ADP Arbitrage - Wide Receiver Draft Bargains

I've introduced this series with a look at running back comparisons to identify mid-round values at the position. Now it's time to dive into the wide receiver position.

While ADP is very informative and can help you get informed about where you should start worrying about potentially missing on a player, it shouldn't have as much weight as to affect your decisions massively. Take Lamar Jackson's 2019 season: 417.7 PPR points, second-best in the whole NFL, and current holder of a 21 ADP that is seeing him drafted inside the first two rounds of drafts. Does that mean you should absolutely trust Jackson having another monster year that when all is said and done gives you a good return on investment after paying a second-round pick for him? Nope! In fact, the most logical thing to happen is having Jackson regressing and finishing with more average fantasy numbers in 2020.

In this four-entry series, I'll go through the four offensive positions of fantasy football, highlighting names that are going cheap in early drafts and evaluate how they are expected to produce similar numbers to other much more-hyped players.

• Quarterback fantasy football rankings
• Running back fantasy football rankings
• Wide receiver fantasy football rankings
• Tight end fantasy football rankings
• Kicker fantasy football rankings
• FLEX fantasy football rankings
• Defense (D/ST) fantasy football rankings
• Superflex fantasy football rankings
• IDP fantasy football rankings
• Dynasty fantasy football rankings

Identifying Overpriced WRs

I'm not going to play games in this column and bring middling names to the table. Instead, I'll be going for the fences and swinging the bat full force to get some fantasy-heavy names here and there. No second-tier players here.

There are 31 players with ADPs under 36 (PPR format) at the time of this writing, and 13 of them (more than 40%) are wide receivers. As expected, Michael Thomas leads the pack with his 4.0 ADP after his impossible 2019 season. Have zero concerns drafting Thomas in the first round: He's finished WR7, WR6, WR6, and WR1 in his career and never with fewer than 255 FP. It sounds ridiculous, but this is one of the single cases where you wouldn't be overpaying but rather getting the best possible receiver with no close comps anywhere.

The rest of the cases are much more debatable. DeAndre Hopkins, Davante Adams, Julio Jones, and Tyreek Hill all have ADPs inside the first round. The second-round group is made of Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Kenny Golladay, and Amari Cooper. Finally, we have Keenan Allen, Cooper Kupp, Tyler Lockett, and Adam Thielen getting drafted inside the third round. There are surefire players there, but there are other names that give me more than a fair amount of pause. Risk it if you want to, but I'd rather pass on some of those in favor of cheaper, pretty similar options available later in drafts.

Here is what I'm looking for when trying to identify comps for those top-ADP receivers at lower spots. If we build some sort of "combined profile" of them, we can land at something close to:

• At least 14.5 PPG per game (that would have been good for WR23 last year)
• Ideally, 200+ PPR on the season (that would have been good for WR24)
• At least 7.5 targets per game (all but five top-24 WRs logged at least those targets per game last season)

Identifying WR Bargains with RD4+ ADP

After applying those filters and thresholds to the data from the 2019 season this is what I was left with.

As you see, not all of the players mentioned above (the 13 with third-round ADPs) are in the chart. Only eight of them made the cut when taking targets and PPG scores from the 2019 season into consideration and meeting the identified thresholds.

Although the bunch of players getting drafted inside the first two rounds (mostly) and in the third (Kupp and Allen) were a little bit over the field in terms of raw PPR production, two other high-priced players (Mike Evans and Davante Adams) fell way short of those levels, ending the year at least more than 30 PPR points behind the worst of the best high-priced WRs. Almost all (A.J. Green and Sterling Shepard excluded, but they merit a mention here) of the identified comps to the right of the chart fall between Adams (212.7) and Allen (261.5) PPR scores last season but they are getting off the board way later in drafts these days.

Let's go round by round with the first two we're interested in, starting with the fourth:

Fourth-Round Values

D.J. Chark Jr. (ADP 38.7) came out of nowhere for the Jaguars last season and when we realized he was already the WR17 and one of the best performers at the position. Shouts to you if you snatched him off waivers for free! (Note: you don't have to overpay to roster and have a monster on your team). Chark broke the 1000-yard barrier and even scored a healthy eight touchdowns on the year. The problem is that 1) he played mostly under a walking miracle in Gardner Minshew, a player who may struggle to repeat in 2020 and 2) Chark was a second-year player that may have taken the leap to his true-talent level, or he might have just a mirage of a season that he will never repeat. He's the most pricey of the "cheap" players, so I'd still pass on him and the questions surrounding him.

Do you want to read something cool about Robert Woods (ADP 43.1)? He's one of the few players to have outperformed his ADP each and every one of his professional seasons. He barely did in 2019 (ADP 47.3, final rank 46th overall), but he still achieved it. Woods has broken for 1134+ yards in his last couple of seasons but he regressed a lot in scoring (only two TD) in 2019. It makes sense considering the group of teammates he has and how Jared Goff sucks more by the day. With Todd Gurley off the Rams and pretty much all of the rest of the pieces remaining, I'd favor Woods over Chark.

Fifth-Round Values

The fifth round is seeing the best trio of cheap WRs getting drafted at the time of this writing. I'm being dead serious here. I'm targeting all of them for my teams, have them super-highly ranked, and love what they have shown and the upside they bring for the upcoming 2020 season. It blows my mind that they're dropping this much and getting drafted after some other very middling names ahead of them.

While Michael Gallup (ADP 48.4) is a fourth/fifth round tweener, he's currently falling to the latter. This is how Dallas' offense reads for 2020: Dak Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott, Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, and good-but-still-rookie CeeDee Lamb. Dallas has lost TE Jason Witten and even WR Randall Cobb. It's either going to be Zeke on the ground or the pair of Cooper/Gallup through the air. Cooper's got the caché, Gallup's got the ability, though.
Check this out: Targets (113 Gallup to 119 Cooper), receptions (66 Gallup to 79 Cooper), yards (1107 Gallup to 1189 Cooper), yards/reception (16.8 Gallup to 15.1 Cooper), touchdowns (six for Gallup to eight for Cooper). The numbers can't be closer and Gallup wasn't on the field for a single snap in three games during the first half of the season. If you want to throw "money" away by drafting Cooper early, that's cool, but you'd be much better off waiting and snatching Gallup later.

Pretty much in the same situation as Chark, Allen Robinson II (ADP 54.8) is part of a team that is barren of talent of offense mostly because of its mediocre quarterback. But the difference in price/production between both receivers makes Robinson a quite nice play at his ADP. Robinson racked up almost 30 more PPR points than Chark last season, is the clear go-to weapon for the Bears, and he has always worked no matter his QB or the attack he's been part of. Other owners will be scared of Chicago, but I wouldn't shy away from drafting Robinson here.

Now please stand up and let me introduce you to the most underrated fantasy football player of all time, Mr. Jarvis Landry (ADP 55.7). Landry has been in the NFL six years already, four with Miami and two with Cleveland. He's reached at least 217 PPR points in his last five seasons. He has finished at least as the WR18 in all of those years, and as a WR1 in three of his last five seasons. He's missed on hitting at least 1,000 yards just two times in that span (by 13 and 24 yards...), scored at least four touchdowns every season as a pro (six last year), and fumbled one ball in his last 32 games.
His super-teammate Odell Beckham is still ahead of him in a lot of owner's minds, yet he's clearly removed from his best days (hasn't finished inside the top-14 receivers in three consecutive seasons). Landry is a beast. He's got the best value/price relation ever. He's a surefire guy on a powerhouse of a team. Draft. Jarvis. Landry.

Other WR Comps to Note

Carolina's offense is a little bit of a mess now that they will have new quarterbacks in Teddy Bridgewater and P.J. Walker. They will obviously keep running with Christian McCaffrey and the fact that Bridgewater has some tendency to look for short passes worries me a bit. D.J. Moore is the best receiver on the Panthers, though, so everything non-CMC should go his way.

DeVante Parker had the season we had been waiting for forever last year playing... for the putrid Dolphins under Ryan Fitzpatrick. I've always believed in Parker and will keep doing so, but Miami is also in a position where they might field a new QB next year and we'll see how that impacts Parker. Don't count on another 250 PPR-point season because he hadn't reached those levels in his other four years, but know that Parker's got everything in him and his price is laughable.

Julian Edelman appears on the plot above because he meets the criteria but removing Tom Brady from the Pats and playing under Stidham/Hoyer/Kessler is not going to help Edelman in 2020. If he drops way down the boards, then he might become a steal. Until then, I'd pass on him.

John Brown, though, looks very promising to my eyes. He will have Stefon Diggs next to him taking coverage from him and opening more doors than he's seen in the past, plus Josh Allen's arm is a cannon (not the most accurate, but still). I'm fully trusting that Brown will become a perennial 1000-yard, 5+ touchdown receiver in Buffalo, even more with the assets they'll have from now on.

A.J. Green and Sterling Shepard are very similar. The last time we saw Green in 2018 he finished the year with 149 PPR in just nine games averaging a very great 16.6 PPG on the season. Before that, he had finished WR24 or better in six of his other seven campaigns. Green is going to be 31 years old in 2020 already, but you don't find 250+ PPR, 1000+ yard, 5+ TD players (assuming he stays healthy for the full year) going this cheap anywhere.  Shepard missed six games in 2019 but still averaged 14.2 PPG and reached 576 yards and three scores in his 10 played games. The Giants have an undervalued (and much better than perceived to be, in my opinion) quarterback in Daniel Jones, don't have a go-to weapon on offense other than RB Saquon Barkley, and if Shepard can stay healthy he can be a rather nice steal in the later rounds of drafts this offseason.