The Next DeVonta Smith Could Be the Perfect Way to Beat 2023’s WR Dead Zone

Shawn Siegele
June 27, 2023

Shawn Siegele dives deep into the evidence and breaks out the full RotoViz toolkit to help you find a receiver who profiles as the 2023 version of DeVonta Smith.

In Part 1 of this series, I framed the project this way:

You only have so many early-round selections.
Players on the same NFL team are frequently dealing with the same team-level risks.

That leads to the question: Can we use these factors to help us load up with talent and benefit from uncertainty?

We do this by using RV’s evidence-based approach to player evaluation and looking for situations where we can offset some team-level uncertainty by embracing player-level uncertainty. This method helped us load up on Deebo Samuel (20.5% win) in 2021 and DeVonta Smith (15.3%) in 2022.

This exercise also fulfills the promise I made in The Late Rounds Are a Black Hole at WR, But These 5 Receivers Could Be Tournament Winners, when I argued that only one WR from Rounds 9 through 13 was truly draftable. He wasn’t part of that article, but he gets his own showcase today.

Will the Next DeVonta Smith Help Us Beat the WR Dead Zone?

Looking for more WR discounts and arbitrage plays? Don’t miss Ross Durham’s Taking Advantage of WR Values in FFPC Drafts and Michael Hitchock’s Finding the Doppelgangers for Trendy Underdog WRs.

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Shawn Siegele

Author of the original Zero RB article and 2013 NFFC Primetime Grand Champion. 11-time main event league winner. 2015, 2017, 2018 titles in MFL10 of Death.

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