Wide Receivers to Prioritize in Non-PPR Leagues

August 13, 2021

Antonio Losada evaluates wide receivers for fantasy football that should be prioritized in Standard leagues while faded in PPR due to their lack of targets and receptions but high efficiency on low volume.

Fantasy draft season will be upon us before we know it. Aside from evaluating ADP and staying in tune with training camp reports this summer, it's also important to study differences between league types. Some still play standard leagues but these days, PPR (point per reception) formats are the norm. The only difference between those leagues comes down to a simple matter of awarding one extra point to players that catch a pass.

With both Standard and PPR-scoring systems in mind, it's time to discover which players are surefire bets in one system but potential duds in the other. Today, I'm highlighting some wide receivers who are primed to become studs in Standard leagues but lose some value when used in PPR formats.

When you're done here, take a look at the other side of the equation with wide receivers to prioritize in PPR.

Standard Wide Receivers

Today, I'm highlighting some wide receivers who are primed to become studs in Standard-format leagues but not so much when used in PPR leagues.

Mike Williams, Los Angeles Chargers

If we had a random encounter, and you told me that Mike Williams is the ultimate boom/bust NFL player to your eyes, I wouldn't argue with you off the top of my head. Now that I have checked the numbers for good, that's definitely a spot-on description of Mikey, and that shouldn't change any time soon as the transition from Philip Rivers to Justin Herbert hasn't changed his usage a bit.

Williams' lone season averaging fewer than 15 Y/R took place when he was a barely-used rookie in Los Angeles and only played 10 games. In his past three seasons, though, he's posted marks of 15.4, 20.4 (!), and back to 15.8 at last. Obviously, his Catch Rate has gone in the opposite direction, with Williams catching more than 56% of his looks just once when he had a ridiculous 2018 season that came out of nowhere (10 touchdowns and 664 yards on just 43 receptions).

Mike Williams' numbers align with an STD-format player profile more often than not. He posted the seventh-highest aDOT (14.8 yards) among WRs with at least 500 snaps played last season, the ninth-highest Completed AY/Target (7.0), yet only the 10th-highest YAC/Target mark (1.9).

Expect Williams to keep racking up deep targets, catching only a few of them, but having booming weeks when things click for him. The risk is obvious (18th most-volatile player of 2020) and with such a low-volume style of play, it's reasonable to find PFF projecting him to a WR29 finish in standard leagues compared to a paltry WR40 (+11) in the PPR format.

Kenny Golladay, New York Giants

Even after a spring and summer full of moves and news involving all positions, the flashiest addition of the Giants made it to this list. That's Kenny Golladay, who is now projected to become the no. 1 wideout of New York in 2021, sharing the field with the likes of Sterling Shepard, Darius Slayton, rookie Kadarius Toney, FA-signee John Ross, TE Evan Engram, and returning RB Saquon Barkley.

Now, if you think that's too many mouths to feed and are concerned about that for fantasy purposes, you might be right. The good thing for Golladay, though, is that he's never had to rely heavily on both volume and high per-play production to rack up fantasy goodies. Golladay has been the go-to receiver of the post-Megatron Lions, but he's never caught more than 70 targets or topped a 62% Catch Rate (he posted that mark last season in only five games, though; his prior high was just at 58.5%).

Golladay, in his two years with at least 12 games played, went on to put up 1,000+ yards each of those seasons to go with five and 11 touchdowns in them, helping him finish as the WR21 and WR9 in PPR leagues... and an even better WR20 and WR3 in the Standard format.

The numbers don't lie and point toward a deep-field magnet of a receiver: Golladay finished in the 90th or higher percentiles in all Deep Targets/G, Yards/Target, Yards/Reception, aDOT, Yards/Route Run, and Completed AY/Target metrics. On the other hand, he fell to the bottom half of the league's receivers in PPR-favorite metrics such as Targets/G, Reception/G, and Routes Run/G.

Jerry Jeudy, Denver Broncos

The Broncos' freshman was a rather nice play last season in his first year as a pro. Taking advantage of Courtland Sutton's Week 1 injury, all Jeudy did was putting on some work and finishing the year with a reasonably good 157.6 PPR points for a 9.9 FPPG average. Not the greatest rookie season ever for a wideout, surely, but one good enough to have him on the radar going forward.

Jeudy wasn't great on a per-target basis, catching only 52 of the 113 passes thrown his way, but he was fantastic on a per-reception basis, with a 2.03 FP/Rec average only topped by 14 other players (min. 50 receptions). Even though he wasn't the most efficient player around the field, Jeudy should keep his volume of targets up (yes, factoring Sutton's comeback in) as the Broncos do not have a ton of playmakers in the receiving corps.

The aDOT (13.6) was the 12th-highest among 500+ snaps WRs last year, he only needed to run 4.4 Routes b/w Targets, and Jeudy also ranked in the 84th and 88th percentiles in Deep Targets/G and Yards/Rec last season. If he can keep improving his efficiency a bit, he might be a very capable STD-league-winning player. The touchdowns should positively regress for him (Jeudy was one of 12 WRs with only three touchdowns while catching more than 50 passes compared to 43 players that scored at least four on 50+ receptions) and the 16.5 yards per reception were the third-most among that crop of wideouts.

PFF projects Jeudy to a WR43 finish in PPR formats but a much tastier WR36 (borderline WR3) in standard leagues. That seven-position difference is the joint sixth highest one and the fifth-highest among players at the wide receiver position.

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