2009 Breakout Wide Receivers
(page 2)
Second year WRs:
As shown in the first part
of this article, although second year wide receivers are not as
hyped as third year wide receivers on fantasy draft day, they do
have a better chance of having a breakout season. To increase the
36.6% chance from the first part of the article, I added two more
criteria which are the following:
-less than 7 TDs (instead of 9)
-less than 0.12 TD per reception
Those two criteria eliminate
20 players of the 82 while only losing three breakout candidates and
they make the percentage jump from 36.6% to 43.5%. It is also
interesting to note that only three of the 62 wide receivers had
their performance decrease by 25% or more compared to the 27 that
improved by 25% or more so drafting players that meet these criteria
is a low risk and high reward strategy.
There are five wide
receivers that meet those requirements for the 2008 season and they
are: Davone Bess, DeSean Jackson, Donnie Avery, Harry Douglas and
Jordy Nelson. Based on past statistics two of these should improve
their performance by at least 25% and reach at least 150 fantasy
points. At this point in the off-season it is too early to tell
which of these if any have a favorable situation for next season but
they are five players to keep in mind for your drafts.
Third year WRs:
Third year wide receivers
are in demand on draft day and although there are many of them that
breakout, many of them do not and it is difficult to predict which
ones will. In order to increase the 29.6% chance from the first part
of the article, I added two more criteria:
-less than 17 YPC
-less than 0.15 TD per reception
These two criteria will
eliminate the players that performed well the previous year because
of catching a few long balls and will also eliminate those that had
few receptions but a lot of touchdowns. This now leaves us with 29
out of 86 receivers that breakout in their third year for a 33.7%
success rate. Unfortunately it was not as easy as for second year
wide receivers to improve the breakout percentage but 33.7% is still
pretty good especially since the sample size is much larger than for
second year receivers. Out of the 86 wide receivers remaining, there
are 29 that increased by 25% or more but still 13 that saw their
production drop by 25% or more. This is still pretty good and does
show that some third year wide receivers could be worth drafting
early and have breakout seasons but there is still a pretty high
risk in drafting them.
In 2008 the third year
receivers that respect the criteria are: Anthony Gonzalez, Chansi
Stuckey, Jason Hill, Steve Smith (Giants) and Ted Ginn. Anthony
Gonzalez is the most likely to breakout but he will also be highly
valued by other managers but players like Chansi Stuckey and Steve
Smith could be great sleepers.
Fourth year WRs:
Fourth year receivers are
generally not thought of as great breakout candidates but there are
a surprising number that excel, the latest example is Lance Moore in
New Orleans who had a surprising year in 2007. We were unfortunately
only able to find one criterion that improved our success rate for
these receivers:
-less than 15 YPC
29 of the 77 fourth year
receivers that respected these criteria had a breakout season for
37.7%. Last season, all five players that had at least 300 receiving
yards improved their fantasy points total over the previous year and
three of them had at least 13 fantasy points per game.
For the 2008 season, there
are six candidates who are fourth year wide receivers: Devin Hester,
Domenik Hixon, Greg Camarillo, Hank Baskett, Jason Avant and
Santonio Holmes. You have to be careful with players like Baskett
and Avant because they are unlikely to reach 300 receiving yards but
the other four could show a nice improvement over their 2007 season.
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