Top 40 Wide Receiver Rankings & Tiers

We have nasty injury updates, brains news, and sports book projections have actually dropped. And all of this has made me update my rankings over the past few months. So, let's dive into where they stand as of now, late June, early July.

S tier going to remain the same. Like Jamar Chase, of course, we can sit here and we can say, "Oh, okay. Well, maybe he wasn't the most exciting wide receiver in fantasy last year, knowing that he went at the 101 in almost every single draft. He ended up with 19.6 fantasy points per game, which had him as the wide receiver three in points per game. But honestly, I think we need to take a step backwards, look back at what we saw from Jamar Chase in 2024, where Jamar Chase in 2024 was the wide receiver one in fantasy with 23.7 points per game. I mean, in the Flock League that year, I drafted Jamar Chase as my round one pick and he was essentially the only reason why I finished with a top two record that season. And one thing that we can do over here on flockfantasy.com is we can pull up what we have had with Jamar Chase with and without Joe Burrow over the past two years and you can see some pretty clear numbers on why Chase did have that dip this past season. And it was simple. Jamar Chase had to deal with non-Joe Burrow quarterback play at the beginning of the year. But in the games in which Burrow has been his quarterback over the past two seasons, he has averaged 22 and a half points per game, which makes him the wide receiver one during that stretch. And it's not even remotely close.

Now, moving over to our wide receiver two that we're going to have, it is going to be Puka. Now, Puka was incredible last year. Like, look at just this game log. Obviously, he goes down in week six where you see him only have 4.8 fantasy points, but he only played 53% of the snaps in that game. He misses week seven, but outside of that two-week stretch, he had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten games with more than 20 fantasy points. And he had zero games with fewer than 13. So, incredibly high ceiling that you have with Puka. The only thing that I'm going to be discounting here a bit is, let me pull up our sportsbook projections that we have on the site. And while the Rams still project to be the best offense in the NFL, last year they averaged 30 and a half points per game. And this year they project to only average 26.8. So you probably have some regression when it comes to the Rams offense. But Puka is still absolutely going to ball.

Now JSN's going to be our last wide receiver here. JSN extremely consistent. Like if we use that same 13-point game threshold that we had for Puka, JSN only had one game with fewer than 13 fantasy points. And he had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten games with over 20 this past season. And it has been a continued trend for JSN to improve every single year in every statistical category. As a rookie, extremely disappointing. Wide receiver, 54 in points per game. Year two, that jumped up to being the wide receiver 20. This past year, he was the wide receiver, two. This was an elite prospect coming out of Ohio State as well, which is worthy to note. And at the same time, he has played 17 games every single season of his NFL career. And there's a small chance that you actually have this team leaning a little bit more pass with the departure of Kenneth Walker, with the injury of Zack Sherbanet, and obviously a rookie leading this backfield injured. So, you can't go wrong taking one of these wide receivers. Outside of Bijan and Gibbs, I think that these are the safest picks that you have on the board and you have to make inside the first five overall picks. You're not going to get them.

Now, moving over to one of my most drafted round one players, it is Amon-Ra St. Brown because while maybe he doesn't have the same ceiling that we get with Jamar, the same ceiling that we get with Puka Nacua, the floor is incredible here. Like he is going into his sixth NFL season. He has never played fewer than 16 games. While at the same time, we can come through and look at the peaks that we've had where he has been a top 10 wide receiver in points per game every single year over the past four. And he has been a top five wide receiver in points per game every year over the past three. A lot of people were concerned about what this offense was going to look like without Ben Johnson. St. Brown honestly wasn't really impacted. He's still averaged over 19 fantasy points per contest. Now, one thing that is important to note, if I'm going to be fair here with a wide receiver that I have drafted a ridiculous amount of this season, is one, he is going to be older than what we have with those other wide receivers that we've talked about. He's still in his prime, but he is about to turn 27. The other thing that's worthy of note is Jameson Williams, who we'll talk about later on here, actually did get better as the year went on. When you had the change with the offensive play calling. So, if we look at the first half of the year for Jamo versus the second half of the season, like his targets had gone up dramatically. Of course, I'm going to talk about Jameson Williams later in this video. I'm actually higher on Jameson Williams than I've ever been in a fantasy season.

Now, moving over to wide receiver five, I'm going to have the Danny Lad special. The guy he took at number two overall in the Flock League, which led to him losing the league this past year. Rest in peace. He's going to be at Denny's all day. Is CeeDee Lamb. Now CeeDee Lamb had a high ankle sprain, right? So we can maybe excuse some of his poor play on that fact, but I don't want to just completely cope with it because while he missed this stretch of games, weeks three, four, five, six, when he came back in week seven, he had one of the best games of his season. He had over 100 receiving yards and a receiving touchdown. So I don't know if we can look at that emergence that we had in week seven and then excuse his poor play at the end of the year due to a hangover effect from the high ankle sprain that he had early on. Obviously, the big drop that we had from Lamb was coming from his market share numbers. If you look at this on the site, he had 27%, 29%, and 28% of the Dallas Cowboys targets from a per-game perspective from 2022 to 2024. However, with the addition of George Pickens this past season, that fell down to 23% of the Dallas Cowboys targets in the games that he played in, which obviously is a dramatic fall. So, I don't think you can view him as an S-tier wide receiver with where he was being drafted last year because Pickens has proven that he's legit. He is going to be the real deal. But at the same time, if I look at those sportsbook projections that we have posted on flockfantasy.com, right now, the only offenses that project to be better than the Dallas Cowboys this next year are the Detroit Lions, the Buffalo Bills, and the Los Angeles Rams.

Now, moving over to Justin Jefferson. The Jefferson bull case is very simple. You can make an argument that Justin Jefferson is the most talented wide receiver in the NFL. Let me pull up the player comparison on flockfantasy.com and let's look at every top NFL wide receiver from the years 2020 through 2024, right? Essentially any game in which you've had no JJ McCarthy or hell, let's not even do that. I mean, you can see here just during that stretch, he had a worst season over five years, finishing as the wide receiver seven in points per game, and that was his rookie year. Maybe the better way to view this is going back and looking at what we saw with Jamar Chase and looking at the historical splits that we've had from Justin Jefferson over the past two years with and without JJ McCarthy, right? Because my base expectation with Jefferson is we're never seeing McCarthy under center outside of a Kyler Murray injury this next season. And he has played 10 games with JJ McCarthy in his NFL career. And in those 10 games, he was the wide receiver 35 in points per game. And the 24 games he played without JJ McCarthy, keep in mind the Vikings had some of the worst quarterback play in the league last year. Like where we're going, "Oh, thank God, no McCarthy. We have Carson Wentz or center, right?" Like that's the quote-unquote good play that he had. Is the wide receiver six in points per game. I think that Kyler is going to come in and elevate the offense. Am I going to tell you that Kyler Murray is a true elite-level quarterback? No. But I think he's a hell of a lot better than what we just had with McCarthy.

Now, moving over to our B tier, a wide receiver I have drafted a ton of is going to be Drake London. Now, obviously, I want to get y'all my overall rankings soon. The only thing that is holding me up is your overall rankings and how you value wide receivers versus running backs is so dependent on your league settings that I really want to make sure that I'm tailoring those to your exact format, the exact platform, and everything to your league specifically. Which is why we are going to have those 50-plus draft sheets posted on flockfantasy.com. As long as those real-time draft assistance for your Sleeper, ESPN, and Yahoo drafts as well, we're going to have all the overall rankings there. And of course, it's not too late to get access to all of that. The flockfantasy.com season pass for this next year is only $34 right now. And if you use code FLOCK when you sign up, not only are you going to get all the stuff from everybody on the site, which is pretty much all the YouTubers you already watch, but I'm also going to be answering your questions for you for free during the live streams this season. You can find the link to that in the description as well as the comment section.

But sticking with the wide receiver ranks and Drake London averaged 16.8 fantasy points per game this past season, the consistency was not there. We can see with London some of these absolute dud games where he went out there and he scored fewer than 10 fantasy points one, two, three, four times. However, he had multiple games with over 30. If you average this all out, Drake London still managed to be the wide receiver seven in points per game. He still managed to have 9.3 targets per game and a target share over 30%. He is a true target hog. And I know a lot of people are going to say with London, who hasn't even turned 25 years old yet, "Oh, okay, well the Atlanta Falcons offense is garbage, right? The Falcons are so damn bad. Why would I want to draft the wide receiver for Tua or Michael Penn?" But what's very interesting is if you go to the site and look at those sportsbook projections, you would notice that the Atlanta Falcons project to be a better offense this year than they were last season. Not by much, by about half a point per game. But they are a bad offense. You can't deny that. But they're going to be slightly improved or at least should be. And Drake London was already the wide receiver seven in points per game last season. He's only 25 years old. You can assume that he continues to get better and he has no target share whatsoever.

Now Nico Collins I traded for halfway through last season in the Flock League. I ended up giving Diggs as well as Stefon Diggs for him. And I really like what we had in the second half of the season, right? We had a lot of these games with over 20 fantasy points. Very similar to London, you don't have the same level consistency that you get from the S-tier and A-tier wide receivers. Like here, you can see one, two, three, four, five games this past season with fewer than 10 fantasy points. Now, keep in mind, you look at some of these game logs, like this game against the Seattle Seahawks, he did go down early. I believe that was with a concussion. I think I actually traded for him right about here. But we can't just ignore the other games in which he performed poorly, right? The thing with Nico is we've seen three straight seasons of him being a top 10 wide receiver, but he has never played more than 15 games in a year. And with the Houston Texans defense, it is so good that you're going to assume that the overall amount of passing attempts C.J. Stroud gets is not going to be incredibly high in comparison to some of these other offenses. Target share should be up. Efficient wide receiver, extremely talented player. But you have the injury concerns as well as the fact that the passing volume's probably not going to be super high here in Houston.

Now AJ Brown is officially a New England Patriot. Now obviously I am drafting teams on the live stream every single night. Real Money fantasy drafts. I would love for you to come and hang out with us in those streams. Maybe draft in a league with us. So just make sure you're subscribed. But what's funny is early in the offseason, everybody knew that AJ Brown was going to be a New England Patriot. Like whenever we would go through and whenever we would draft AJ Brown, the quarterback we would target for our stack, it was Drake May. And it's not like I'm some next-level genius where I'm the only person with access to Dianne. No, I mean it was the national story. Everybody knew. But the second that the trade actually happened, then you had AJ Brown going from being consistently a third-round pick to now you're not going to get him after the second round. With AJ Brown, he did have a significant drop-off from 2024 to 2025 and a couple key categories. The number one thing that I want to point out is this yards per route run column. He fell from 3.16 down to 2.13, a career low. Jalen Hurts was still throwing him the ball. He was averaging 8.1 targets per game, a 29.5% team target share. I mean, that's up there at the very top of the NFL, but the efficiency was down. The yards per target, tied for a career low. Last time we saw it that low, he was a Tennessee Titan in 2021. So, when you're drafting Brown, everything hinges on how much you are willing to excuse away the drop in efficiency last season on the quarterback play with Jalen Hurts and make an argument for it to be improved this year with Drake May.

Now, if you look at how many points the New England Patriots often scored last season, they were incredible. The Patriots scored 28 and a half points per game. They were only behind the Los Angeles Rams in total points scored. However, super important to note what sportsbooks are projecting this year. Sportsbooks have the New England Patriots as the number one offense with regression and scoring fewer points year-over-year than they did the year prior. So, I want to bank in that the New England Patriots offense will not be to the same level that it was last year, even with the addition of AJ Brown, that they ran hot with the easiest schedule in the NFL. So, it's tough for me to get as excited as some other people are where they're just immediately moving AJ Brown ahead of Drake London where I'm looking at it going, "Maybe the quarterback play is a little bit better, but Brown's 29 years old. Drake London hasn't even turned 25. London averaged over two points per game more than AJ Brown this past season. We did see the drop-off in efficiency from the 28-year-old. So, I'm going to need a little bit of a discount on AJ Brown where I wouldn't be willing to take him ahead of London."

Now, going down to our S tier, George Pickens has an incredible range of outcomes. Like, if you go through and use the range of outcomes tool on flockfantasy.com, which you can see a little sneak peek of it here as we bring up these players, you'll see that wide receivers that had a similar age 24 season to George Pickens. Since I think we go back to 2008 on flockfantasy.com would be Michael Thomas in 2017. The following year he averaged 19.7 points per game. AJ Green 2012. The following year he averaged 19 points per game. Odell Beckham Jr. 2016. The following year he averaged 18.5 points per game. Brandon Marshall 2008 the following year 18.5. Dez Bryant 2012 the following year 18.2. Like you are not going to find another wide receiver that has comps as exciting as what George Pickens just put up at 24. I mean, at 24 years old, he had 84 and a half receiving yards per game, 10.4 yards per target off of only a 22% team target share. So, Pickens is incredible. I am ranking him here with the assumption that he is going to be worse year-over-year. And if he is not, he is the biggest value in drafts. There is a real-world scenario in which these CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens rankings should be flipped. Like I'm going to acknowledge that right now. The only thing that I think is worth pointing out is Pickens did get to juice some of these stats a bit in the games in which he played without CeeDee Lamb. Like let me go through and let's pull this in. And actually, we're not going to look at any previous years because obviously it's tough to go through and say like, "Oh, okay, we can use George Pickens as a Pittsburgh Steeler against him this season, right?" But in the three games without CeeDee Lamb, George Pickens averaged 26.3 points per game, he had almost 120 receiving yards per game. And in those three games, he had four touchdowns, right? Unbelievable. 3.58 yards per target. Like this was the number one guy in fantasy whenever you had no Lamb. With CeeDee Lamb, a little more disappointing. He fell down to being the wide receiver 10 in points per game. So that's exactly where I'm going to rank him here because I'm expecting that CeeDee Lamb's going to be good to go. And I still would prefer Lamb because we have the largest sample of him being a dominant fantasy option. But if Pickens can replicate what he did last year, he's an incredible value.

Now the Rashee Rice saga is insane, right? Rice is a player that we have never really got to see play out a full season. He played four games in 2024 and then you had Mahomes taking him out for good. 2025 he was suspended, right? And not only was he suspended, but we can go through and look at him coming back in week seven and then Patrick Mahomes going down at the end of the season as well, right? But with Rashee Rice, it is extremely difficult to know if you're going to be able to rely upon him because he seems like the least reliable person I've ever met. Like I mean, I haven't met him. I wish I could. Buddy, I'd shake your hand and ask you how you're going and maybe try to give you a wee bit of life advice. But the best news that we've had from Rashee Rice this offseason was the fact that he was able to leave jail with no incidents in the jail. I mean, I was afraid that he was going to be doing something behind bars that was going to keep him there for good. But the fact that he gets out, obviously positive. And at the same time, he was actually able to leave the jail when he was there for the course of the month to go and get rehab surgery or I'm sorry, rehab on the knee that he had to have a cleanup surgery with this offseason. So, we have Rice coming off a surgery, spent a month in jail, but when he's been on the field, like over the past two seasons, wide receiver five in points per game in 2025. And then if we go back and look at where he was in 2024, in the three games that he played fully, 17.3, 18.5, 29.1 fantasy points. So, I mean, he produces when he's out there. Mahomes is looking healthy and he is no longer behind bars, which has to be a positive thing.

Now DeVonta Smith is a very difficult eval because with Smith, if we're looking at really any of these stats, they're all skewed. He's had to play with AJ Brown, one of the most dominant wide receivers in the NFL, AJ Brown, who sees a 30% team target share on average. Now AJ Brown has missed some time, right? So we can go through and maybe we can look at DeVonta Smith over the past four years in games with and without AJ Brown. It's going to take a slight second for flockfantasy.com to load this for us. So going from 2022 to 2025, we've seen four games without AJ Brown. And in those four games, DeVonta Smith averaged 8.25 points per game, a 29% team target, more receptions per game, more receiving yards per game. I mean, he's had a jump from a total of 2.1 yards per route run up to 3.8, but it is a very small sample. Not only is it a very small sample, but at the same time, you have A.J. Brown coming into Philadelphia with Eli Sterns, a tight end that can essentially run wide receiver routes. So, I want to bank that DeVonta Smith is going to improve year-over-year, especially with the change with the coaching staff for the Philadelphia Eagles where right now, if you do look at sportsbook projections, they are supposed to have a bounceback season and be a higher-scoring offense this year than they were last, but it is tough because he did finish as the wide receiver 31 at 27 years old last year and we're ranking him here as the wide receiver 12. So we are banking in a ton of improvement both for the Eagles offense as well as the market share numbers for Smith without AJ Brown.

Now Chris Olave incredible last season. Like obviously S crushed the Flock League having CMC and Jonathan Taylor and Trey McBride on the same team. But the sneaky MVP for him winning the league in the playoffs was Chris Olave who in the final three weeks finished off with 20.5, 36.8, and 25.9 fantasy points. He did so as well only at 25 years old. The historical comps for wide receivers that had a similar age 25 season were Calvin Johnson, Tyreek Hill, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Brandon Marshall, T. Higgins, Terry McLaurin, and then you get to some bad names like Deontay Johnson who he fell from 17 points per game down to 10.5 and Jerry Judy who fell from 14 points per game down to seven. But I want to believe in Chris Olave, right? I want to believe that he's actually up here with the top-end range of outcomes. Somebody closer to like Terry McLaurin and T. Higgins. And I think we can because he's been a good wide receiver in fantasy before where you go back to 2023 before he dealt with the concussion stuff and here he is the wide receiver 17 in points per game. And with Olave as well, you actually do have the Saints offense projecting to improve year-over-year. Last year, the Saints averaged 18 points per game, and this year, the projections have them slightly over 21.2. So, sports books are telling us that we should expect Derek Carr to improve. But I do want to at least address the fact that he still has the same concussion concerns, which has plagued him throughout his entire NFL career. Just because he dodged the concussion bug this past season doesn't mean it's going to be the same thing this next year. And also on top of this, this team did significantly invest into Jordan Tyson, a wide receiver we'll talk about later that I think has an incredible ceiling.

Now, let's pull up T. Higgins. And with Higgins, you can never look at just his per-game statistics throughout his career because there are some of these games that are mixed in where the dude will play one snap and then we won't see him again, right? Like maybe that's not something we had to deal with this past year, but I mean we can just go back and we can look at previous seasons and see Higgins go out there in 2022 play 27% of the snaps, 19% of the snaps, 2% of the snaps. And these are going to impact just his per-game numbers when we look historically. So, it is difficult to just try to draw a one-to-one comparison based on what's happened in the past for Higgins and what's going to happen in the future. One thing that we do know is we've seen an incredibly high ceiling before where last season in 2024 he averaged 18 and a half points per game and he was the wide receiver six. This was like his George Pickens year where Pickens this past year obviously alongside CeeDee Lamb. This was T. Higgins popping off to that same extent. And with Higgins, he has also had to deal with Joe Burrow being injured over the past two seasons where if we go through and do the same thing that we did with Jamar Chase and look at Higgins with and without Burrow over the past two years, he's had to play nine games without Joe Burrow. And in those nine games, 13.4 fantasy points per game. He's a low-end wide receiver two. But over the past two years, in the games he's played with Joe Burrow, 17.4 fantasy points per game, which would have him right up there as a top-five wide receiver in fantasy. Not to mention that you have some contingent value where we go down a hypothetical scenario of Jamar Chase getting injured. Then immediately T. Higgins becomes an A-tier level receiver. Like let's go through the hypothetical. Jamar Chase tears his ACL in the preseason. It's middle of August in the Flock League. I'm on the clock. It would be tough for me to take Drake London over T. Higgins in that scenario. I would probably be sliding T. Higgins into the end of this A-tier alongside Lamb and Jefferson. So, that's the type of ceiling you would have if you did get an injury to Jamar, but obviously unlikely and that's not the main reason we're drafting him.

Now, moving over to Zay Flowers. Zay Flowers has been steaming up fantasy drafts and it's not even funny. Now, what is maybe a little funny with Flowers is if you look at his year last season, it was bookended by incredible performances where week one he was the wide receiver one in fantasy. In week 18, he was the wide receiver one in fantasy. However, if we look at every week in between the two, we look at weeks 2 through 17, he had two games with over 20 fantasy points, and that was a 20.6 game and a 21.2. Well, at the same time, he had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve games with fewer than 15 points. Now, what's interesting to note with Flowers, one, this team did go out there, they drafted a couple wide receivers day two of the NFL draft, which I do think is an important note, and two, you have the change with the coaching staff, which it is going to be very difficult to figure out how we should project Flowers out and the overall passing offense. And three, he did have to deal with the injury to Lamar Jackson this past season. And if we look over the past two years for Flowers in games in which Lamar's played, he's been the wide receiver 22 in points per game. And in games in which he hasn't, he's fallen down to being the wide receiver 33. But unlike Higgins where I'm willing to use those splits and rank him as like a wide receiver with real number one upside, I don't know if I can do so with Flowers because again, with the change of the coaching staff, I don't know how confident we can be that all of a sudden Flowers is a wide receiver that is going to see a ton of passing volume, especially with the new names that they added in.

Now, looking at Malik Nabers, obviously there's nothing we can do to go through and just look at his statistics and determine if he's going to be a good or a bad pick. I just took him in the middle of round four in the last $500 draft I did on the live stream. I got him at like the 406 and in a tournament like that, I was willing to take the risk for the ceiling that we may have in the second half of the season because the ceiling that you have is he is the number one wide receiver in fantasy. I know that's aggressive, but we go back to 2024 in his rookie season. He averaged almost 35% of the targets for the New York Giants. Unbelievable. Legitimately unbelievable. This was with bad quarterback play. If you want to say that Daniel Jones and this coaching staff, they have real upside. If he can maintain anything close to this level of target share and an improved offense, he could be the wide receiver one in fantasy. But the problem with it is he currently has one leg. Like if I just go through and search Malik Nabers on Twitter, the number one thing that everybody has followed this offseason, I know this is going to sound dumb. This came out a while ago. This came out like almost a month ago is Nabers just trying to jog in a celebrity softball game. Like it's unbelievable. But if we go through and look at this, like he is he can't move and this was May 30th. He completely destroyed his knee. This wasn't a clean ACL tear. After we see that video, the New York Giants come out and they go, "You know what? Let's sign Odell Beckham Jr. Uh, you know what? Let's sign Juju Smith-Schuster. Uh, you know what? Let's sign Darnell Mooney earlier in the offseason. Oh, you know what? Let's draft Malachi Fields." Like, the New York Giants have felt the need to just add as many wide receivers to this wide receiver room as they possibly can. Every doctor is coming through and saying that you're not getting Malik Nabers until week eight. So, I would almost say that in an Underdog baseball tournament where all the money's won in the final three weeks, by all means, take them. In your regular redraft league, if you have an injured reserve that you could throw them on, by all means, take them. But if you're drafting him like an ESPN league where you don't have an IR slot and you would actually have to put him on your bench for him to not play games at the beginning of the season, I would honestly move him even lower in these rankings until we get additional news.

Now, Tee Higgins has been a massive follower. I don't exactly know why to be honest. Like with Tee, I saw everything I needed to his rookie season. He came out and in a garbage Carolina Panthers offense, which sports books are projecting to improve year-over-year, he finished the wide receiver 24 in points per game in his rookie season. This was an incredible prospect coming into the NFL. And if we go through and look at the historical comps for similar age 22 wide receivers, it's Keenan Allen, DK Metcalf, Drake London, Percy Harvin, Stefon Diggs, Jeremy Maclin, Michael Crabtree, Jordan Addison, Kenny Stills. My favorite out of this list is Drake London because London was also an incredible prospect. London has a similar frame. London plays in the same division and London had a very similar rookie season. What's incredible about Tee is he had a 25% team target share in his rookie year. If we go through and look at rookie season comps, wide receivers with similar rookie years include Metcalf, Kupp, Rice, Higgins, Diggs, Lamb, Chase Claypool, Brian Thomas Jr., Iyk. And again, I think that it's fair to compare him to the really strong wide receiver prospects. Maybe some of these guys that didn't have incredible prospect profiles like Chase Claypool, I wouldn't be looking at, but especially because he averaged seven targets per game. He's been falling to round four of drafts lately and I think at this point by the time you're watching this, he may be my most drafted wide receiver.

Now Ladd McConkey is going ahead of Tee Higgins in the majority of drafts. I can't do it. Y'all know I absolutely love Quentin Johnston. Like I'll do this for the thousandth time and it used to be really easy to do this because I was able to draft Quentin Johnston like five to six rounds after Ladd. Now people have gotten smart. Now, they've moved Quentin Johnston up drafts in a dramatic way. So, we're not able to very easily just go through and say like, "Oh, hey, reminder to everybody here." Ladd McConkey is only a couple months younger than Quentin Johnston. And Quentin Johnston dominated him in fantasy football last season, so I can't really say that. We'll talk about Quentin Johnston later on, but I have been underweight on Ladd because I do think that there are real red flags here. It is a real concern to me that Keenan Allen this past season was able to come into the Los Angeles Chargers offense at 33 years old and take what was this 7.2 targets per game. Like that is a real concern that he was able to have more targets per game than Ladd at 33. If Ladd wasn't an Amon-Ra St. Brown level talent, that wouldn't have happened. If Ladd was an Amon-Ra St. Brown, they would have gotten to camp and they would have gone, "One, maybe we don't even sign Keenan Allen and two, even if they did, he wouldn't have seen the field much and even when they would have been on the field together, Justin Herbert would have been throwing to Ladd." So it is a concern for me that Keenan Allen did block him that Ladd McConkey fell to 1.47 yards per route run. But I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt because we saw a good rookie season. Not only a good rookie season, but also the Chargers project to be one of the most improved offenses year-over-year with the improvements to the offensive line as well as the coaching staff.

Now Garrett Wilson's going to be our next guy. With Wilson, he is feasted off of no competition for the New York Jets for God knows how long now. Yes, he had to deal with a small little segment of Davante Adams playing alongside him, right? But you can go back and look at 2025. This dude had a 34% team target share before he went down. Like every single time a New York Jets quarterback dropped back, primarily at that time of year, I believe it was Zach Wilson, one out of every three pass attempts was going to Garrett Wilson. However, he still has never demonstrated an elite ceiling in fantasy. The reason is he's a part of the New York Jets offense. The Jets are garbage. They've been garbage. They will be garbage pretty much forever. And I know a lot of people want to believe that the Jets are going to be so much better this year with Aaron Rodgers. And I will say they project to improve for sure, but they are only projected according to sports books to outscore the Cardinals and the Browns. The Dolphins are right there neck and neck with them. It's a 0.02 difference. So really the only offenses the Jets will be better than are the Cardinals, Browns. You haven't seen any of those offensive wide receivers yet, and you have two round one NFL picks coming over to the New York Jets this year to finally give Garrett Wilson some target competition.

Now Iyk is going to be our next name. Weirdest rookie season I can ever remember. Like, look at the first half of this year. Iyk through the first five weeks was a legitimate wide receiver one. Then what ended up happening, I believe it was against the Niners. Yes, in this Niners game in week six, Iyk goes down with an injury that I immediately reported on it that Sunday just seeing what everybody was talking about going, "Oh, okay. I think Iyk is supposed to be out for like five weeks. I think he's going to the IR." And what ended up happening, he didn't miss a single week. He was back in week six, I mean week seven, like he played the rest of the season. And what happened to his play? He went from the first five weeks averaging 20 and a half fantasy points per game and being the wide receiver three in fantasy football to in weeks six through 18 falling down to being the wide receiver 56. Please, I know I have the memory of a goldfish. So, if anybody is watching this that can let me know, do we have another example of this ever happening to a rookie wide receiver? I would love to know. I also can understand the Bucs offense did get worse during that period as well. If we just look at his raw total numbers though, because he started off his rookie year so damn strong, you'll see that his rookie season historically comps to Allen Robinson, which would be a massive hit. DK Metcalf, Cooper Kupp, Higgins, DeVonta Smith, Stefon Diggs, Claypool, Marvin Harrison, and Jerry Judy. So, the world in which Iyk is a smash league winner this season is the Bucs offense improves and we learn that that injury that he suffered in week six really lingered all year and now he's finally fully healthy and the player that he was at the beginning of this past season. That's who he actually is.

Now, moving over to our E tier, we are going to have Mike Evans here. Super concerning to see this for me. Unbelievably concerning. At 32 years old, we see a fall-off from 2.44 yards per route run down to 1.66. Yards per target from 9.1 down to six. Points per game 17 down to 10.5. This kind of fall-off at 32 kind of means, yo, your career is done. GG's. Wrap it up. Enjoy retirement. But the Niners give him a really good contract. He goes to a team that should project to be one of the better offenses in the league. I have no faith in Brock Purdy. They just lost Jauan Jennings. K.J. Osborn is coming off a torn Achilles. So the situation could not be better for Mike Evans.

Now Terry McLaurin I actually may need to move up these ranks. I had in the back of my mind that Brandon Aiyuk was going to be a Commander this next year. I was dumb enough to be drafting Brandon Aiyuk in round 16, round 17 of drafts and literally every single time I open Twitter now, it's only Brandon Aiyuk stories. I swear I was about to go search something, search Brandon Aiyuk, first thing I opened, top of my algorithm. Brandon Aiyuk has a message to NFLPA on his recent IG story. "When members of the union that is in playing, well, I can't read. When members of the union that is in place to help players is lying/withholding information from a player on behalf of the team alongside a certified agent, that's some stray BS. Some players have no other place to go for information or help and are relying on the union to help them continue advancing in their careers and lives. I'm sure there are great members of the union, so this message does not pertain to them, but about the ones in my specific case." Long story short, every single time I open Twitter, it just gets worse and worse for Brandon Aiyuk. It looks like Terry McLaurin's competition this next year will be Chick, a tight end that's never been a top 24 tight end in points per game, and then Antonio Williams, an uninspiring rookie wide receiver that just got added day two of the draft. And all of a sudden, Terry goes into a situation where he has no competition whatsoever. And in 2024 with a good Jayden Daniels that wasn't injured, Terry McLaurin was the wide receiver 16 in points per game.

Now Jaylen Wadd is a wide receiver I've drafted a ton of. I believe the Denver Broncos are going to be a very good offense. And at the same time, I believe that Wadd is a very good wide receiver. Wadd this past year was actually at 2.4 yards per route run and 9.1 yards per target. So the Miami Dolphins offense, it completely collapsed, right? So the volume numbers weren't there to support a successful season for Jaylen Wadd. However, like we can go back in history, see Wadd opened up his career with three straight seasons over 14 fantasy points per game. We can see the fact that he was a very compelling prospect coming out of Alabama. The Denver Broncos go out of their way. They trade a round one pick to get him. I have full faith in Wadd this next season.

Jameson Williams, we are rocking the Jamo jersey right now. I've historically not liked him in fantasy, right? Like we can go back and look at a lot of these years where I was just viewing him as a boom-bust wide receiver that couldn't trust. This season he finishes the wide receiver 21. Now we have back-to-back years with him finishing at about six targets per game. But what was interesting is we had the change with the play calling in Detroit happen about halfway through this past season. So let's look at Jameson Williams in the first eight weeks of this past year and let's look at him in the second half of the season because he went from being somebody that you couldn't even get close to your starting lineup to all of a sudden a player that just simply needed to be in. This is before and after the bye that I want to mention. Again, he had that bye week in week eight. But before the bye week, Jameson Williams in weeks one through seven was sitting here averaging 8.3 points per game. So, the wide receiver 59. After the bye though, Jamo jumped up to 16 points per game being the wide receiver 12. Keep in mind this is a 24-year-old wide receiver. Last year, he was only 24 coming into the NFL, he had the torn ACL where he wasn't able to do anything in his rookie season. Then he gets popped with the suspension for gambling. So, he has had like a wild NFL career up until this point. And he obviously had to change with the offensive coordinator year-over-year with Ben Johnson leaving to go to Chicago, but I think he's still stepping into his prime. It makes sense to me of why he would have been improving as time went on. And I'm completely fine drafting him now. Like we're going to have Luther Burden at 25 at least in Underdog drafts at the moment. Luther Burden's going like 10 picks ahead of Jameson Williams. And again, you look at my rankings, I have Jamo ranked straight up ahead of Burden.

Now, I completely understand the bullish case with Luther Burden, right? And it all hinges on two numbers. Two numbers everybody wants to focus on. They want to focus on his yards per route run and they want to focus in on his yards per target. And I really needed to make sure that I wasn't missing something here with Burden because this is a player that as he's been going in the middle of round four, I've made a pretty big bet against. Like I haven't drafted him much at all. You can just see with these rankings, Terry Evans, Wadd, Jameson Williams all go behind Luther Burden in drafts. So when I have them ranked over Burden, I'm just never taking them. Like hell, Luther Burden goes ahead of some of our D-tier level wide receivers a lot. I've been in drafts where Luther Burden goes ahead of T. Higgins. So what I did is I went through and collected a ridiculous amount of data. Ridiculous amount. I looked at every wide receiver that was drafted as a top 10 wide receiver in their class. Right? So, if you were in the 2026 NFL draft and you were drafted as a top 10 guy off the board like Michael Thomas here, I got your routes run per game as a rookie and your yards per route and I saw where you finished in fantasy the following season. And if we go through and look at the wide receivers that in their rookie season, we sort by their yards per route run, incredible names. Justin Jefferson leads this category. Ladd McConkey was number two. Now Ladd McConkey wide receiver 37 this past year. Brian Thomas Jr. at three where Brian Thomas Jr. finishes wide receiver 47. I'm not holding either of these against him, right? Because you have Chase, AJ Brown, then Luther Burden slides in right here. This is using his playoff as well as his regular season numbers in his rookie season which we did for all these guys. Then you have Christian Watson, Tank Dell, Rashee Rice, Malik Nabers, Kadarius Toney. I'm not holding like this list against them. The point of this list is it's phenomenal and this is why everybody's

excited. However, what they're not focusing in on is the amount of routes that were run by these guys because when we look at Jamar Chase on top of this list, Jamar Chase averaged 35 routes per game in his rookie season. When we look at Justin Jefferson on top of this list, Jefferson averaged 33 routes per game in his rookie season.

If we actually sort this list by the amount of routes that these guys were running, it becomes really concerning for me because we can go through and look at how little Luther Burden was involved in this Bears offense in his rookie season where the only wide receivers that were drafted as top 10 guys that ran fewer routes per game than Luther Burton but still played Trey Harris, DJ Shark, Isaac Tlaw, Paris Campbell, Jaylen Pulk, Marvin Mims, Nicole Hardman, Curtis Samuel, Mike Williams, Jack Bash, Dwayne Esgridge, Kyle Williams, Tawan Taylor, Ararius Store, Andy Isabella, Chris Moore. The best finish the following year was wide receiver 19 with DJ Shark. You have some other wide receivers that are in a similar range here that also were incredible from a per route perspective. Those guys were Cadarius Tony and Christian Watson. And this is kind of what I'm looking at with the Luther Burden comp. I'm almost looking at him as if he's like Cadarius Tony and like really cool gadgety player in his rookie year. Super efficient, great offense. You want to bet on him, but he's being priced in a way in which when I see him going ahead of Tedaro and McMillan, I can't do it. It is a red flag that Olam Saki has played over you. I'm sorry. It is. I see the upside. So, I'm not going to rank him as if he's Cadarius Tony. Obviously, I'm putting him here in a range in which I could see him finishing as a top 12 name because there is very real reason to be excited about him based on the efficiency, but I'm at least allowed to acknowledge the red flag of him not getting on the field and actually playing.

Now, let's move over to Dvonte Adams. Adams, if he's able to repeat what he just did, is the biggest value in drafts right now. Goes in the middle of round five. He averaged a touchdown per game. Like if we go back this past season, he played 14 games, scored 14 touchdowns. One of the best wide receivers in NFL history. This is going to be a Hall of Fame level player. I mean, he's going to be in the Hall of Fame. Historical comps at 33 years old for Devonte Adams. And their following seasons include Reggie Wayne, Larry Fitzgerald, Adam Thelen, Emanuel Sanders, Andre Johnson, Floyd, Reggie White, AJ Green, Jordy Nelson. So, I mean, you have other Hall of Fame level wide receivers on this list, right? And now you did only have two of these wide receivers getting better year-over-year. The rest actually got slightly worse to either um majorly worse. But so if Adams can hold on going into his age 34 season, he'll be a massive value. But that's a big if, right? Most wide receivers get worse at this age.

Now Carnell Tate going to be our next guy. One of my most drafted wide receivers at this point. I absolutely love Tate. Ranking him out of ADP, drafting him everywhere I can. I think the situation in Tennessee is sneaky good. I think he's actually going to be able to command a decent amount of targets. Very little competition. And I can go back over to the site and let's pull up those projections. And again, if y'all just wanted to see any of the projections, just go over here to the post section on flockfantasy.com and hit Vegas projections. Okay. But anyway, looking at these, um, right now you actually have the Tennessee Titans projected to score 20.3 points per game, which compared to last season, that's a three and a half point jump. The only offense that's supposed to improve more than the Titans year-over-year is the Raiders. So, yes, garbage offense this past season, but they project to be better. Still bad, but much better than they were. And I think he's an incredible player with little competition.

Now, Christian Watson is a very interesting case where Watson's extremely expensive in underdog drafts right now. I would expect when we start drafting in ESPN, Yahoo, sleeper drafts, he's going to be much cheaper than where he's going in baseball. But coming off a very short timetable of his rehab with the 2 ACL from 2024, in 2025, he was the wide receiver 19 in points per game. Back-to-back seasons with some of the best efficiency in the entire NFL. And now you have no Romeo Dobs. you have no Davian Wixs. So, you actually want to believe that Christian Watson could be in line for a big-time breakout.

Now, Roma Dunce broke the foot last year, which it's very difficult to come through and look at what Rome did in these games in which he played injured and count that into his average. Right at the beginning of this past season, Roma looked incredible. Through the first four weeks, he looked like he was going to be a wide receiver one in fantasy. However, outside of that four-week stretch, we haven't had him really show that he is that dude in Chicago. Quotes coming out around his broken foot or him saying essentially, "This is my nor new normal. I have to play differently than I did in the past." Ben Johnson coming out hyping up Luther Burton does make it sound like Burton is the wide receiver one. Here you have an incredible tight end with Coulson Loveland. So I see the upside case with Rome, but also I do think that there's a lot of downside risk, very similar to what we have with Burden, of course.

Now, moving over to Brian Thomas. I I can't find any example of this historically going from 16.7 points per game as a rookie, being the wide receiver 12, falling down to the wide receiver 47 the following year. What you want to believe is you want to believe that he was just injured. You hear him at OTAAS saying like, "Oh my gosh, I finally feel healthy. I feel so much better. Oh, this is this is everything I needed. Blah blah blah." And I want to buy into it. But the Jacksonville Jaguars traded up to draft Travis Hunter number two overall last year. They then trade to get Jacobe Meyers. They then see a breakout from Parker Washington. So, you have more competition for Brian Thomas than almost any other wide receiver on this list. And at the same time, he's been bad with Lawrence specifically. He has played seven games without Trevor Lawrence in his NFL career. And in those seven games, he averaged 19.3 fantasy points per contest. In the 24 games that he has played with Trevor Lawrence, that's fallen down to 12th. So, at some point, we do at least need to acknowledge maybe just M. Jones was the Brian Thomas whisperer.

Now, Jordan Tyson, I think he is an incredible wide receiver talent, a ton of upside, but I don't know if the Saints are going to be able to support two top wide receivers in fantasy. And Tyson doesn't seem like he's fully over this hamstring injury yet, but this is going to be one of the top players to monitor the reports in training camp.

DJ Moore I am lower on than Consensus. DJ Moore from 2024 to 2025 fell from 8.2 targets per game down to five. 5.8 receptions per game down to 2.9. Back-to-back seasons now for DJ Moore has him at 1.5 yards per rot run or lower. Extremely concerning falloff for a wide receiver that's this old. We can say, oh my gosh, he had a ton of competition last year though. He had Roma Dunce. He had Luther Burden. He had Coulson Loveland. Let's go through and let's look at those guys. We already talked about him. Roma didn't do anything in the second half of the year. He got hurt. Um Luther Burden, maybe you want to say, oh, he was the guy keeping DJ Moore from producing. Oh, Luther Burden had one game with over 20 fantasy points. Luther Burden averaged 40% of the snaps. Maybe you're a massive Olid Zakias fan. We don't even have old me Zakius loaded into flock fantasy.com. So I can't even pull that up. I'm looking at Coulson Lovelin. Loveland averaged 3.6 receptions per game as a tight end. Technically, I guess like he had a bunch of names around him. They weren't doing anything. They were all either rookies or injured. So I think that he really didn't have much competition if you actually think about it in Chicago. The efficiency dropped off a cliff. And I think he's going to be a really good NFL fit for the Buffalo Bills. But the Bills run the ball over and over and over again and they spread the ball out a ton. We haven't seen a wide receiver be successful in Buffalo since Stefon Diggs himself.

Now Marvin Harrison is a super interesting player because he graded out as one of the best prospects that we have seen since the FSE guys started out making their prospect model. I think dating back to like 2016. With that in mind though, he's been garbage. Like let's just call a spade a spade. Rookie season wide receiver 42 in points per game. Year two wide receiver 41. He fell from 11 and a half points per contest down to 10 and a half. We look at the historical comps at his age 23 season. You have other elite wide receiver prospects. Amari Cooper in the 2015 NFL class was one of my favorite wide receiver prospects of all time. I started playing dynasty fantasy football in 2014. I became so obsessed, you have no idea how many hours and hours and hours I listened to a podcast telling me that Amari Cooper was going to be the best wide receiver the NFL's ever seen coming out of Alabama. I honestly do think there are some comps here because obviously the narrative was very similar surrounding Marvin Harrison where Amari wasn't like the worst thing ever in the first two years of his NFL career, but he didn't light the world on fire. I think maybe Marv's a very similar mold here. You have other top level wide receiver prospects like Sammy Watkins. This is a historical comp for him based on his age 23 season. Everything I just said about Amari Cooper kind of applies to Sammy Watkins as well. You have Devont Smith put up the best collegiate wide receiver season of all time.

Now, you have some changes with the Arizona Cardinals, but what is important to note, going back to those sports book projections right now, the Cardinals project to be the worst offense in the NFL, only ahead of the Cleveland Browns. I apologize. The Browns are the worst. The Cardinals are the second worst. And you have McBride and you have Michael Wilson. So, I want to believe on the talent for Marv, but it's hard to get there based on the offense and the competition.

Now, Mai Lemon's going to be our next guy with Mai Lemon. Good prospect. It all hinges on what you think with the Philadelphia Eagles. I want to say I'm maybe a Jaylen Herds apologist. I think that Jaylen Herz is better than people give him credit for and I think Herz can support Lemon.

Parker Washington had three strong games to end this past season. He had 26 points in week 16. He had 19 points in week 17. and he had 19.7 in week 18. However, with that in mind, Parker Washington has never finished higher than the wide receiver, 39 in points per game. If we go back and look at what he was doing before Travis Hunter went down for the season, nothing. Literally diddly squat. Week four, he had negative fantasy points. So, yes, we get the breakout in the second half of the year, but you had an injured Brian Thomas, Travis Hunter was out for good. This next season, you have hopefully Brian Thomas healthy, hopefully Travis Hunter healthy and playing some offense at least. And at the same time, you have Jacobe Meyers. So, I am fading Parker Washington because at least in underdog drafts at the moment, he goes ahead of Mai Lemon in every single one and he goes ahead of Marvin Harrison in most of them.

Now DK Metaf, our next wide receiver. I mean, pretty much we are identical twins, Siamese twins, whatever you want to say. So, of course, you know, I got to root for my brother here, but we'll call Spade a Spade. He's never been elite in fantasy outside of one season in 2020 where he was a top 10 wide receiver. Very consistent. you know, he's going to be usable, but I don't necessarily think that we have a crazy high ceiling with the offense with Rogers holding it down and Pitman seeing more targets.

The big Q, Quinton Johnson, was my most drafted player early in the process. However, I have had to slow my role a bit because everybody's caught on. It's no longer a secret. Quinton Johnson went from being a wide receiver, we were able to draft as like the wide receiver 80 in last year's drafts. And keep in mind, I think we profited $27,000 last season, somewhere around that mark. This is the reason why finished as the wide receiver 26. The offense is going to be better this next year. And you possibly have no Keenan Allen. I hope that the steam lets off his price so I can draft more of him, but he is just getting so damn expensive.

Alec Pierce ended his season incredibly well, put himself in a situation with the Indianapolis Colts to have all the contract leverage in the world this past offseason. Gets paid uh an insane amount of money, life-changing amount of money. Hopefully, I can do the same thing on my contract year. We'll see. But the hope with Alec Pierce is that he is fully healthy right now because he did have surgery this off season. And the Colts project to be much worse this year than they were last. Again, Pierce, if he's fully healthy at training camp, he's going to be moving up dramatically.

Courtland Sutton last season wide receiver 22 points per game. The year prior, wide receiver 27, but he's going to turn 31 years old. So, you have the natural decline with age. Like if you just look at historical comps of guys that had similar age 30 seasons, every single one of them got worse in points per game except Cooper Cup and Tyreek Hill. So wide receivers typically get worse at this age. And they added Jaylen Wadd.

And then we have Jordan Addison slowly becoming one of my most drafted names because he's been slipping in drafts. And if we want to excuse away the poor play from Justin Jefferson, I think we should have to do the same thing with Addison where he had to deal with that same quarterback play in 2025. But if you go back to 2024, he's the wide receiver 25 and points per game. And I have much more faith in Kyler than I do in um McCarthy at this point.

But I really appreciate you. Again, I'm going to be live every single night drafting fantasy football teams. I would love to see you out in a stream and maybe you get a draft in with us. And if you wanted to win your fantasy football league this year, the number one way to do so, not even remotely close, is by getting the flockfantasy.com season pass. It's only 34 bucks. And at the same time, you're going to get all the draft sheets customized for your exact format. You're going to get realtime draft assistance for Sleeper, ESPN, Yahoo. And you're going to be getting all the premium content from pretty much everybody that you watch on YouTube. Code Flock will give you all that plus free questions that you can ask me during the live streams in the season. Links in the description. It's in the comment section. I really hope it helps you win your league this year. But much love, ladies. I really appreciate you all and I really hope I get to see you out on the live stream later tonight.