It is all but essential to draft an elite WR in order to win a fantasy football league. On NFL average, teams have been gaining more yards per game steadily since the 70s, whereas rushing yards have been close to static. In 1977, teams averaged 142 passing yards/game. Last year it was 228 yards/game. It is important to identify elite pass catchers as teams will continue to figure out a way to gain more yards through the air. The more yards they compile, the more fantasy points go to this position.
The good news with elite pass catchers is that there is not as much turnover as we see with other positions. And by elite, I am referring to WRs that finished WR1-8 in PPR format. Once a WR joined the club of elite receivers, there was a high likelihood of them returning.
I highlighted players that have cracked the top 8 more than once in green, and as you can see, this accounts for 77.5% of this list. That is a huge correlation. This list does not set in stone which players are considered a top-8 WR, but it does paint a picture of who is most like to be on that list in the future.
This is what made Cooper Kupp so interesting last year. He had been in the top 8 before, but he was going in the fourth round. He finished as WR6 overall in 2019, and as he was a member of this elite club, we know there’s a strong chance he would return. Kupp posted that strong season with Jared Goff as his quarterback, so it made sense that consistency from the coaching staff and a QB upgrade in Matthew Stafford would yield the result we witnessed last season.
This begs the question: who will return to the top 8 in 2022? We can already cross some off the list. Antonio Brown and Julio Jones don’t have homes at the moment. DeAndre Hopkins will be suspended for at least four games, and Michael Thomas and Chris Godwin are coming back from major injuries. Fitzgerald and Edelman have retired, and we won’t see Ridley until 2023.
It’s possible for a WR to snag a top-8 season with below-average QB play (Allen Robinson and Deebo Samuel both did it), but it does not help Diontae Johnson or DK Metcalf. Tyreek Hill and Davante Adams also have significant QB downgrades this year, and neither Derek Carr nor Tua Tagovailoa has facilitated a fellow wideout to attain this top-tier status.
Let’s narrow this search down, then. What really helps your fantasy squad is to find one of these guys after round 3 as you should already have an elite RB/WR on your team. Since 2017, 27% of WR1-8 fall in round 4 or later (based on my own fantasy leagues) so they are out there, and when you land them, they are a tremendous boon. This group, as of this writing, includes Jarvis Landry, D. Johnson, Hopkins, Adam Thielen, and Godwin.
It also includes two players with a massive QB upgrade, and it is these players that make the best case for rejoining the club. JuJu Smith-Schuster will go from an ineffective Ben Roethlisberger to Patrick Mahomes. Robinson will see targets from the same QB that helped Kupp attain the overall WR1. These last two names bring a history of baggage with them, but they also bring a history of an elite finish and one that should not be overlooked.
Again, this does not mean that it’s set in stone that JuJu and Robinson are top 8 receivers this year. There is always the possibility that at the end of the year we will have eight new wideouts representing this club. It is just that history is so strong in saying that won’t happen, and as fantasy players, we are always searching for some modicum of certainty to help guide us on who to draft and who to avoid. The takeaway should be that this elite club is about as certain as one can get in this game.
