Making A Fantasy Football WR1
The making of a wide receiver one has a certain profile. As we begin to dig into redraft leagues and as we look ahead in our dynasty leagues, I have broken down data from the last seven years to get an understanding of what it takes to be an elite fantasy wide receiver.
There is a profile, most of the guys that have been elite the last seven years look similar. By looking into the past we can gain an understanding of the future and that can give us an edge by building a roster of elites WR’s either in their prime or ready to break out.
When talking about a wide receiver one, I am talking about a top 12 wide receiver per total points in fantasy. Most leagues have 12 teams, sure a few leagues have 10, 14, even 16 teams to a league but the majority of fantasy football leagues have a standard 12 teams. Meaning if you were going to pick a wide receiver that you can rely on week in and week out who will come out as a top 12 fantasy wide receiver asset, they can be WR1 on your squad.
I am really excited about the model I have built. It takes a look at every possible aspect of a player profile. Size, age, draft capital, target volume, target share, and quarterback play. By having an understanding of what players who have performed at an elite level the the last seven years, I can be much more informed by my choice of wide receivers in my upcoming drafts.
So, I’m pumped, I know you are too. Let’s take a look at what makes up a wide receiver one and get ready to dominate your drafts.
Wide Receiver 1
When I am talking about a WR1 I am talking about the top 12 wide receiver finishes in a total year in a PPR format. I only discuss PPR these days, it has become the common format. My model is comprised of 84 data points. I researched the top 12 wide receivers that had the most points from 2014-2020. My hope is to not only look back because it is fascinating but my hope is that by looking back on who actually became a top Wide Receiver for their fantasy squad I can then forecast forward who are possible candidates to be a WR1 in 2021 and beyond.
Profile
When discovering what does a WR1 look like I took at look at 10 variables to get an idea of what WR1’s look like in the past. I looked at games played, years in the league, age, height, weight, draft capital, target volume, target share, and quarterback play. I also took a look at fantasy points and fantasy points per game. This gave me a full picture of what wide receiver ones have looked like so that I can then build out who is going to dominate your league in 2021 and beyond.
King Antonio Brown
Before we get started, I have to give a shout out to the King. Antonio Brown was and is an outlier of all outliers. He was WR1 in 2014. Not a WR1, he was the top Dawg. He finished with 380.9 fantasy points which is ridiculous. But what makes AB the king is not one crazy year it is the fact that AB finished as WR1 4 years in a row! From 2014-2017 AB was the top Dawg. I believe this is historical and will never happen again. The league is pass happy and what he did will never be duplicated. On top of AB finishing as WR1 in years 2014-2017, he finished as WR5 in 2018. Meaning if I drafted AB in my start ups in 2014, he would have given me four consecutive number one wide receiver billings and five consecutive top five wide receiver one entry’s. That’s insane. No one is close to that in my model.
AB is not only an outlier for his production but also for his size and draft capital. I will break down the size of players and their draft capital later in this piece but AB is a 5-10, 186 pound wide receiver that was taken in the 6th round. On average for all 84 data points the average height of WR1’s is 6-1 and weight is 210 pounds. He is three inches shorter, almost 30 pounds lighter and is four rounds later in draft capital than the average WR1. He is the outlier of outliers and no matter what he has done, love him or hate him, he is a fantasy football legend.
Height/Weight
In fantasy football, I say to follow the odds. What this model aims to find is searching for the best odds that players on my squad will be a dominant wide receiver. As stated above, can a 5’10, 186 pound, 6th round draft choice be a dominant player? Of course! Antonio Brown, Tyreek Hill, and others have proven they can dominate the competition. But when playing the odds, bigger, taller, thicker players have proven to be the most common profile for putting up fantasy points.
Over the last seven seasons, the average height of receivers in the top 12 is 6-1. The average weight of players has been 208 pounds. In fact out of the 84 data points (12 players x 7 seasons) there have only been 23 players that were under six foot tall. This accounts for 27 percent of all data points. Meaning roughly 3/4’s of the players have been 6’0 or taller. If I’m on the board in round 7 and there is a player that is 5’10 and a player that is 6’2, history tells us to go with the 6’2 player. Play the odds.
This logic holds up in 2020 as well. Only two players were under 6-0 in the top 12 in 2020, Tyler Lockett and Tyreek Hill. For the most part, wide receivers that are are 6-1 or taller and 205 pounds or more have dominated the fantasy football landscape. Applying this logic moving forward in my rookie and start up drafts, take a look at guys like Terrace Marshall and Elijah Moore. I love Elijah Moore. I believe he has the ability to be a Tyreek Hill type of player.
However, the cards are stacked against him. If I am on the board and both Marshall and Moore are there, I am playing the odds and taking Terrace Marshall every time. This logic could fall short but in fantasy football, playing the odds will generally win me more games. Look for the tall guys, get them on the squad and good things will happen.
Draft Capital
The same logic applies to draft capital. Who would ever think that a gangly, doughy, back up QB from Michigan would dominate the NFL for 25 years as a sixth round draft pick? But that is exactly what Tom Brady has done. I will do a quarterback feature similar to this wide receiver piece in the future so stayed tuned! However, history has proven that the majority of QB’s that have succeeded in the NFL have been 1st round draft picks. Looking at wide receivers, generally a first or second day draft pick has dominated the fantasy football landscape.
In fact, if we were choosing a number, the average draft capital for top 12 wide receivers is pick number 71. Coming in the beginning of round 3. What we can draw from this conclusion, the majority of players that have been dominant fantasy assets have been first or second day picks. In my model I took a look at every player drafted who hit top 12 over the last seven seasons. For players that went undrafted, I picked number 257 to represent their capital.
The majority of players in any given year end up being in the first or second round. in 2020, 8 players were from rounds 1-2, four were from rounds three or later. More often than not guys with high draft capital are producing the highest fantasy scores in any given year.
Again, the goal is for our audience to use this info for making the best decisions possible in a startup draft. If I’m deciding between two young players from the 2020 draft like Lavishka Shenault (2nd round) and Gabriel Davis (4th round). Take away the height, the film, the passing volume or the QB and I am still going Shenault over Davis based purely on draft capital. It is a solid indicator which WR’s will end up jumping into the top 12.
Games
The first important stat of any elite player is games played. The fact of the matter is that injuries are the great unknown. We can label guys as injury prone or look at dudes that have never missed a game and we have no idea if they are going to get injured or not. There has been plenty of research on this subject so I won’t go into it here. But the fact is that players that hit top 12 in total PPR points every year, play. They miss the injury bug or are so elite they can overcome a game or two to continue to produce. The average for games played of the top 12 receivers over the past seven years is 15.73. The majority of players that hit the top 12 play all 16 games, 83% of the top 12 have played all 16 games.
The players that produce, play. I wish there was a better indicator to understand injury history but if any player spooks me over their injury history, looking at you OBJ, then I would temper expectations for their final production. Injuries are the great equalizer in fantasy football. They are are big reasons why sharks are unable to regularly destroy newbies. Injuries can bring a well executed plan down with the ship and there it is extremely difficult to predict who will get injured in any given year. Michael Thomas did not miss a game for 3 straight years and was injured for the majority of the season in 2020. I say this as a devout Michael Thomas owner who ruined many of my teams last year but also because it is difficult to draft based on who may get injured.
Year in the League
With all of the rookie hype that takes play between May and August I wanted to understand who were the receivers that resided at the top? Were they young? In their prime? Played for a few years. Were they rookies? When I first started playing fantasy football there was the optimistic third year receiver profile that dominated fantasy discussions. Is this still true? Do third year receivers tend to “break-out” in the NFL.
Well, it turns out that the majority of the top scoring leaders are players that are in their fifth year. It takes receivers a while to adjust to the NFL. For most of their lives, top notch receivers were bigger, faster, stronger, than their competition. But when they enter the NFL, there is an adjustment to zone defenses, twitch corners, and lighting quick linebackers. Receivers need to learn their craft. Learn how defenses are playing them. Learn leverage against the secondary, setting up corners with double moves, and how to find space in zone coverage.
In redraft leagues, I wouldn’t even bother with rookies. With all of the hype for the 2020 class, and it may be the best class of all time, top to bottom, there were still only 3 rookies that landed in the top 24 (Jefferson, Claypool, and Lamb). If I’m planning on drafting Ja’Marr Chase as a WR2 great, but don’t expect greatness from rookies. It is an outlier.
In seven years, only 3 rookies have cracked the top 12. Out of 84 data points only three have been rookies (4 percent). Again, life is about expectations and playing the odds. In dynasty drafts I draft rookies hoping they will turn into Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, or Allen Robinson, but understand that even in the year 2020 when receivers are fast, physical freaks, and passing is at an all time high, it still takes time for receivers to ascend to the top of the fantasy world. Like green bananas, draft these guys and let them grow into greatness. By year 4 or 5 they start to hit their stride and the great ones rarely relent.
Age
Playing Dynasty Fantasy Football would get the vast majority of us sent to HR as ageists. We will take an unproven young guy over a solid old guy every day of the week. I understand the running back position but when it comes to wide receivers, the older the berry, the sweeter the juice. Young guys are fun and looking at the 2020 class as well as the 2021 class there is a ton of talent all over the league. However, it was still the wily vets that came out on top in 2020 with the average age being 26.78, between 26 and 27 years old. This seems to be the sweet spot in all seven years as well.
The average age of wide receivers that hit the top 12 is 26.97. In 2014 the age was 25.67 (the youngest range) and in 2015 the average range was 30 years old. A few “old” guys slipped into the mix in 2015 and ruined our youth over experience enthusiasm. For Dynasty, we tend to look at 3-5 year runs. In the NFL, most things change with 3-5 years. The names that dominate the fantasy landscape (especially running backs) disappear and are never heard from again.
Even receivers, who hit their stride later and don’t relent for 4-6 years, begin to fade and new names start to appear. One thing is clear. The sweet spot for wide receivers is between years 4-6 in the league and between 25-27 years old. Don’t forget about guys heading into year’s 6 and 7. Guys like Amari Cooper, Robert Woods, and Tyler Locket may surprise a few folks given their ADP and hit the elusive top 12 position.
Targets/Target Share
In fantasy football the old cliche is volume is key. I’ve added to that saying that volume and value is key. Find guys that are being disrespected and that have great target share and fantasy success will follow. There are many guys that are often drafted in the middle to late rounds that are good players on bad teams. The last two years who wanted to watch Mitch Trubisky, Chase Daniel, and Nick Foles? I’m a Bears fan it is was tough to get motivated to watch Bears offensive football. Allen Robinson however, continuously overproduced his ADP in 2019 and 2020. One of the big reasons was target share.
Sure the Bears were a bad offensive football team but Allen Robinson was the man and he ended up WR8 in 2018 and WR9 in 2020. A big reason. Target share. Sure overall target are a main factor, when looking at the data it isn’t only target hogs that are hitting the top 12, it is target share monsters. Guys who get a majority of their teams pass attempts produce. In 2018, ARob had 151 targets on a 27 percent target share. Not only was he targeted often for all of the NFL(3rd most WR) but he was targeted on more than every fourth throw by the Bears. Find guys that hog the ball on their teams and they will pay off.
The average amount of targets for the top 12 over the past seven years was 147 targets with the top 12 players averaging 25 percent of target share. I want guys that are seeing a quarter of all their teams throws. This is why three way situations can become messy. Yes Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb could become top 12 players but with Michael Gallup still around it will be difficult. Same with the Bengals. Having three great receiving options is awesome for my real NFL team and for my team’s QB but when it comes to elite fantasy football wide receivers, I want guys who own their teams attempts. Guys like Davante Adams, Stefon Diggs, and DeAndre Hopkins all had 28% of their teams targets last year, this is a major factor for why those guys came in 1st, 3rd, and 4th respectively in 2020. I want guys getting targets and being ball hogs.
Quarterback
Another common theme of elite WR’s is their attachment to elite QB’s. Every year there are a few situations where middling QB’s help produce WR1’s. But more often than not, WR1’s are attached to elite QB’s. Elite can be different for everyone but going through the list I defined elite as all pro QB’s (1st or 2nd team) at any time in their life. If a QB was at any point an all-pro, I designated that QB as elite. For example in 2020, Aaron Rodgers supported THE number one fantasy wide receiver in DaVante Adams. I believe any sane person would understand that Rodgers is elite but in order to justify an “elite QB tag” in order to support this research I stated that any QB that was an all-pro was elite.
We could quibble all day on a justification of an elite QB, it is mostly subjective. However in order to determine elite I will put it this way. Josh Allen in, Kirk Cousins out. Kirk Cousins actually supported 2 top 12 receivers in Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen. In doing this research I will go so far as to say that Kirk Cousins is the most interesting fantasy QB because he not only continues to be a top 12 fantasy asset almost every year, but he also supports top level fantasy assets.
I do not consider Kirk Cousins elite however. Josh Allen has had one good year, the other two he sunk his receivers more than supported them. But in 2020, Josh Allen was able to support Stefon Diggs as a top 12 receiver. Josh Allen was named an all pro in 2020, Kirk Cousins was not. This also means that guys like Matt Ryan, Carson Wentz, and Carson Palmer are all designated as elite. That is how I looked at every top QB attached to a top fantasy wide receiver and as it turns out there was 61% (50/81) elite QB’s that supported elite receivers.
Not as much as I expected. Seemingly every year there is a Kirk Cousins, Derek Carr, Jared Goff, or Mitch Trubisky that supports a top 12 wide receiver or two! This is intriguing because it is tied to target volume. Even average QB’s that play all year and find their favorite receiver can support elite wide receivers in fantasy football. Remember this when thinking about guys like Brandin Cooks (Tyrod Taylor), Terry McClaurin (Ryan Fitzpatrick), and Kenny Golladay (Daniel Jones).
Still if I’m playing the odds most guys will be attached to a franchise QB. in 2020 the top three wide receivers were Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, and Stefon Diggs. Their QB’s? Aaron Rodgers, Patrick Mahomes, and Josh Allen. Great quarterbacks make great wide receivers and vice versa. Look for guys that will be attached to greatness and my own greatness will follow.
Turnover
The last category in this article was a question I ask every year; how often did top 12 wide receivers become top 12 wide receivers again the next year? I already stated how Antonio Brown is king and he will never be dethroned but how often do receivers fall in and out of the top 12? Turns out it is more often than I thought.
Again, injuries are usually to blame but when drafting, understand this year is not last year. Injuries happen. Not just to wide receivers but to all players. Offensive line play can decline, a quarterback may get injured, a fellow wide receiver may get injured bringing double coverage to players. There are a myriad of reasons why players don’t have the same success from one year to another. But the fact remains it is a low percentage of the same players who were top wide receivers are year ago will be again this upcoming year.
Over the past seven years, on average only 36.9 percent (roughly a third) of players that were top 12 the year before are top 12 the next year. In 2020, that number was only 16.67 percent or two out of twelve. DeAndre Hopkins and Allen Robinson were the only players that hit top 12 in 2019 and 2020, every other player was new to the list. This isn’t a new phenomenon.
In 2019 the same applied, only two receivers from 2018 were top 12 in 2019. It is a hard pill to swallow but quite a few of the players we will draft high will not become top fantasy wide receivers this year. In other words, they will not maintain their draft capital and can sink your squad. It is okay to look at last year and say Tyreek Hill is too much of a force, he can’t be stopped, maybe this is true. But I said the same thing after 2018 and Reek was not a top 12 fantasy asset in 2019. It happens every year. Go in with eyes wide open and don’t over spend either in snake drafts or auctions. Maintain value, pick players that hit the top 12 profile and go for new blood because history proves new blood.
To Conclude
My magnum opus of fantasy research has been concluded. This project has been fun, intriguing, and eye opening. I have gained a world of knowledge on what to look for and now I’m sharing that with you good people. To recap, when looking for a top 12 fantasy wide receivers you are looking for players that are:
Year in the League: 5th Year
Age: 26
Height: 6-1
Weight: 208 pounds
Draft Capital: Pick 73
Targets: 143
Target Share: 25 Percent
Elite QB: 61 Percent
Turnover: 33 Percent (4/12)
Analysis would be nothing if you weren’t able to use this profile to project forward and a few guys that hit every one of these requirements are listed below. These are players to keep an eye on in 2021 and beyond. Play the odds, look for guys that look similar to those that have produced in the past and find your way to fantasy glory by way of elite level, athletic freaky, wide receivers.
Players to watch
Amari Cooper
Chris Godwin
JuJu-Smith Schuster
Terry Mclaurin
AJ Brown
Cooper Kupp
Mike Evans
Calvin Ridley
The top 12 wide receivers from a year ago (2020) in order of fantasy points scored
- Davante Adams
- Tyreek Hill
- Stefon Diggs
- DeAndre Hopkins
- Calvin Ridley
- Justin Jefferson
- DK Metcalf
- Tyler Lockett
- Allen Robinson
- Adam Thielen
- Mike Evans
- Robert Woods
If I were to guess at this time the four from last year, now this may only be two or could be as high as six, but on average only four from the year before retain top 12 status, for one reason or another my four are:
- Stefon Diggs
- Calvin Ridley
- DeAndre Hopkins
- Allen Robinson
I hope this helps you picture exactly what an elite wide receiver looks for. These are guys that average nearly 20 points per game. You want big guys, in their prime, attached to elite QB’s that look for them early and often. This should help shed a light on the abundance of talent at the wide receiver position and how to separate guys in the same tiers. When there is a choir between two guys in the same tier, I can use this as a guide. And you should too dear readers!Play the odds, dominate, take home the ship! Good luck good people!
