Good wide receivers available deep in drafts

When we look back on the 2020 NFL season and how fantasy football played out, it is going to be remembered as the year of the quality wide receiver.

Fantasy Football managers are so used to drafting running backs early and often that there are true quality wide receivers available in even in the fifth and sixth rounds.

Players such as Courtland Sutton and Stefon Diggs, who could be the top pass catchers on their respective teams are going at cheap prices.

However, after that sixth-round area, wide receiver does a reverse and is no longer deep.

So many teams are playing three and fourwide receiver sets and no longer targeting their top wide receiver on 25% or more of their passing plays.

This means that there are theoretically more wide receivers who have some semblance of fantasy value, but there are far fewer true fantasy starters every single week.

Even if you don’t really buy the concept of modified “Zero RB” and want to start plugging away your draft with multiple running backs (which we actually think is fine in some situations; for example, if you can start Miles Sanders, Kenyan Drake and James Conner that is a reasonable starting point) it is so vital to realize that WR is not a deep position. If you are looking for your WR2 in the eighth round, chances are you’re going to struggle.

By passing up those elite WRs in rounds two to four for the likes of Todd Gurley and Le’Veon Bell, you are making a bet with asymmetric downside.

Best-case scenario, those third-tier running backs grind out seasons where they stay healthy and don’t hurt you on a weekly basis.

The evidence would suggest that not only are you making negative expected value picks by taking running backs in the dead zone of the third/fourth/ fifth rounds, but in 2020 specifically, you aren’t leaving yourself outs to figure out wide receiver production later.

Unlike running backs, we struggle at knowing which week wide receivers are going to do their scoring. It is why we say that we like Mecole Hardman and Will Fuller better in best ball. It’s why we draft nine WRs in best ball.

A big competitive advantage you get from drafting elite WRs is that you are not stuck guessing on who to sit or start. You’re just starting the guys you drafted who all have 25% target shares of their offenses.

It is helpful to know which wide receivers we should be selecting as well.

Of all the fantastic young wide receivers in the NFL (Chris Godwin, A.J. Brown, JuJu Smith-Schuster), D.J. Moore could have five straight years of WR1 seasons in fantasy football.

This is likely the last time that we are going to see Moore go later than the second round in fantasy drafts for quite some time.

The Panthers could have a bounce-back season in 2020.

In addition to hiring Matt Rhule and signing Teddy Bridgewater, the team also brought in the mastermind of LSU’s offensive resurgence in Joe Brady. Likely the biggest change from the 2019 Panthers horizontal passing game is how willing Rhule and Brady will be to throw down the field.