WR Metrics That Matter | Just The Tips

Welcome to the fantasy footballers, just the tips. I'm your host for today, Jason Moore, and we are continuing this mini series to give you a deeper look into some of our research projects. Today, we're looking at wide receiver metrics that actually matter. So click that subscribe button and let's get into it. The wide receiver position is arguably the deepest and the sexiest position in fantasy football. winning your week on a bomb touchdown or the wide receiver who explodes for 150 and 2 while your opponent wallows in their pee stained pants. It's one of the best feelings in this silly game we play. Now, depending on your league format, you likely need three or more quality wide receivers to truly stand out from your league mates. With a ton of leagues like ours, starting three wide receiver or two flex spots, stockpiling high upside wide receivers.

is on everyone's to-do list while they're drafting. So what statistics should we be paying attention to at the wide receiver position? Which ones actually matter for fantasy football? And who are some undervalued receivers to target in 2025, maybe based on this data? So there's a couple ways to approach this, but simply put, we're interested in what matters for wide receiver... fantasy points for your roster, right? Like, isn't that the goal? There are so many advanced receiving statistics out there. It could be really confusing to sort through all of them or even know what half of them are detailing. And this is an important point to start with. Statistics can be descriptive. Here's what's happened, but not necessarily prescriptive. Here's what will happen. This is where we get into all sorts of trouble.

scrolling on social media and we see one statistic posted that we assume means, oh, my wide receiver is about to go off or this wide receiver sucks. So what we did is we looked at the last five years of wide receiver data across the NFL regular season to find out what is sticky. We run what's called an auto regressive model. So we are using the previous year's data to predict next year's data. In other words, what has been prescriptive for fantasy? Generally, sticky stats will have coefficients close to 1.0, since this just means that we predict the statistics to replicate themselves over time. Non-sticky stats will be closer to zero or even sometimes negative, which just means that the previous performance is less impactful when predicting future performance. Keep in mind that the NFL, it does change and evolve over time. The overall value of a wide receiver target?

has actually slightly declined in the last few years. The increase of zone defenses has changed how offenses adjust their game plans, a lot more short area targets, the little dink and dunks. And so I bet you're wondering now, which magical statistic is going to change your fantasy fortunes? Is it the separation score on third downs when the quarterback is out of the pocket? Might be. Is it their next gen speed versus cover four on play action passes? Maybe. Now, I love all the data I can get my hands on, but despite all the advanced tracking data and all the film watching, the fancy analytics, the math don't lie. Here's the best part. Targets. Targets have the highest correlation year to year for fantasy simply by acknowledging how involved a player will be and how much percentage of the passing pie they will get.

Yep, that's it. Good old Target Share. It's a go-to on the show because it not only is explainable for so many listeners, but it is actually predictable. Target Share, also known as Market Share, we use those terms interchangeably. They reveal a team's total passing output, and it gives us a clearer picture of that receiver's importance to the passing game expressed as a percentage. Now, while we can't predict usage. fully, it is important to note that the majority of wide receiver ones need to see upwards of a 20% target share. That's like has to happen. And anyone seeing close to 30% is in a different stratosphere and almost near locked in for a wide receiver one status and fantasy. So yeah, in the midst of all the statistical gymnastics, you could be doing some of the simple counting stats that we see and use every day are the most predictive fantasy points.

receiving yards, receptions, and targets are all among the stickiest and correlate the most to future fantasy production. It's not that hard, folks, but we love adding depth and color when explaining targets on the show. We talk all the time about how targets are earned. They show skill. Now, routes give an additional context because they mix in opportunity or the lack thereof for a wide receiver. Here's another statistic that's important, yards per route run. That gives a well-rounded figure to work with as we're able to simply divide the total receiving yards by the number of routes that they run on the field. It's less prone to outlier skewed stats like yards per target or yards per reception, but it's still not perfect. Yards per route run needs nearly 11 games or 180 plus routes to start to stabilize for wide receivers.

Overall, yards per route run is it's heavily influenced by the number of wide receivers on the field as well. Fewer wide receivers on the field, like in two wide receiver sets, well, the easier it is to gain yardage. Targets per route run is another metric we discuss frequently on the fantasy footballers podcast. It measures how involved a player is, and it weeds out the cardio kings, okay, who might be the best condition players on the field run and nine routes, but they are shots in the dark for fantasy. Targets per route run closely follow target share, but it gives us an even deeper look at the team opportunity. When this player is running a route, how often does their quarterback look their way? Anything sub 20% is not optimal when you compare it to other wide receivers. At its core, targets per route run is a measure of efficiency, tells us the player's ability to either get open or be part of the offensive scheme. Here's a cool stat. Since 2006,

Yes, before many of you were playing fantasy football, 92% of receivers who finished as a wide receiver 2 or better, a top 24 wide receiver, had a targets per route run of at least 20%. So that's a benchmark we look for, 92%. Apart from these metrics, we need statistics like catch rate, yards per reception, for projections sake, but for predictions sake, it honestly doesn't tell us a whole lot about wide receiver 1 status. The catch rate of a wide receiver shows how many of those targets they get converted into receptions, but not necessarily the quality of those targets from their quarterback. Year-to-year fluctuations happen all the time at catch rate, and depending on where they see a target on the field, it greatly changes. Now, touchdowns are very, very important, but touchdowns scored are often not sticky because they vary so much year-to-year. A player might find the end zone a couple of times.

or they might AJ Brown and just keep falling down at the one yard line setting your quarterback up for a tush push, all base solely unlock. Other noisy statistics that we don't care so much about, contested catch rate, drop rate, even though we love making fun of Q's, it doesn't really matter. Passer rating when targeted, that is a fun statistic for a tweet, doesn't really matter. I will still tweet about it, though. We would not call those statistics worthless. but instead they fill in background details rather than being the main part of the painting. So now that you know what matters for receivers, here are a couple undervalued pass-catching situations worth targeting in your drafts. Number one, Josh Downs. His usage last year suggests he's a wide receiver. One, a 26% target share right below Jamar Chase. He was targeted on 30% of his routes.

right below Drake London. He saw 30% of Indy's first read targets right below CD Lamb. He averaged 2.29 yards per route run, right below Malik Neighbors. All four of those wide receivers I just named, they're being drafted appropriately as top 12 wide receivers, except Downs feels like a complete afterthought. The third-year wide receiver, he's a PPR-friendly target. You can draft late in your drafts as you're... teams wide receiver three or four or flex, knowing full well that his percentage of teams passing pie isn't going to drastically change in 2025. His splits with or without Anthony Richardson in his career are exactly the same. Over the last decade, we looked at year two wide receivers who averaged 7.5 plus targets per game, like downs, who were also day one or day two picks like downs. What did they do in year three?

filtering out injured guys. Okay, so healthy year three players who matched all that, 70% of them were top 24 wide receivers in full PPR in their year three. 46% of them were top 12 wide receivers in year three in full PPR. So that's why Josh Downs, I think, is a good wide receiver to pay attention to. Here's another one. Devante Smith. I love Devante Smith. I don't know what it is, but he never gets the respect he deserves. I've always been a huge Devante Smith. Truther, since he came into the league as a Heisman trophy winning first round pick out of Alabama. The fact is this Philly passing attack is so condensed. They basically have two wide receivers targeted like number one fantasy options. His 25% target share was the same as guys like Garrett Wilson or Amun Ross St. Brown. He saw 34% of Philly's first read targets. That's the seventh highest rate in the league, the same rate as Jamar.

Chase and Justin Jefferson. I mean, A.J. Brown is obviously ahead of him in every major metric, but it doesn't mean we have to somehow punish Smith because of it. He missed four games, but his 17-game pace last year would have been 89 receptions, 1,100 receiving yards, and 10.5 touchdowns. Smith is a quality-wide receiver 2 in fantasy with the type of spike week games that I want on my team. Okay, next guy up. Cortland Sutton. Nobody wants the old guy. Despite signing a four-year contract extension, agists in your draft room are continuing to bypass the soon-to-be 30-year-old Sutton for younger, sexier names. He was the wide receiver 13 in Bo Nix's rookie year, averaging eight targets per game, and his red zone prowess makes him one of the easier wide receiver ones to potentially hit double-digit touchdowns. The best part is his draft cost, it allows him to comfortably fit in your flex.

He can be your team's wide receiver. I mean, it's your wide receiver too. It's not a very expensive price to get. And it's rare to find a bona fide, locked in receiver seeing 25 plus percent of his team's targets that nobody wants. Last name I'll throw out there, Jacobi Myers. Myers knows his place in fantasy football, and he annually takes his place as a flex play without much fanfare. He was a top 24 wide receiver last year. and yet you can draft him once again to be a quality wide receiver three or flex late in your drafts. He saw 8.3 targets per game, the same number as Amonrae St. Brown and Nico Collins, and Gino Smith presents a major improvement on a number of levels for the Raiders' offense. While this team's pass rate might come down from last year's third rank, Minchu O'Connell, Hodgepodge, the efficiency should increase across the board.

Myers is an every down player with an opportunity to outpunt his draft cost in 2025. When the season starts, you are going to get bombarded with so many statistics that it could be tough to figure out what matters and what doesn't. At the wide receiver position, don't overcomplicate it. Targets, target share, and per route metrics are the easiest to digest and the easiest to project successfully moving forward. Thanks for watching. And if you want access to all the fantasy footballers draft information, check out the Ultimate Draft Kit at Ultimate DraftKit.com. Let us help dominate your draft this year. We'll see you next time.