Ultimate Fantasy Football Strategy - Rookie Wide Receivers

Rookie Wide Receivers
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Another interesting thing I noticed by looking at rookie wide receivers is that wide receivers drafted early in the NFL Draft performed worse compared to their average draft position than the ones drafted later in the draft. Since 2000, there have been 15 wide receivers drafted in the first 12 picks of the first round and only two of them performed better than their average draft position in fantasy drafts. The following table compares rookie wide receivers drafted in the first 12 picks of the NFL Draft with non-rookie wide receivers who ranked between 20th and 57th in average draft position:

	Average Draft Position	Average Rank	% Improve
Rookies (top 12 in NFL Draft)	38.1	61.3	13.3%
Non-Rookies (20 to 57)	38.1	51.6	37.7%

Even though the sample for rookies is quite small, there is an obvious difference between these two groups of players. This seems to indicate that rookie wide receivers drafted in the first 12 picks of the NFL Draft are generally way overrated by fantasy managers. My explanation for this would be that wide receiver is a very complicated position and those who adjust the quickest to the NFL game are not necessarily the most talented. Moreover, the statistics of a wide receiver often depend on the team they play for. Wide receivers drafted in the top 12 picks are usually on bad teams which is something that fantasy managers may not take into account as much as they should. In the past few years, Calvin Johnson, Braylon Edwards, Reggie Williams, Troy Williamson, Ted Ginn and Mike Williams are all receivers who disappointed in their rookie season.

Now that I have shown that rookie wide receivers drafted in the top 12 picks are overvalued, let’s see how the statistics change for the group of wide receivers that were not drafted in the top 12. The following table compares the rookie wide receivers not drafted in the first 12 picks of the NFL Draft with non-rookie wide receivers that ranked between 53rd and 85th in average draft position:

	Average Draft Position	Average Rank	% Improve
Rookies (non top 12 in NFL Draft)	69.2	75.1	46.9%
Non-Rookies (53 to 85)	69.4	69.7	54.5%

As you can see, this data is once again in favor of non-rookie wide receivers. The difference is not enormous but it’s still more than 7%. Moreover, I have shown in a previous article that you should generally target wide receivers that are entering their second, third or fourth NFL season. This means that if we were to only focus on that group of wide receivers, the difference between rookies and non-rookies would be even bigger.

The data presented in this article makes it quite evident that you should stay away from all rookie wide receivers especially ones drafted in the top 12 picks. You may want to consider drafting rookie wide receivers later in your draft but they are still a risk. On draft day, I would still suggest keeping them in mind because average draft position is not perfect and it is possible that a rookie wide receiver will drop one or two rounds lower than expected. However, unless you are very confident, I would not draft any rookie receivers before their average draft position and I would focus on second, third and fourth year receivers as shown in my previous article.