Wide Receiver Stats That Matter for Fantasy Football

As we are pushing into July and further downhill towards the 2023 fantasy season, we are going to extend our top-down approach that has already examined leaguewide production at each position group and team output.

The goal is that when it is time for your drafts, we have covered all corners of the fantasy earth from a team, player, position, and game theory stance to accurately calibrate our draft strategy.

This week, we are going to dive into the stats that matter the most for weekly fantasy output and which of those stats have the largest rollover year over year.

Highlights:

• Yardage gained has a lot more variance per opportunity (targets or receptions) for wide receivers than a rushing attempt does for the running back position since not all targets are created as equally as handoffs are.
• Targets per game is the most stable metric for wideouts. As a byproduct of getting those looks in the passing game, receptions and yardage per game then round out the top three.
• Receiving touchdowns per game is the lowest correlated per-game metric we have while receiving scores per season is the lowest per-season counting stat. Paired with both is the touchdown rate per target, which is the lowest of all of the rate metrics.

Stats that Matter:

• Quarterbacks
• Running Backs
• Tight Ends

Wide Receiver Fantasy Related Articles:

• Wide Receiver Tiers
• Wide Receiver Rankings
• Wide Receiver Trends
• Red Zone Points vs Expectations: Wide Receiver

Highest Correlation to Weekly Fantasy Points Scored For Running Backs:

For our game sample, we are looking at individual games played since the 2012 season.

Getting into the teeth of things, the statistic that carries the most weekly weight in correlation to per-game scoring is receiving yards in both PPR and half-PPR formats.

Yardage gained has a lot more variance per opportunity (targets or receptions) for wide receivers than a rushing attempt does for the running back position since not all targets are created as equally as handoffs are.

Yardage results through the air are tethered to a depth of target, yards created after the catch and then the volume of those targets to generate the yardage totals that go into the most important component of receiver scoring.

After yardage, the formats you are playing in then start to take shape.

Receptions are inherently more valuable in full-PPR formats while touchdowns become more important in leagues that do not fully reward receptions.  These things are largely known, but it is still good to have data to support those thoughts.

If you recall from our running back post from yesterday, touchdowns carried more importance than they do here for wide receivers.

That is valuable through a DFS lens when forced to split hairs between a high-salary running back versus a wide receiver since the running back has more reliance on touchdown production in achieving his ceiling.

This is also a strong factor in why wide receiver scoring has been more stable overall than running back scoring since touchdown production carries so much variance.

In PPR formats, both receptions and targets are a better indicator for fantasy points than touchdowns are, while touchdowns and target opportunities are more tightly packed outside of those formats.

If you are still in an old-fashioned league that does score receptions at all, you can extrapolate these gaps even further.

This is not a revelation to many, but it is a great context when combining both elements into the player selection for what you are looking for on your rosters.

This is where you shuffle up your tiers depending on the archetypes of players and your formats. We have already done that since I focus on how players score points in fantasy for the tiers.

Players such as Diontae Johnson, Chris Godwin, and arguably even DeAndre Hopkins now are wideouts stacking targets and receptions over touchdowns. Sure, you can run into a touchdown spike for any of those players in a given season, but they are going to inherently carry more base value in PPR formats.

Players such as Mike Willians, Mike Evans, and Gabe Davis are among the archetypes of wideouts that carry more weight in leagues that do not reward receptions or have a heavy target influence.

With what goes into weekly output the most, the next step is uncovering which metrics have the highest rollover year-over-year.

Year-Over-Year Correlation Categories and R-Squared Scoring for Wide Receivers:

Right away we are seeing something similar to what we saw in the running back post and that is per-game metrics are so much stronger than seasonal production.

As a collective fantasy group, we are largely good at using the relevance of per-game output since so many players miss time during an NFL season, but this reinforces the use of those per-game statistics over saying something such as “Player X was the WR15 last season”.

The top five statistics with the highest yearly rollover are per-game stats, with the major counting stats based on opportunities given logging the highest significance.

Take advantage here by looking at players who missed time last season but are being discounted from their weekly production. If you go down to the bottom of stable metrics, you see that games played are highly volatile, so we can take advantage of players that are being partially dinged for missing time or inversely wideouts that are being elevated for the full-season production but played the entire season with not-so-great per-game output.

Targets per game lead things off as the most stable metric for wideouts, and as a byproduct of getting those looks in the passing game, receptions and yardage per game then follow suit followed by fantasy points scored (which inherently has both of the yardage and receptions baked in).

Opportunity is the name of the game in fantasy football.

Of course, things do not always work out in an individual season such as what happened to Diontae Johnson last year, but you want to lean into that volume because not only can variance swing in the opposite direction, but that volume is the most static element we have at the position. You can’t get catches, yards, or touchdowns without first earning a target.

This not only makes players such as Johnson, DeAndre Hopkins, Chris Godwin, or Marquise Brown appear to be undervalued players based on current draft costs, but also more risk than assumed on players such as Tee Higgins, Terry McLaurin, Drake London, or Brandon Aiyuk, all players outside of the top-30 wideouts in targets per game, but all carry top-30 ADPs.

McLaurin made up ground when accounting for what he did for his targets and logged high yardage per game, which carries weight in year-over-year stability. The same is true for someone such as Jaylen Waddle.  Hopkins, Mike Evans, Mike Williams, and Godwin again are players that were top-20 in yardage per game but discounted in cost this season.

Touchdown production has proven to be consistently inconsistent throughout this series and that holds here with the pass catchers.

Receiving touchdowns per game is the lowest correlated per-game metric we have while receiving scores per season is the lowest per-season counting stat. Paired with both is the touchdown rate per target, which is the lowest of all of the rate metrics.

We took a good look at which wideouts are due for touchdown regression from both directions in the red zone.

Outside of per-game statistics carrying more water than season-long stats, the next thing that stands out is that counting stats dwarf rate stats. This is something we talked about with the running backs yesterday but be careful not to overweight highly efficient or inefficient seasons as something static. As someone who spends a ton of time in the weeds with player data, this is something I often fall victim to.

While rate stats are among the least stable metrics to latch onto carrying over into the following season, catch rate, yards per catch, yards per target, yards after the catch, and touchdown rate are so lowly correlated that you can argue being better off placing any weight into them for the upcoming season based on last season.

There are a few rate statistics that are not terrible, even if lower on the pecking order and behind baseline counting stats.

Yards per team pass attempt and team target share are above the 40% thresholds, while the target rate per route run is above 30%. Those all hold some water in the rollover to the following season.

If you have followed my work over the years, then you already know that yards per team pass attempt is one of my favorite statistics. Yards per team pass attempt has a higher correlation to N+ scoring output than actual target opportunity, despite targets per game being the stickiest stat year-over-year for wideouts.

This is the area where you can build up your case for those wideouts dinged by counting targets since that volume was capped through their offensive climates rather than those players not being productive.

Wideouts such as McLaurin, London, and Aiyuk all shine in this area. If we are wrong in the projection of passing volume for these teams as a whole and any or each end up higher, this is where these players can spike.

We do see this reflected in their draft costs in some cases, so finding that marriage is the sweet spot. Bang for your buck, the player that checks off the most boxes paired with the favorable draft cost is McLaurin.

Takeaways:

• Focus on per-game metrics over season-long metrics in yearly stability.
• Focus on counting stats over rate statistics for year yearly stability.
• Opportunity is the name of the game. Targets per game are the most stable metric year-over-year.
• Touchdowns are less important for wide receiver scoring than for running backs.
• Receiving yardage has the highest correlation to weekly scoring in all formats for wide receivers.
• If looking at rate stats, yards per team pass attempt and team target share are the stickiest metrics.

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