Thread by @DFBeanCounter

If you are playing fantasy football and trying to win a championship you need difference making WR's.

Let's dive in.

It takes about 18 ppg in order to have a top 5 season for a WR.

In fact we have 39 unique instances of 18+ ppg since 2015.

39/7 seasons = 5.57/year.

Here's the thing about great WR's... they stay great.

For a very small list, we have a tremendous amount of repeat performances.

Gud players stay gud. Who'd have thought?

So lets start from the start, but we are going to use my whole database instead because it has much higher samples.

As mentioned, we are looking at ~top 5 WR's. So we'll limit my database to top 5 finishes. (i dont have ppg set up in that manner in my database).

First things first, do good prospects make good fantasy points scorers?

I have 33 unique players with a top 5 finish within my database representing 73 individual seasons.

As you can see, the bust tier is the most prominent on this list representing the most unique players having scored a top 5 season.

It breaks down to:

Transcendent - 6
Generational - 3
Bulletproof - 5
Coinflip - 7
Longshot - 2
Bust - 10

And as a result of this you can clearly see that the bulletproof process sucks and all of the good players come from the Bust tier.

Until of course you remember that denominators exist for a reason.

Transcendent - 6/6 = 100%
Generational - 3/5 = 60%
Bulletproof - 5/33 = 15%
Coinflip - 7/72 = 9.7%
Longshot - 2/43 = 4.7%
Bust - 8/318 = 2.5% (I removed the UDFA's)

So does being a good prospect help? You are damn right it does. And if you think my process is BS, I think you are wrong, but you can also use DC.

1st - 16/74 = 21.6%
2nd - 6/86 = 6.9%
3rd - 3/81 = 3.7%
4th - 2/74 = 2.7%
5th - 2/53 = 3.7%
6th - 1/54 = 1.8%
7th - 1/58 = 1.7%

So if you are making a bet on who will become the next perennial top 5 WR, I'd suggest starting your search with highly drafted good prospects...
Revolutionary, I know.

And then from there we can get into body types. I define a 'prototype' as a WR that is 5'11, 195 pounds, and 26.0 BMI

28/33 players with a top 5 season since 2003 were prototypes - 85%

But wait, we can't simply do that because again, we have a denominator to worry about, dfbeancounter, you imbecile.

Of our 480 drafted WRs we have 262 prototypes.

262/480 = 55%.

Our prototypes are vastly out performing the general population - 85% > 55%

But that brings up a whole host of other questions....

Perhaps all the good highly drafted prospects are prototypes and only the shitty day 3 picks were small.

That question is addressed in this thread.

https://twitter.com/DFBeanCounter/status/1369119686164504577?s=20&t=cUSGyiKfMHWcp-vrYAW_iQ

But there is another question that I think we need to be asking and that is the way the NFL is changing... and changing fast.

Ian shows you specifically what I mean with this little tidbit.

https://twitter.com/dynasty_im/status/1537967212371202049?s=20&t=cUSGyiKfMHWcp-vrYAW_iQ

So how does that change things? I have no idea. But I'd expect that we will have to drop those size requirements to some degree in the near future.

So that is a good starting point. There is literally nothing new here.

But now we are going to be trying to spot which WR's will be top 5 or score 18+ ppg in a given year.

One of my favorite stats is target share because it is one of the stickiest metrics that we have.

Also, because target share is volume and volume is fantasy points.

Ive taken the liberty of highlighting a few different things here for you under the target share column.

1) Green = 30%+
2) Yellow = 25%-30%
3) White = 20-25%
4) Red = <20%

Oh and this is sorted by ppg.

You'll notice quite a few green, quite a few yellow, a couple of white, and zero red.

This should be rather intuitive.

The average target share for our 18+ ppg folks is 28.11%.

We are obviously looking for players that can dominate their offense.

But as always, we mustn't forget the denominator.

Here are all of the players with 30%+... 4 missed, 3 were near misses and the curious case of Mike Evans back in 2015.

I presume a ton of folks told you he was "bad" at football on account of how 'inefficient' he was..

So yeah, no rocket science here. If you get a gazillion targets you will probably score a gazillion points.

11/15 hit = 73%

Yellow (25-30%) isn't nearly as promising.

21/81 players with target shares in that range hit an 18+ ppg season. 25.9%

White (20-25%) was only 7/151. 4.6%

And lastly Red (<20%) was 0/808. 0%

So yeah, obviously target share is important, we haven't split the atom here.

You will notice that if a player were to have a 30% target share or more, pretty much nothing else matters.

Except for whatever happened to Mike Evans in 2015. That clearly mattered.

So then our job should be to determine how to predict target share?

Well, as I mentioned before target share is pretty predictive of itself.

Players that had high target shares last year will probably have high target shares again this year. The reverse is also true

I'm out of tweets, so I need to post and will continue the thread, feel free to hold off commenting until I complete the rest of the thread as I may just answer your question within.

Here are the WRs that have played two non-rookie years in the NFL thus far that have averaged greater than 25% of their teams targets.

I would argue these players are the *most* likely to put up an 18+ ppg season.

Here are your WR's that have played one non-rookie year season that put up >25% target shares.

And then these were your rookies that had 20%+ target shares last year.... None of them had 25%+ though.

But they were rookies. Rookies need to be graded on a different scale than veterans which is why I normally use "non-rookie seasons"

One of the "functions" of target share seems to be ADOT which the great @CoopsFB laid out wonderfully in this piece for @DLFootball

There is an optimal ADOT for earning targets. This is largely role driven.

dynastyleaguefootball.com/2021/03/09/wid…

We want WRs with ADOT's between 8 and 14.

This is one of the reasons I was infamously out on folks like Deebo Samuel and Mike Williams for much different reasons heading into 2021.

They both needed role changes in order to realize their fantasy point scoring potential.

They both, "kind" of got it. Their year end ADOT's were in line in 2021.

But this is one of the reasons I am out on said receivers again this year. I want more assurance that their "role changes" are going to stick.

I only have one roster spot to spend and I want to make the best bet I can.

Now lets go back to our lists from earlier and see if we can spot some players to target.

If you've been keeping track at home these are sorted by colors for a reason:

Grey - Former top 5 scorers
Blue - 25%+ avg target share the past two years.
Orange - Rookies that were either good or highly drafted good prospects.
Green - 2nd year players w 25%+

As you can see I have posted their 2021 ADOT's. The players in red either need a role change or they are *probably* not going to have much upside.

This is the type of thing I like to call, "casting your net". Now we just have to fish within the net.

That is where the individual circumstance comes into play. We would look at things like:

- projectable range of outcomes.
- team context
- who benefits from chaos?

And most importantly how has the market (adp) reacted to their situation and them within the context of how good they are 'individually'?

Is the breakout priced in, like it is with CeeDee Lamb?

Last year I was pounding the table to stay the hell away from AJB at near WR1 overall prices

The masses completely forgot that the Titans haven't been out of the cellar in terms of pass volume in your lifetime

His price indicated that increased pass volume was 'assumed'

But yet, it was like the masses didnt even want to acknowledge that last year could have been the year that DJM scored touchdowns.

He was being priced as though he simply "couldnt" get lucky on TD's let alone perform up to 'average' in that department.

From a dynasty perspective these players are generally "good at football" and should be coveted pending price checks.

In redraft these players should be targeted because if you miss, you can just pick up a replacement player on waivers anyway.

Anyway, if this is your type of thing, hit me up on patreon.com/bulletproofFF

May your championships be plentiful.