As we are preparing for our 2023 fantasy drafts, we are going to dive into the recent history of average draft positions to pull away any ongoing trends or pitfalls.
Every year, we have nearly eight full months to prepare for the draft, but just how good are we at setting the market for the season?
Today we are looking at wide receivers. We have already covered the quarterbacks, running backs, and tight end positions.
Wide Receiver Fantasy Related Articles:
- Wide Receiver Tiers
- Wide Receiver Rankings
- Wide Receiver Trends
- Red Zone Points vs Expectations: Wide Receiver
- Stats That Matter: Wide Receiver
Highlights:
- 37 different wide receivers here have averaged 20 or more PPR points per game. 29 of them were selected as the WR15 or higher, 26 as top-10 picks at the position, 20 as top-five picks, 16 as top-three picks, and eight of them were the first wide receiver selected in drafts.
- In the past two years, the only receiver selected as a WR1 that outright flopped and averaged single-digit points was Allen Robinson in 2021. 13-of-24 WR1 picks have ended those seasons as WR1 players while 11 of the top-20 scorers overall in those seasons were selected as WR1 options.
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RB ADP vs. Points Scored since 2010:
If you have already checked out the quarterback and running back posts in this series this week, the correlation between average draft position and points per game for receiver is a notch below the running back position.
One of the things you probably did notice is that a lot of the elite seasons are often attached to front-end draft capital, similar to running backs.
37 different wide receivers here have averaged 20 or more PPR points per game. 29 of them were selected as the WR15 or higher, 26 as top-10 picks at the position, 20 as top-five picks, 16 as top-three picks, and eight of them were the first wide receiver selected in drafts.
There have been 48 seasons here in which a wide receiver posted over 300 PPR points.
35 of those came from wideouts with a WR1 ADP while just five have come from wideouts with ADP outside of the top 24.
We have talked about the top picks at every position so far, and the wide receiver has the highest actual true hit rate for WR1 options ending up leading their position in points per game despite the overall lowered correlation of the position itself.
The element that hurts the overall correlation for wide receivers is that there has just been a ton more variance with how we have done in recent seasons.
If you go back to the quarterback and running back posts, you can see that we have homed in our accuracy at those positions. That is not the case with wide receivers.
I believe that has to do with the way the game has changed and gamers understanding the proper archetypes to select for those positions.
Dual-threat quarterbacks are dominating the quarterback position, while the reduced number of running back touches and usage of the position in the passing game have reduced the field of three-down running backs.
Here is that top-down correlation at wide receiver broken down into dissected buckets…
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Top-48 WR in ADP and Correlation to PPR Points per Game Since 2010:
| Year | Top-48 | Top-36 | Top-24 | Top-12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 0.4757 | 0.5226 | 0.5936 | 0.5424 |
| 2021 | 0.1901 | 0.1418 | 0.0368 | 0.4784 |
| 2020 | 0.2704 | 0.2006 | 0.0583 | 0.1635 |
| 2019 | 0.3534 | 0.2842 | 0.0768 | 0.1866 |
| 2018 | 0.5301 | 0.3121 | 0.6353 | 0.2481 |
| 2017 | 0.3021 | 0.3061 | 0.1098 | 0.3961 |
| 2016 | 0.2181 | 0.2243 | 0.1513 | 0.1072 |
| 2015 | 0.2418 | 0.1637 | 0.0685 | 0.1622 |
| 2014 | 0.2627 | 0.1621 | 0.2971 | 0.2441 |
| 2013 | 0.3085 | 0.2644 | 0.2499 | 0.5713 |
| 2012 | 0.2799 | 0.2651 | 0.1552 | 0.1198 |
| 2011 | 0.3466 | 0.3044 | 0.1796 | 0.3891 |
| 2010 | 0.3275 | 0.3168 | 0.1925 | 0.3687 |
Breaking things down this way, you can easily spotlight how volatile the position has been over the years compared to the market.
We are coming off a strong season across the board that immediately rebounded from a poor 2021 season overall.
The overall correlation between ADP and points per game had their strongest season since 2018 and the second-best mark in the sample.
It followed the worst mark in the sample, so the question to ask is whether or not that was just a dead cat bounce of regression to the mean or the start of a potential new trend.
Not only did the top-48 wideouts have a collectively strong correlation, but reducing the field at each tier was the best we have seen for top-36 and top-24 players while top-12 wideouts had their strongest season relative to ADP since 2013.
While it has been a rollercoaster ride top-down at the position, we gamers have had two of the best three seasons setting the top of the market at the position in the entire sample.
I also highlighted how the elite WR1 options were elevated through the current defensive trends this past season, something that could be sticky moving forward while NFL offenses calibrate a counterpunch.
With offenses becoming more concentrated by default of the environment of the league last season, front-end wide receivers for fantasy accounted for more of the wide receiver production than in recent years.
In the past two years, the only receiver selected as a WR1 that outright flopped and averaged single-digit points was Allen Robinson in 2021. 13-of-24 WR1 picks have ended those seasons as WR1 players while 11 of the top-20 scorers overall in those seasons were selected as WR1 options.
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Wide Receivers vs. Running Backs:
| POS | Match+ | Top 12% | Top 6% | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WR1 | 50.6% | 50.6% | 33.9% | 16.4 |
| RB1 | 54.4% | 54.5% | 28.5% | 16.2 |
| WR2 | 54.5% | 25.6% | 10.3% | 13.7 |
| RB2 | 49.4% | 19.9% | 8.3% | 12.1 |
| WR3 | 40.4% | 13.5% | 3.9% | 11.4 |
| RB3 | 56.4% | 11.6% | 5.1% | 9.7 |
| WR4 | 44.2% | 5.1% | 1.3% | 9.9 |
| RB4 | 59.6% | 8.3% | 1.9% | 8.1 |
One of the biggest dilemmas drafters have is when to target wide receivers and running backs in relation to each other.
Your draft room will dictate how aggressively each of the primary positions are, but from an arbitrary stance, we can go under the hood to provide some light on to handle things as they shake out in drafts.
Here, we are looking at the subset of players drafted at their position in terms of hit rate for the percentage of players to match their draft cost within their position and finish as front-end scorers at their position.
RB1 selections have edged top wideouts in justifying their draft cost and just barely in terms of producing front-end scoring seasons at their position.
When you pair those edges with the support that an elite running back usually carries more positional leverage than an elite wide receiver, there is a strong reason why top running backs should be valued highly, even if a finite resource for fantasy football.
Taking running backs early still works in fantasy football (and did again a year ago) because it targets the part of the draft where the gap between running backs and wide receivers is the tightest.
When we get into the WR2 level of required draft capital, WR2 (WRs 13-24) options are the most stable buys in matching their cost out of any subset of wide receivers.
Compared to their RB2 peers, they are just better in every department. This aligns with the “dead zone” we discussed yesterday in the running back post.
This is where you should be looking at really pushing wide receivers over running backs.
If you are an early-round running back drafter, you will be guided here naturally.
But even if you started out WR-heavy, you want to stay on that path at this junction of drafts even if you are feeling the need to roster fill or feeling the pressure that running backs are drying up.
They aren’t drying up. They already have.
When you get to the WR3 and WR4 sections of the draft versus their running back counterparts, we start to see the running backs begin to match their positional ADP more than the wideouts, but when you factor in that baseline running back scoring is arguably the least useful thing you can have in your fantasy lineup, that safety net loses a bit of its appeal.
At the WR3 level, there is more fragility in terms of meeting cost within the position, but those WR3 still produce more points scored and hit a higher rate of top-12 seasons (although the RB3 group has hit a higher ceiling rate of top-six scoring campaigns).
When reaching the WR4 level of drafts, things start to pivot back more to running backs in a number of hit rate areas despite lagging in overall points per game and games missed.
This entire section really puts a bow on how I most often approach drafting, although there is no shortage of ways to win a league.
Most often, I am trying to accrue as many front-end running backs as possible and then start spamming the wide receiver position until we get into the WR4 range of drafts.
If I do not select a front-end running back early and open up with wide receivers, I do not panic and start taking running backs in that secondary portion of the draft.
Takeaways:
- We have been far worse at setting the market for wide receivers than running backs, but 2022 was the strongest collective season in forecasting the position through draft position.
- Over the past two years, we have been particularly sharp at setting the top of the market at wide receiver, where the crux of elite scoring seasons come from at the position.
- Draft WR2 options over RB2 options.
- WR3s are more volatile than RB3s but offer higher scoring ceilings and more baseline points per game.
- WR4 options still provide more scoring probability than RB4 options but lose in stability and spike-season hit rates.
This is a FREE PREVIEW of the Sharp Fantasy Football Draft Kit, one of the best resources to get you prepared for the 2023 fantasy football season.