Kevin Szafraniec uses RotoViz’s Advanced Stats Explorer to uncover under-the-radar trends at the wide receiver position from the first five weeks of the 2025 NFL season.
The career arc for every NFL player is different. Some players shoot out of the gate, some take some time to emerge, and others never emerge at all. Perhaps the worst arc of all is seeing a player look like a star at the start of their career only to come crashing back to earth a few years in.
Sadly, the past three years have not been kind to Jaylen Waddle in Miami. After kicking off his career with two top-12 PPR seasons, the arrival of Tyreek Hill combined with constant nagging injuries led to Waddle finishing no higher than WR34 in each of the past two years. When it appeared as though we should probably close the door on the idea of Waddle ever returning to the player he once was, an injury to Hill opened up the door for him to reclaim the WR1 spot on the Dolphins’ depth chart.
After one week the results are promising, but there is still a lot of football to be played in 2025. Should fantasy managers be buying into Waddle’s comeback story, or was his big performance against Carolina just the case of a good game against a bad defense?
Before we get into the latest information available in the Advanced Stats Explorer, just a few quick reminders about the article.
- Early in the offseason, I updated my deep dive into the past six years of wide receiver data available in the Advanced Stats Explorer and broke it down into four separate articles: Routes and Targets, Intended Air Yards, Yards After the Catch and Evasion, and Catchable Targets, Drops, First Downs, and Touchdowns.
- When working through the six-year sample, I found that the 90th percentile and above generally included most of the top 24 wide receivers for each metric in any given season. The 75th percentile and above included the top 55 to 60 WRs in any given metric per season. Given that these two cohorts easily apply to a normal 12-team fantasy league, they will be referenced often throughout the article.
Our current sample of wide receivers to earn a target in 2025 rose to 167 in Week 5, up from 163 in Week 4.
