RADIO
Plunging into the world of football analytics is without question the best way to find fantasy sleepers for the coming season. Especially in the case of wide receivers, where how they are lining up on the field has a direct correlation with production.
Slot receivers don't quite offer the boom-upside an outside receiver will deliver (typically). What they do excel at is running high percentage routes and catching passes in traffic. Many of the game's best slot receivers are often regarded as some of the best and most undervalued options in PPR formats.
The goal of this post is to find the worst performers at the WR position based on the volume of snaps they played at both the slot and other alignments and the production they yielded in PPR leagues when used in the former and the latter positions. Can't risk those picks come peak draft season, so we better start studying last year's results!
2021 Slot WR Losers and Busts
Before we move one to the particular players I chose to highlight, I have included the above chart in this post to make things a little bit easier to understand when it comes to the larger NFL picture. The chart above includes all WR with 350+ snaps from the Slot position in 2021. It also limits the plotted players to those with 150+ PPR points over the full season, no matter the alignment.
The vertical axis represents the percentage of the player's total PPR points that he got while starting his routes from the Slot, while the horizontal axis represents the percentage of snaps such player ran from the Slot compared to all snaps he played into.
I have limited the colored areas from 50% to the right in terms of Slot% to highlight those players that can (at least by the numbers and their usage) be true slot receivers. Those in the green area produced 50%+ of their total PPR points while getting 50%+ of their snaps coming from the slot (what could be considered true slot receivers producing the most from the slot, which is what we want to highlight here), while those in the red area produced a lower percentage of PPR points from the slot than other alignments compared to their share of snaps started at that position (players who would have been better used heavily in other alignments given their production-profiles).
Amon-Ra St. Brown, Detroit Lions
Fourth-round rookie ASB is the only WR to appear in the chart above given the high percentage of snaps he took from the slot and the late-season push in PPR scores that allowed him to break the 150-FP barrier with the Lions. St. Brown, as phenomenal as he was to close the year and as much as I like him, disappointed quite a bit while deployed inside. Per RotoWire numbers, St. Brown appeared on 800 snaps throughout the season while starting off the slot in 618 of those (87%), getting a 36% Slot Share among Lions receivers over the full 2021 season. He only got 68% of his total PPR points on slot-aligned plays.
Amon's 0.21 PPR/SlotSnap (PPR/SS from now on) ranked 20th among the 33 receivers to get a 22% Slot Share last year, and the percentage of points he got from that position compared to the times he started plays off yielded an 0.88 ratio that was the second-worst among those in that group only ahead of Freddie Swain. I'm not saying St. Brown was bad (he wasn't!) but he definitely didn't look great while manning the slot for Detroit. Here's hoping the Lions coaches dig deeper into the numbers, realize the shortcomings, and make the proper adjustments to make the most out of the gem St. Brown could actually be if properly used.
Quez Watkins, Philadelphia Eagles
I'd understand if you came here expecting to read about the likes of bona fide slot-receivers (Cole Beasley) or top-tier players oft-aligned in the slot (Cooper Kupp)... but hey, they do this thing for a reason and the reason is that they're good. The likes of Quez Watkins--not so much. Watkins played all games for the Eagles last season, logged as many as 763 snaps, and was used on the slot for a team-high 32% share while running 74% of his total routes from there. The results? Nothing bueno.
Watkins racked up 116 PPR points over the full campaign, and 74% came on plays in which he was deployed in the slot. That's exactly what you would have expected (74% plays off the slot, the same percentage of PPR points coming from them) but that's not precisely great. First of all, on a counting basis, the numbers stunk at just 85 PPR points when aligned inside even though he got the 11th-most slot snaps among all players in the NFL last season. Then, to put the cherry on top, Watkins was the only receiver with 567+ snaps from the slot without a single TD over the full season.
Only one other receiver got fewer yards than Quez's 438 on such a bulky volume of snaps inside, and Wakins' 28 receptions trailed everybody with his volume of plays at that alignment. Philly has made small changes to its receiving corps ahead of the 2022 season, and the only one that did get fewer yards was...
Zach Pascal, Indianapolis Colts
Watkins' new counterpart coming over from the Colts: Zach Pascal. That's correct. Not happy with already having a subpar slot wideout in town, the Eagles doubled down on it by adding Pascal to the fold in time for summer camps. Fantastic! Not only will Philadelphia split both receivers' snaps at the slot next season, but the Eagles will also have to endure below-average production from two players instead of just one!
Pascal's 869 total snaps and 674 from the slot ranked 24th and sixth respectively among all WRs in the NFL playing last season. That was an absolutely ludicrous volume handed to a man who went on to score just 94 PPR points over 16 games to finish the year barely as a top-75 wideout. Jeez. Pascal did the most out of his slot snaps, sure, getting 84% of his total PPR points through the season on routes run from the slot. That's perhaps the best news coming from him on an otherwise forgettable campaign, and not even those are quite nice things to hear about him considering his low total production.
Pascal's 347 yards from the slot were nearly half as many as those of every other WR running 600+ snaps off the slot. That's just borderline malpractice by the Colts coaches to hand this man so many chances that were ultimately wasted by his erratic levels of play. Pascal is now the Eagles' WR2 to Watkins' WR3 role. God heal Philly Phanatics' souls.
Robby Anderson, Carolina Panthers
It's hard to believe Anderson's fallout in 2021, but it was very real indeed. After a bona fide breakout campaign in 2020 in which he got a career year off his move from New York to Carolina (224 PPR points and 14 FPPG), Anderson didn't come even remotely close to those numbers last season even though he played one more game in 2021 than he did two years ago. The total tally: 138 PPR and a measly 8.1 FPPG.
The Panthers, for some reason (money), handed Robby 978 (!) snaps over the season with 55% of those (537) coming from the slot position. Anderson, truth be told, only found peace aligning inside compared to his outside routes. Robby went on to score 74% of his total PPR points on routes run from the slot compared to a measly 26% on boundary routes. But that just doesn't cut it for me. Cold world.
Anderson's 333 yards from the slot are even worse than they already sound: that figure ranked seventh-worst among WRs with at least a 22% Slot Rate and second-worst among those with 500+ snaps aligning in that position. Ugh. Though the Panthers added Rashard Higgins, Anderson still projects to be Carolina's WR2 next year... while playing once more under bust-QB Sam Darnold if the Panthers can do something to fix the position (Garoppolo? Drafting a rookie? A last-resort shot at Baker?) and even though I'd expect Robby to bounce back a bit, numbers don't speak highly of what he can do out there on the field--let alone the slot position.
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