earner but is an effective downfield threat.

Since entering the league in 2019, Slayton’s 15.1 yards per catch rank ninth among all wide receivers in the league.

He is averaging 37.0 yards per reception on throws 20 yards or more downfield.

The only wide receivers that have averaged more yards per catch on those throws with as many receptions as Slayton has on those throws are A.J. Brown (40.8), Mike Williams (38.7), and Stefon Diggs (37.8).

Rashod Bateman

BYE: Week 14

Bateman did play in a career-high 16 games after two injury-filled seasons, but he only caught 32 passes for 367 yards and one touchdown.

After averaging 42.9 and 47.5 yards receiving per game over his first two seasons, Bateman averaged 22.9 yards per game last season.

Bateman ran nine fewer pass routes on the season than Nelson Agholor, who caught 35 passes for 381 yards and four touchdowns.

Kendrick Bourne

BYE: Week 14

Bourne was second on the team in target rate per route last season (23.4%) and led the team with 1.73 yards per route run.

While Bourne has been arguably the best New England wide receiver outside of Jakobi Meyers since the glory days of this offense, he still is more of an ancillary option in a passing game.

Bourne will be 29 this August with a career-high of 800 yards receiving in a single season (2021). He also is coming off ACL surgery in November.

Brandon Powell

BYE: Week 6

Someone has to be the WR3 in Minnesota and right now it appears as if Powell is the leading candidate.

We saw Minnesota go from fifth in the NFL in rate of 11 personnel in 2022 (73.5%) down to 13th in 2023 (64.7%) in large part due to Jefferson’s injury and their lack of viable depth.

That was with K.J. Osborn running 558 pass routes (78.8% of the team dropbacks), who left the team during free agency.

If looking for some silver lining, Powell did outperform Osborn on a per-route basis on his smaller sample size in 2023.

Powell ran 287 pass routes (40.5% of the dropbacks), averaging 1.13 yards per route run compared to Osborn’s 0.97 yards per route run.

Odell Beckham

BYE: Week 6

Beckham will turn 32 this November, coming off averaging 2.5 catches for 40.4 yards per game with Baltimore last season.

Miami has ranked 30th (43.6%) and 29th (44.5%) in the rate of 11 personnel under Mike McDaniel.

Josh Reynolds

BYE: Week 14

Reynolds is coming off 608 yards with Detroit last season, his most yards in a season since 2015.

His five touchdowns matched a career-high.

He is trading an offense that was fifth in the NFL in scoring for one that was 19th and now has a rookie quarterback.