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Drafting WRs Based on Years of Experience
(page 2)

In this section, I will look at the group of wide receivers which rank between 25 and 48. The following chart is the same as the one presented previously but only applies to the 25 to 48 group:

As expected, the wide receivers that improve the most over their previous year’s performance are second and third year wide receivers but unfortunately they are also the ones that the average manager expects to improve the most. For this group of wide receivers, all numbers seem pretty even other than for fifth and ninth year wide receivers where there seems to be a decent discount. In 2008, this group includes wide receivers such as Bernard Berrian, Lee Evans, Jerricho Cotchery, Reggie Williams and Patrick Crayton. The advantage these wide receivers have over the rest is relatively small and the sample size is pretty small so I would not put too much into this. However, here is a chart if you once again group these by even and odd years:

The difference is not as big as it was for the top 24 receivers but it is still a difference of 8.5 points for wide receivers that have on average about 160 points for about 5%. Putting both of these together is starting to make me thing that this is more than a simple coincidence. The final group of wide receivers I will look at includes those that were not amongst the top 48 in average draft position. It is especially useful when looking for sleeper picks in the last few rounds of your draft. Here is the same table once again for this group of receivers:

Although once again these are not very big samples they still include for the most part over 20 players and you can see that there seems to be an interesting discount for third and fourth year wide receivers. The most interesting trend is if we group wide receivers in their first four seasons and compare them with those who have been in the NFL for five years or more. We obtain the following table:

You can notice that the average manager expects younger receivers to have 10 more points than older ones but in fact they average 26 more points. This suggests that if you are drafting a wide receiver in late rounds of your draft, you are much more likely to find a discount by drafting a wide receiver in his second to fourth seasons in the NFL as opposed to a more experienced wide receiver. This may seem obvious but this analysis not only shows that younger receivers improve more but also that the average manager does not account enough for that improvement.

As I had shown in the breakout wide receivers articles, second year wide receivers are very good breakout candidates but unfortunately this is very well reflected in the average draft position. I still suggest targeting wide receivers that you like no matter their years of experience in the NFL. To summarize, top 24 wide receivers with an even number of years of experience are generally overrated based on this analysis. Here is the list of top 24 receivers for the 2008 season iwho are in their first 11 NFL seasons and grouped by even and odd years of experience:

Even: R. Wayne, B. Edwards, A. Johnson, T. Houshmandzadeh, Ch. Johnson, S. Smith, T. Holt, A. Boldin, Ca. Johnson, D. Bowe and R. White.
Odd: R. Moss, L. Fitzgerald, M. Colston, W. Welker, P. Burress, B. Marshall, S. Holmes, R. Williams, G. Jennings, L. Evans and J. Cotchery.

As of August 10, our 2008 Wide Receiver Projections project the odd year receivers to have nine points less than the even year receivers and they are expected to have only seven less according to average draft position. This means that if statistics from the past eight seasons hold true, our projections overvalue even year receivers by about 30 points while the average manager overvalues them by 28. Some adjustments will likely be make within the next few days based on this analysis. The final  reminder is that when drafting receivers late in your draft (outside the top 48) you should draft receivers in their second to fourth NFL seasons since they are on average close to 15% better than older receivers. This means that this year you should target guys like Robert Meachem, Mark Clayton, James Jones and Laurent Robinson late in your draft.

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