In this weekly article, Bjorn Yang-Vaernet uses the Advanced Stat Explorer and other RotoViz tools to dive deep into wide receiver usage trends. Usage is key for making waiver wire adds, start/sit decisions, and finding the next blow-up WR in DFS.
Week 1 was awesome: a full slate of games with more than two-quarters of starters playing. More importantly, after months of debating who the next breakout wide receiver is, there is tangible information to base our takes on. While this is just one week of data, there are still important takeaways that can be gleaned from the usage.
Many of these stats come from the new Advanced Stat Explorer. I highly recommend checking it out — you can get lost in it for hours.
Routes Run and Routes per Target
Routes run is the first key statistic I’ll focus on because WRs need to be on the field to produce. The second statistic is routes per target. Unlike RBs usage, targets are earned as a WR and routes per target is a helpful measure in figuring out which players are good (or which players coaches want to get the ball to).
