I love a home league more than any other form of fantasy football on this blue marble. There is something about playing with my friends and family that all the money in the world couldn’t buy. Therefore, as you might imagine, this is my favorite time of year. Home leagues are ramping up, and people who value them most (one might call them The Sane) are crawling out of their bunker (one might call this A Life) and catching up with the rest of us.

If you are one of these people, I have great news; a lot of research has been done since we last saw you; these webpages have been filled with incredible analysis from a stable of the best fantasy writers in the world, speaking to an audience putting thousands on the line. If home leagues are your jam, like they are for me, these all amount to regularly scheduled scrimmages in preparation for the biggest event of the year. And while some of the micro-edges and format-specific roster construction details we bandy about may not translate to home leagues, the meticulously crafted player valuations translate everywhere.

After all the work we’ve put in with the soldering iron, the jeweler’s loupe, and the fine-toothed comb, it can honestly come as a shock when we finally look at the ADPs on a home league site and see the perspective of casual drafters who are just dipping their toes in the pool (Like, are y’all really not taking Dontayvion Wicks in the fifth round? — also, this is an inside joke; don’t do this.) The good news for you? We’ve got edges for days, and home leagues are giving us some crazy WR values in the middle rounds.

Cindy from IT is never gonna see this coming.

TARGET THESE KILLER WIDE RECEIVERS IN THE MIDDLE ROUNDS

A few parameters: I used Yahoo ADP, finding WRs that go between picks 61 and 120. A few of my favorites at ADP got lopped off by this bit of pruning — mainly DeVonta Smith (50.0 ADP) and Brian Thomas Jr. (129.8 ADP). But three of my absolute faves land right in the breadbasket in the middle rounds, and each is going for a song; so, let’s get the ol’ harpsichord tuned up and get ready to sing it.

MALIK NABERS (65.5 Yahoo ADP/20 RotoViz Rank)

One of the biggest questions of the offseason for me has been: why is there such a disparity in opinion between Marvin Harrison, Jr. and Malik Nabers? Several RotoViz writers have shown the same curiosity this spring:

This is by no means a dig at Harrison — his success is absolutely not the result of nepotism — but Nabers is not the type of WR that should be standing in anyone’s shadow. Nabers’ success is less a matter of ‘if’ or even ‘when,’ and more a matter of ‘how high can he go?’ and ‘how fast will he get there?

— Kevin Szafraniec, May 10.

Want to know why I recently moved Nabers ahead of Harrison in my dynasty rankings? The simplest explanation is this: Nabers provides unparalleled flexibility with epic upside.

— Shawn Siegele, April 24.

And others still have touched on the historicity of the market valuation of these two WRs:

Rookies are not included in the alpha wide receiver group, because, well, we have never had a rookie WR drafted in the first two rounds. That is, until 2024’s Marvin Harrison Jr. (ADP 13.6) made fantasy history, with Malik Nabers knocking on the door (24.9).

— Michael Dubner, August 18.

But the best ball/sharp market on FFPC is lapping the field on Nabers’s ADP, as he goes over thirty spots later on Yahoo. I think it is at least arguable that Harrison is being taken near the top of his range of outcomes; I’ll grant you that. But Nabers at the top of the sixth is Grand Theft, no matter what format. Shawn has led the charge on championing Nabers’ profile over Harrison’s coming out of school; these are both elite rookie prospects that should be held up as Amari Cooper/Ja’Marr Chase-types. One of the only considerations that offers a modicum of separation is each one’s landing spot. In dynasty this is less of a problem because we recognize the fluidity of circumstance; in redraft, people draw a straighter line from QB to pass-catcher and want to dodge the treachery of a potential pitfall.

Kyler Murray is indeed a better QB than Daniel Jones (or Drew Lock if you’re behaving skeptically). But Giants’ HC Brian Daboll is historically pass-heavy, and New York has no single weapon on the team as target-absorbent as Trey McBride should prove to be in 2024. More than that, we simply tend to overstate the impact of a QB on a WR’s ability to land near the apex of the position (D.J. Moore, Mike Evans, and Davante Adams all finished as top-12 WRs in 2023, for example).

Nabers is an elite talent. WRs like him finish at or near the positional top 12, even as rookies. Don’t overthink it.