This Advanced Wide Receiver Opportunity Metric Is Still Undervalued: 3 Second-Year Breakout Candidates and a Sneaky Veteran Who Can Give You a Massive Edge in Best Ball Drafts

Conor O’Driscoll
May 16, 2023

A cornerstone of RotoViz drafting strategy is using data to assist in selecting young players before they break out. Players vastly outperforming their draft cost is the key to winning in fantasy football.

The ability to consistently earn targets is a foundational skill for wide receivers. Despite consensus agreement on the importance of targets for wide receivers, drafters often ignore target earning ability when it isn’t accompanied with fantasy points. Exploiting this is a great way to identify future stars without having to pay for yesteryear’s points.

DeVonta Smith is an excellent case study.

As a rookie he earned a target on a large percentage of his routes — especially deep routes — and ended the season with a 63% weighted targets per route run (wTPRR) mark. But his fantasy points (11 PPR/game) were underwhelming. He exploded in his sophomore season, rewarding drafters with 15.3 PPR/game from an eighth-round cost. This is a great example of drafters’ tendency to underrate individual player skill such as target earning ability relative to other factors like overall team efficiency and run/pass split. Regular RotoViz readers will know we advocated for drafting Smith again and again.

But Smith is not just a one-off. Among wide receivers with at least 100 routes in 2021,

Please subscribe For Full Access to all RotoViz content and tools!

What’s included in your subscription??

Exclusive Access to RotoViz Study Hall
- A treasure trove of our most insightful articles that will teach you the metrics that matter, time-tested winning strategies, the approaches that will give you an edge, and teach you how to be an effective fantasy manager.
Revolutionary Tools
- Including the NFL Stat Explorer, Weekly GLSP Projections, NCAA Prospect Box Score Scout, Combine Explorer, Range of Outcomes App, DFS Lineup Optimizer, Best Ball Suite,and many, many, more.
Groundbreaking Articles
- RotoViz is home of the original Zero-RB article and continues to push fantasy gamers forward as the go-to destination for evidence-based analysis and strategic advantages.
Weekly Projections
- Built using RotoViz’s unique GLSP approach.
Expert Rankings
And a whole lot more…

Conor O’Driscoll

2021 FFPC Bestball Tournament Champion and RotoViz writer. Find me on twitter at https://twitter.com/DricoOut

Using WTF Principles To Crush Running Back: Keys to the 2023 FFPC Best Ball Tournament – Part 3

Conor O’Driscoll September 4, 2023

Conor O’Driscoll took down the inaugural FFPC Best Ball Tournament, and followed up with two finals teams last year. Now the world’s foremost authority on this unique tournament format gives you an in-depth look at his process. Part 1 on how to make elite TE builds even stronger here. Part 2 on overcoming QB inflation here. The current iteration of the Win The Flex tool…...

Overcoming Inflation and Exploiting the New QB ADP Landscape: Keys to the 2023 FFPC Best Ball Tournament – Part 2

Conor O’Driscoll July 31, 2023

Conor O’Driscoll took down the inaugural FFPC Best Ball Tournament, and followed that up by getting two teams into the finals last year. Now the world’s No. 1 authority on this unique tournament format gives you an in-depth look at his process for consistent success. In the second installment he details his approach to handling the new QB ADP landscape. Part 1 on how make…...

A Contrarian Path to Supercharged Elite TE Builds: Keys to the 2023 FFPC Best Ball Tournament – Part 1

Conor O’Driscoll July 10, 2023