There’s Breaking Out, and Then There’s Breaking Out: The Immense Value of Secondary Breakouts and the Possibilities for 2024
Image Credit: Nick Wosika/Icon Sportswire. Pictured: Justin Jefferson.

Fantasy football is about creating more WR firepower than your opponents. You can’t do it without numbers, but you can’t win tournaments with numbers if you don’t select the right guys. Nothing provides more fantasy upside than hitting on undervalued WRs. 

That’s been the focus of my WR Breakout Series, a research project that hits this topic from a variety of important angles.

While breakouts are often the key to fantasy glory, 2024 presents a unique opportunity for players chasing a secondary breakout. If it seems like the Year 2 breakout candidates are slightly weaker than in past seasons, that’s because so many rookie WRs broke out last year.

It’s true that all these breakouts happened in the 17-game era, when reaching 200 PPR points in a season is somewhat easier than it used to be. But every player on the list above had already reached 200 points by Week 17 — none of them needed the extra week.

Of course, the fact that they’ve already broken out doesn’t make them bad picks in 2024. But it does mean that if they’re going to outperform their ADPs, in most cases we might need more than just a repeat of their rookie year performance. Are secondary breakouts in the offing?

A Brief Survey of Secondary (and Tertiary) Breakouts

Since 2016, there have been 19 occasions in which a player has reached at least 200 PPR points in a prior season and then gone on to produce a season with at least 34 additional PPR points (2 or more points per game).

Season Player Year PPR Previous High PPR Improvement Previous High Season
2021 Justin Jefferson 2 310.7 274.2 36.5 2020
2017 Tyreek Hill 2 239.2 201.6 37.6 2016
2023 Amon-Ra St. Brown 3 305.5 256.7 48.8 2022
2022 Justin Jefferson 3 360.2 310.7 49.6 2021
2022 CeeDee Lamb 3 285.4 227.7 57.7 2021
2021 Diontae Johnson 3 264.3 223.9 40.4 2020
2020 Calvin Ridley 3 283.5 208.8 74.7 2018
2019 Kenny Golladay 3 250.0 207.1 42.9 2018
2018 Tyreek Hill 3 328.0 239.2 88.8 2017
2018 Michael Thomas 3 321.5 259.7 61.8 2016
2023 CeeDee Lamb 4 369.7 285.4 84.3 2022
2022 A.J. Brown 4 290.1 249.3 40.8 2020
2019 Michael Thomas 4 374.6 321.5 53.1 2018
2021 Cooper Kupp 5 410.9 270.6 140.3 2019
2018 Davante Adams 5 329.6 248.7 80.9 2016
2018 Adam Thielen 6 309.3 243.8 65.5 2017
2023 DJ Moore 6 278.1 232.5 45.6 2019
2020 Stefon Diggs 6 328.6 266.3 62.3 2018
2018 Julio Jones 8 329.8 259.9 69.9 2016

In most cases, the previous high PPR mark was set in the year immediately preceding a secondary breakout. But in some cases there are intervening seasons. In some cases we even see tertiary breakouts (Justin Jefferson, Tyreek Hill, CeeDee Lamb, and Michael Thomas all show up twice.) And in many cases a secondary breakout adds well over 50 points above the initial breakout.

The Immense Value of Secondary Breakouts

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Blair Andrews

Managing Editor, Author of The Wrong Read, Occasional Fantasy Football League Winner. All opinions are someone else's.

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