In trying to predict future WR performance, I often estimate that “X” number of targets equates to “Y” level of WR fantasy. You might wonder where these estimates come from.
They start with this graph:
I plotted each WR’s targets against his seasonal rank in fantasy points per game among WRs, from 2002 to the present (PPR scoring). To balance out missed games, I converted each WR’s actual targets to his targets for a full 16-game schedule. Since all my predictions usually start with the assumption that a WR will play a full schedule, I wanted to have 16-game target totals to use in estimating how a player might rank given that number of targets.
I also eliminated WRs who played less than 4 games, to get rid of small sample sizes. All ranks were calculated after those WRs were removed from the sample.
For example, last year, T.Y. Hilton ranked 13th in FP/G with 17.1 FP/G. He had 120 targets in 14 games, which equates to 137 targets for 16 games. So that’s how he plots on the graph (big red diamond below):
Each dot represents a WR who both finished in the Top 100 in FP/G and had at least 50 (prorated) targets in the period from 2002-2018. The black line is a curve with the equation shown on the graph, where X = Targets per 16 Games and Y = FP/G Rank. That equation is based on a regression analysis which was an R-squared (R2) of 0.7849. At its most simplistic interpretation, that tells me that about 78% of WR FP/G rank is due to the number of targets he sees in 16 games.1
That’s a pretty high percentage and one of the reasons estimating how many targets a WR will see is a very good way of then predicting his final rank. Obviously, it’s not everything: look at Hilton’s diamond. It’s well above the trendline. In fact, the dots are pretty scattered, so I didn’t want to just plug a target prediction into the equation and say, this will be Jimmy Bob’s rank this year. It’s not that accurate (because that other 22% is important) and a sure way to be wrong. I prefer to use tier descriptions rather than precise ranks when predicting WR performance. How do I associate tiers with targets?
This is my scheme, based on 12-team fantasy leagues:
Top 3: Pretty obvious, finish in the Top 3 WRs in FP/G
Top 6: Also obvious
WR1: From here on, I get less specific, WR7 overall to WR10
Low WR1: WR11 or WR12
Hi WR2: WR13 or WR14
Mid WR2: WR15 to WR21
Low WR2: WR22 to WR242
Hi WR3: WR25 or WR26
Mid WR3: WR27 to WR33
Low WR3: WR34 to WR36
Hi WR4: WR37 to WR38
WR4: WR39 to WR44
Top 50: WR44 to WR523
WR5: WR53 to WR60
WR6: WR61 to WR72
WW: Waiver wire fodder, WR73+4
Once that was done, I could assign every WR since 2002 to a tier based on his rank and then pair that rank with his targets per 16 games. Then I put those pairs into a table like this:
Of the 8 WRs since 2002 who have had 50 targets, and finished in the Top 100, 6 would be described as having finished in the WW tier and 2 in the WR6 tier. So I would describe a WR with a 50-target projection as being a WW guy – and maybe as having WR6 upside if I wanted to describe him further.
I did a similar process for each block of 5 targets: 55, 60, 65, etc. Some were less clear-cut than the 50 targets line. For example, here are the 105 targets data, plus the numbers on either side that rounded to 105:
The WR4 category has 13 WRs in it; the Top 50 had 14. There are 13 WRs in a tier lower than Top 50 and 24 higher than WR4. While I’ve defined “Hi WR4” and “Top 50” as separate tiers from “WR4”, they obviously overlap in our minds with WR4. So I made a judgment call and went with “WR4” as my descriptor for a 105-target season. For downside, it was easy, WR6, since those were the lowest examples. For upside though, there was one “Low WR1” and two “Hi WR2” examples. I could have gone with the outlier on the high side but felt “Hi WR2” was the better choice.
This table is the result of all the subjective judgments I made (the 105 targets row from the example above is highlighted):
I built this table to help me assign those descriptions, but you can use it subjectively to do your own analysis, knowing there is some underlying historical reality.
Let’s go back to the T.Y. Hilton 2018 example. He had 137 targets/16 games, round that to 135 and ranked 8th, a WR1. Enter the table at 135, his fantasy value “should have been” Mid WR2; he actually finished as a High WR2. His catch rate was 63%, above average for a WR since 2002 (59%). His yards per catch (16.7) were above average (13.4). And his TD rate/target (0.05) was exactly average. Because two of his three efficiency stats, especially his yards per catch rate, were above average, he ranked a bit above his expected tier.
So if you build your own estimates of how many targets a WR will get (Jimmy Bob got 105 targets last year, and the team got rid of Billy Ray, so Jimmy Bob should get 125 is a perfectly fine way to do an estimate in my opinion), you can see what tier that historically would put him in (Hi WR3).
Then you can look at Jimmy Bob and his QB, and if you think he will have a high catch rate, high yards per catch, or score more than his share of TDs, or some combination thereof, you can say, well he’s going to hit his upside of WR1, or somewhere in between his baseline Fantasy Value and his upside. Or if Jimmy Bob has a rookie QB who’s going to be shaky for a while, you can give the wideout his downside tier, WR4. At least you have a range of likely outcomes to compare Jimmy Bob and Billy Ray on his new team.
1If I use all WRs, I get a higher R2 value. The fewer targets a WR gets, the closer they cluster around a regression trendline and the better the regression results look. But that’s misleading. We don’t care about a WR who gets 10 total targets and ranks 158th. I’d prefer to have a lower R2 and analyze more relevant WRs. That’s why I have cutoffs of 50 targets and WR100. Those are on the fringes of relevancy, ensuring I’m probably not missing anyone important, without artificially inflating the R2 and creating a misleading statistical accuracy. Note the R2 value for FP/G is about the same as that for WR Rank from the Top 100 WRs.
2I’m not consistent with my Low WR1 description because my “Mid WR2” is different from my WR1 category – my tiers are finer-grained at the top than at the bottom levels.
3Here, I blur the Low WR4/Hi WR5 together.
4Assuming 20-man rosters; bigger or smaller rosters would move the WW point.
