Finding the best-value wide receivers in fantasy football: Follow the targets

The worst part about fantasy football for those who think they have a grasp on a player’s strengths and weaknesses is that, without opportunity, all the advanced stats, metrics, and analytics don’t matter. At all.

The Idiot’s Guide to Fantasy Football — which sounds like a million dollar idea, Denny, you idiot — would include a chapter on the importance of wide receiver targets. The chapter would be called something like, “Hey, Moron: Get Receivers Slated For A Bunch of Footballs Coming Their Way.” Targets, more than almost anything else, correlate strongly with fantasy production. It’s at this point that the Idiot’s Guide to Fantasy Football would remind readers that one cannot produce fantasy points if one is not given the chance to produce fantasy points.

Because the computer simulation in which we exist is fickle, wideout opportunity sometimes emerges from a spate of injuries that leaves Brian Hartline or Harry Douglas getting 19 targets, which is a thing that once happened. But we work with probabilities in this maddening little game, so we work with likely target shares for receivers headed into the season.

Receiver targets varies from analyst to analyst, based on what sort of target share a guy is likely to see, how team pass attempts might regress one way or the other, and other factors that result in the same receiver being pegged for 90 targets by one fantasyhead and 105 targets by another.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCju7Bxze7g

Below are my 2018 target projections for receivers being drafted between the seventh and 13th rounds of PPR drafts. This exercise is straightforward: We’re looking for cheap receiver targets — guys who could very well see as many targets as wideouts going in the first five or six rounds of a re-draft league. When we’ve found a high-target receiver in the middle or late rounds, we’ve found a guy who is necessarily undervalued if we view fantasy football through the lens of opportunity.

You might say, quite correctly, that 90 targets from Tom Brady is a hell of a lot more valuable than 120 targets from future Ravens backup Joe Flacco. But the guy catching footballs from Flacco has that disadvantage baked into his average draft position. And until targets stop correlating so well with fantasy points, I’m going to pay close attention to high-target receivers (usually) on the NFL’s worst teams.

Emmanuel Sanders getting 125 targets is something less than hateful, and hardly unrealistic. Sanders in his tenure in Denver has notched a healthy 8.57 targets per game, which works out to 137.2 targets over 16 games. Even Sanders’ disappointing 2017 campaign in which he missed four games saw him get 7.8 targets on average. I’m feeling brave, so I’ll say that Case Keenum is at least a slight upgrade over the absolute horror show Denver had under center last year. Sanders isn’t being valued as a top-30 receiver, per ADP. Sanders’ disastrous 2017 season saw the receiver set a WR35 pace. He’s a clear buy based on volume alone in a system where he won’t be the primary focus of opposing defenses.

Check out Emmanuel Sanders on PlayerProfiler’s “World Famous” Draft Kit:

More than 100 targets from Aaron Rodgers at the cost of a low-end seventh rounder? Yes, please. It was a long time and many, many injuries ago, but Randall Cobb once saw precisely 104 targets in Green Bay’s offense. The year was 2012: Cobb was among the most tantalizing weapons in the NFL, Twitter was just people messaging their favorite celebrities, and I was wasn’t online 23 hours a day. Cobb finished that year as WR14 in PPR leagues, though we should note that his eight touchdowns that year were an awful lot for someone who caught 80 balls. Don’t forget that Cobb gobbled up 33 targets in the first four games of 2017, before the Packers’ proverbial wheels came off. Equity score analysis likes Cobb quite a bit in 2018.

D.J. Moore’s target projection may be extremely nice, but there’s no reason to draft Cam Newton’s secondary or tertiary wideout, unless you’re weirdly handcuffing Devin Funchess. Don’t handcuff Devin Funchess.

Do we want 122 targets from the terrifying trio of Buffalo quarterbacks who could take snaps in 2018? In a word: no. Unless future converted tight end Josh Allen far exceeds expectations, Kelvin Benjamin’s targets will be of the (very) low quality variety. The market has adjusted to this by keeping Benjamin’s ADP down in the last of the tenth round. It’s conceivable that many fantasy footballers will see Benjamin on the board as late as the 12th round, making those targets all the more appetizing. It won’t be pretty — in fact, it’ll probably be hideous, with heavy targeting in the second half of games — but Benjamin profiles as one of this year’s preeminent source of cheap targets, no matter what you think of him as a player.

Jordan Matthews has been sent to Injured Reserve by the Patriots, so he will not, in fact, be seeing 84.7 targets from Tom Brady in 2018. Alas.

Marqise Lee is the only wideout here I’ve projected for more than 100 targets. Those targets, of course, will be coming from Blake Bortles, whose career completion rate sits at below 60 percent (including three 2017 games where he failed to complete half his passes). That’s what we in the industry call Not Good. Fifty receivers are going before Lee, who, until further notice, is likely the Jaguars’ No. 1 receiving option. He saw 105 targets in 2016 and 96 targets in 2017. Lee, who missed two games last year, was on pace for 109.7 targets, which seems perfectly reasonable after the departure of Allen Robinson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcPQPhFv6g4

I suppose people draft Allison in the 11th round are banking on an injury to Randall Cobb or Devante Adams. Without that, he simply won’t be a reliable fantasy asset.

Doctson is a 100-target candidate who is five rounds cheaper than teammate Jamison Crowder. Reports out of Washington training camp have Alex Smith zeroing in on Crowder, so the narrative says Crowder will carve out a much bigger slice of the target share pie than Doctson. I think it’s presumptuous to assume Doctson will take on a secondary role after the team — determined to get usage out of their second round draft pick — targeted him 57 times in 2017’s final eight games (7.1 targets per game). I plan on exploiting Doctson’s falling ADP unless his recent shoulder injury is much more serious than first thought.

Follow @CDCarter13