These 4 Second Year Wide Receivers Could Lead You to a Playoff Berth—Wide Receiver Usage Trends and Takeaways: Week 13

Bjorn Yang-Vaernet
December 2, 2021

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.

As highlighted in many articles around the site this week, the running back position got decimated last weekend. Christian McCaffrey is out for the season, Dalvin Cook is out for two games at a minimum, and other lower-profile names including Darrell Henderson, D’Andre Swift, and Miles Sanders picked up injuries.

These were the top-24 RBs by ADP on July 1st this summer.

Absolute carnage. pic.twitter.com/yVKnIvz7sq

— Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) November 30, 2021

Many fantasy teams will now be relying on their WRs to have high-end production. Who are the emerging WRs that can help down the homestretch for playoffs? Below I highlight four second-year WRs and a pair of veterans with high floors.

Routes Run and Targets per Route

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).

*Route data is not yet available for players from WAS and SEA as of this writing.

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Bjorn Yang-Vaernet

Writer at RotoViz. Best ball enthusiast. Happy to interact more on Twitter @GoldenGate_FF

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