NFL

Fantasy Football Today: Round 2-3 wide receivers to target or avoid in your drafts

by
SaC Bot
June 5, 2024

USATSI

One of my favorite aspects of working with Fantasy Football Today is how often and early we get both the mock drafts and real drafts rolling prior to the start of a Fantasy Football (and NFL season). We’ve had mocks running from before and after the 2024 NFL Draft and now we’re starting to accrue some data on ADP (average draft position) trends, the sweet spots in every round and strategies that will determine roster builds for the coming season.

One concept that has been discussed on the Fantasy Football Today podcast at length is the surprising uncertainty at the WR position once we dip into Rounds 2-3. On Tuesday’s FFT show, the guys dove into which wide receivers they are targeting from that range and Adam ranked those second and third-round receivers in order for PPR formats. We’ll dive into some of those key takeaways on each wide receiver selected in this range from Adam Aizer’s detailed show prep below as well as Adam’s PPR rankings of the second tier receivers.

Olave finds himself coming off the board at some point in Round 2 but he has fallen to the Round 2/3 turn in some of our early mock drafts. The talented Saints receiver played through injuries in 2023, but would’ve been on pace to rack up 92 receptions and 1,193 yards on 147 targets over a 17-game pace. If you remove Week 4 where Derek Carr played through a shoulder injury that limited him to 127 yards on 37 attempts (and a whole lot of checkdowns to Alvin Kamara), Olave was on a 97-1,268-6 pace on 150 targets. The volume is likely to only improve in 2024 with an added year of rapport with Carr plus the team’s decision to move on from Michael Thomas. Olave may ultimately be a better bet in Best Ball leagues after finishing with 60 yards or fewer in eight games in 2023, unless of course you see the Saints passing game taking an unlikely step forward in 2024. However, Olave could benefit from a new system with Klint Kubiak coming in to run the offense. There’s a whole lot of projection involved in Olave’s outlook, however, as he has never finished as a top-20 Fantasy receiver in points per game at any point in his career despite being drafted above that range.

If we’re projecting when it comes to Olave and his ADP, we’re doing the same with London who racked up just 69 receptions, 905 receiving yards and two touchdowns on 109 targets in 2023. Of course, Desmond Ridder and Taylor Heinicke were his quarterbacks and now he gets Kirk Cousins. Working in London’s favor is the fact that he has led the Falcons in both red zone and green zone targets for two straight seasons — he has just six touchdowns to show for it but the Falcons quarterbacks have only thrown for 34 touchdown passes over the last two seasons. London hasn’t finished in the top 40 in Fantasy points per game among wide receivers on a per-game basis, but he is being drafted in the Rounds 2-3 range based on how he might project with Cousins. It’s important to remember Cousins is 36 years old, returning from Achilles tear and learning a brand new offensive system.

Waddle didn’t live up to his ADP in 2023 in large part due to injuries. He played in just 14 games and wasn’t fully healthy for the entirety of them. If you extrapolate his production over a 17-game sample size, Waddle was on pace for 87 receptions, 1,231 yards and five touchdowns compared to his 2022 season where he racked up 75 receptions, 1,356 yards and eight touchdowns on 117 targets. If Waddle can stay healthy in 2023, there’s reason to believe he can bounce back to 2022 form. In Weeks 7 and 16 of the 2023 season, Waddle played just 45% and 43% of the Dolphins’ snaps, respectively. If you remove those weeks, he had a 17-game pace of 92/1,267/7. In 2022, Waddle played more than 70% of the Dolphins’ offensive snaps in 13 of 17 games but that dropped to just six of 14 games in 2023 as he battled through injuries. Waddle was the WR7 overall in 2022 and after signing an extension with the Dolphins he’s one of the best value picks in the Rounds 2-3 range at wide receiver now that he is fully healthy.

Pittman found success with Gardner Minshew in 2023 by earning a massive target share. He racked up 109 receptions, 1,152 receiving yards and four touchdowns on a whopping 156 targets (through just 16 games). Minshew is gone and Anthony Richardson is fully healthy for OTAs. In Weeks 1 and 4 with Richardson (the rookie quarterback’s only two fully healthy games), Pittman racked up eight catches for 97 yards and a touchdown in one of them and just one catch for 15 yards (on five targets) in the other. Production could be tricky to predict with such a small sample size working with Richardson. However, there are very few receivers you can grab in the Rounds 2-3 range with more upside than Pittman given his potential target share and the potential for this passing game to take a leap forward in Richardson’s second season.

Adams is 31 years old now, but he still managed 103 receptions, 1,144 yards and eight touchdowns on 175 targets in 17 games. Targets are earned at the NFL level and Adams has shown no signs of slowing down. The Raiders have no peppered Adams with 175-plus targets in two consecutive seasons. Of course, the flip side to this is that in 2023 the Raiders had the third-highest off target rate among all quarterbacks. Projecting a big jump for the Raiders offense seems risky even after the team added Gardner Minshew at quarterback. Also, there are some alarming rate trends on Adams to consider. His 11.7 yards per catch was his lowest since 2015, he has now gone two consecutive seasons with a catch rate under 60%, and he had just 3.3 yards after the catch per reception in 2023 after racking up at least 4.6 yards after the catch per reception in seven of his last 10 seasons. Adams’ floor should still be high due to the heavy volume he is likely to receive, but there is injury risk given his age, metrics to be concerned about and a ceiling that isn’t what it used to be.

Check out the Fantasy Football Today podcast below for more detailed breakdowns of each wide receiver plus full breakdowns on Mike Evans, Brandon Aiyuk and Nico Collins.

Below, you’ll find Adam Aizer’s PPR rankings of the Rounds 2-3 receivers: