Wide Receiver Draft Bargains - Fantasy Football ADP Arbitrage: Mike Williams, Diontae Johnson, Hunter Renfrow

I've introduced this series with a look at running back comparisons to identify mid-round values at the position. Now, it's time to dive into the wide receiver position.

While ADP is very informative and can help you be informed about where you should start worrying about potentially missing out on a player, it shouldn't affect your decisions massively. Take Josh Allen's 2021 season: 402.6 fantasy points to lead the whole NFL, and the current holder of a 34 ADP that is seeing him drafted inside the first three rounds of drafts these days and as the clear-cut no. 1 QB. Does that mean you should absolutely trust Allen having another monster year that when all is said and done gives you a good return on investment after paying a second-round pick for him? Nope! In fact, the most logical thing to happen is Allen regressing and finishing with more average-ish fantasy numbers in 2022.

In this four-entry series, I'll go through the four offensive positions of fantasy football, highlighting names that are going cheap in early drafts and evaluating how they are expected to produce similar numbers to other much more-hyped players.

Identifying Undervalued WRs for Fantasy Football

There are 35 players with ADPs under 36 (PPR format) at the time of this writing, and 13 of them (37%) are wide receivers. Unsurprisingly, Cooper Kupp (coming off an all-time season) is the no. 1 WR getting drafted this summer.

There isn't too much of a gap between him and Justin Jefferson (it can actually be neglected; 3.5 to 3.9) with both getting drafted inside the first half of the first round on average.

Ja'Marr Chase is the only other first-round WR this summer in ADP, with Stefon Diggs, Davante Adams, CeeDee Lamb, and Deebo Samuel the only players at the position with an ADP below 24 (end of the second round).

There are as many as six wideouts bunched into the 24-to-36 ADP range this offseason, including Mike Evans, Tyreek Hill, Tee Higgins, Michael Pittman, Keenan Allen, and A.J. Brown. That paints a highly contrasting picture with that of the first-round-bound players (only three) and those drafted inside the second round (four of them).

Here is what I'm looking for when trying to identify comps for those top-ADP receivers at lower spots. If we build some sort of "combined profile" of them, we can land at something close to:

• At least 14.5 PPG per game
• Ideally 200+ PPR on the season
• Ideally 7.5+ targets per game

Identifying WR Bargains with RD4+ ADP In Fantasy Drafts

After applying those filters and thresholds to the projections data, this is what I was left with.

There are two clear groups in the chart above: Kupp (1) and then the rest of the field (2). That sounds like a joke, but that's a nice summary of the 2021 season in fantasy football. When it comes to drafting WRs ahead of 2022 though, things are a little bit messier.

Deebo and Tyreek make for a good gap between the top-5 receivers in ADP and those getting drafted later. After those two go off the board, I'd split the remainder of depicted wideouts into three further groups: one with Higgins/Keenan, another one with Waddle/Mike-Will/Diontae, and a third with Godwin/Renfrow.

Let's go through the identified players, highlighting their value for the 2022 season.

Mike Williams, Los Angeles Chargers (ADP 38.7)

Mike Will is super close to being a late third-round pick in terms of ADP but he didn't make the cut for a couple of picks. Alas, here we are discussing him as a fourth-or-later-round bargain! Williams has had the "bad" luck of playing next to another legitimate wide receiver in Keenan Allen for all of his career.

The truth is that Allen and Williams have scored 846.9 and 762.3 PPR points over their first five years in the league, which is more than close if you ask me. If you think Allen's virtually-missed 2016 season hurts his tally, or that Williams' rookie year does so to him, the truth is that looking at actual opportunities (targets and rushing attempts) Allen averaged 1.75 FP/Opp to Williams' 1.90. Surprise!

Although not incredibly separated in terms of ADP (Allen is at 30.4) and while Allen will most probably be QB Justin Herbert's favorite target next season if only because coaches will scheme plays that way, Williams is the player to target this summer in fantasy drafts.

Williams is projected to 224.3 PPR points to Allen's 248.3 in the latest simulations performed by PFF. That 24 fantasy-point difference comes purely from Allen supposedly catching 20+ more passes than Williams. We'll see how that goes.

Williams is rock solid, barely misses playing time at all, and is finally a touchdown-catching receiver trusted by his quarterback (from 2 to 5 to 9 TDs in the past three years) with much much better TD% rates than Allen and sky-high upside on deep throws given his speed and deep-route running. Must-have for a "cheap" price.

Jaylen Waddle, Miami Dolphins (ADP 41.5)

Tyreek Hill is the flashiest new toy in town and so is his monster ADP of 24.5, barely past the second round in 12-team drafts. Waddle, the actually-proven, known quantity, most-productive player in Miami is often available at a much lower ADP of 41.5 (halfway through the fourth round).

It took Miami a good bunch of assets to land Hill, and reasonably so, but remember he's going from catching passes thrown by Patrick Mahomes to doing so from Tua Tagovailoa. Do you know who's already played under Tua and proved capable of performing in that context? Tip: it's not Hill.

Waddle's rookie year was clearly overshadowed by the historical season put together by Ja'Marr Chase, but the Dolphins freshman was good to finish the year as the WR13 of the season with a 245.8 PPR tally. Do you know how many rookie receivers have topped that figure since 2000? Six of them. In the past five years? Michael Thomas and Chase. That's it.

There is not a single WR that had a rookie year on par with Waddle that turned into busts in their second season – or actually at any point throughout their careers. Draft Hill if you want, I'd reap the tastier rewards of getting Waddle later and enjoying his much-higher ROI.

Diontae Johnson, Pittsburgh Steelers (ADP 46.2)

The only reason Johnson is falling outside of the first four rounds of fantasy drafts must be the fact that he's playing for a team that employs Mitchell Trubisky and Kenny Pickett as quarterbacks, right?

Other than that, Johnson is sublime and... wait a minute! Hasn't Johnson excelled at this thing called football even playing for a rather mediocre QB called Ben Roethlisberger in the final (and underperforming) years of his career? Oh... I see...

Roethlisberger only played two games in 2019 but came back for the 2020 and 2021 seasons, virtually completing them in full both times. Johnson, playing with this old man at the helm, still found a way to average 14.8 and 17.2 FPPG in those two years and finish the last two seasons as the WR21 and WR8 in the NFL.

Johnson is as quarterback-proof as it comes, so don't worry a tiny bit about him playing under Trubisky/Pickett's wings.

Johnson has raised the touchdown-scoring bar yearly going from 5 to 7 to 8 and posting eerily similar rates in terms of TD% and averages on his YPR marks, which screams stability and doesn't call for wild regressions on any front. The opportunities he's gotten in the last two years have stayed kinda similar (though on the rise, mind you) so that's another positive.

All of JuJu Smith-Schuster, Ray-Ray McCloud, and James Washington were shown the door while none other than George Pickens (?), Calvin Austin (??), and Miles Boykin (???) were brought to fill the holes. I mean, you know who's going to big-time eat targets next season in Pitt.

Chris Godwin, Tampa Bay Buccanneers (ADP 67.2)

I have to assume that ADP will eventually (reminder: we're just days from the start of the regular season) rise, right? There is an upward trend baked into it, but nothing truly remarkable so odds are you still have a chance to find Godwin available past the fifth/sixth round of most 12-team drafts from now to the start of your fantasy league. Which is a true bargain.

The only player Tampa has lost from last season is Rob Gronkowski. Other than that, the Bucs are as good as they ever were and added Russell Gage and Julio Jones to the fold just in case. Yes, that means that one TE went out and two WRs came in, which is going to impact Chris Godwin's target pie and make it a bit thinner than it should.

Only, you know, Mike Evans (WR1) and Gage (WR3) are banged up and probably missing time or at least get eased into the year while Julio Jones (WR4) has been more of an afterthought for two years and running more than the best he was in his Falcons days.

Most fantasy GMs are still operating under the assumption that Godwin will just not perform to any sort of rewarding level given his ACL tear and MCL sprain from December of last year, but the team has already reported how his recovery from those issues is nearing full availability and how Godwin will, most probably, be out on the field come Week 1. And if that's the case, there is no way this man is a sixth-round draftee.

Godwin has posted three consecutive seasons of 15.9+ FPPG averages with him playing to WR2, WR31, and WR15 levels. The lower numbers came on a 12-games-played campaign in 2020 in which Godwin, somehow, still put up a 65/840/7 season on his way to wearing a ring and lifting the SB. Not bad if you ask me.

Hunter Renfrow, Las Vegas Raiders (ADP 85.7)

Let's play a game for a minute. How many players have scored 250+ PPR points in a single season from 2000 on? How many of those went on to have an ADP lower than 85 the next year?

How many of those were wide receivers? The answers: 650, 68, and five. You can make that last figure six with the addition of Renfrow and his ADP of 85.7. You can do better, folks.

The last player in a similar situation was Josh Gordon in 2014. It's been almost 10 years, so yes, you can definitely do better. Of course, Renfrow is entering a much different season in 2022 than the one he enjoyed last year.

He's now part of an offense that added arguably the best receiver in the NFL in former-Packer Davante Adams. The Raiders also hope to have a healthy Darren Waller available all year and added ancillary pieces in Keelan Cole and Mack Hollins to the receiving corps.

Going from that to a stupid ADP of 85 (still high, but I hope you understand where I come from) is nonsensical. Renfrow is projected to get 19.4% of the total touches projected to become available in the 2022 Raiders season. He projects to 205+ PPR points on PFF's latest run of projections.

Renfrow definitely boasts a positive ROI, and the ninth-highest among receivers projected to 205 or more PPR over the full 2022 season.

Just for context, 18 other wideouts are projected to have more PPR points than Renfrow (good!) but have lower ROI figures attached to them (bad!) because fantasy GMs are clearly overvaluing them. Don't be one of those and maximize your assets.

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