5 Wide Receivers Who Could be League Winners This Year

If you want to win your fantasy football league, you're in the right place because today we are going into the deepest position in fantasy that you can't afford to mess up, the wide receiver position. More specifically, we're breaking down the five wide receivers who look like league winners right now. You should draft them and if you're not familiar, I'm Sal Vetri. I've helped over 10,000 people win their fantasy league the last few years alone and I plan to do the same for you with this video.

Now, let's start with DeVonta Smith, who is lined up to be the Philadelphia Eagles clear-cut number one wide receiver for the first time in his career and nobody is talking about it. Now, based on this time of the recording, he should be maybe a couple of days away from when A.J. Brown is going to most likely be traded based on all the reports, credible reports, to the New England Patriots. And this opens up the opportunity for DeVonta Smith to be the number one receiver because A.J. Brown came here before the 2022 season. Now, in that season, you still saw a nice year of almost 1,200 yards, a career high despite playing next to A.J. Brown. The year before that was when DeVonta Smith ended up having a rookie year of 916 yards, 103 targets. Like, it was likely that he was the number one receiver on the team, was just a rookie. He didn't come out of the gates firing by any means. So, right now in the prime of his career, he's going to be their number one option most likely. And Smith is coming off of another solid season. Like, when he's actually out there and healthy, he's one of the most underrated wide receivers easily. I mean, one of the best wide receivers in college football history if you're talking about his reign at Alabama, Heisman Trophy winner. A 24% target share last year. Now, this was on an Eagles team that obviously struggled. Offensive line broke down. Offense in general wasn't gelling with the new offensive coordinator. Weren't throwing as much. Drives weren't sustaining. But, still a 24% target share, top 20 in the NFL. That's good to see.

And like we mentioned, all the rumors right now is that A.J. Brown is looking into luxury apartments as one of them right now in Boston Seaport area. He was on a podcast with like Julian Edelman and some other guys there and they basically joked about how we're all Patriots here, right? And A.J. Brown was just kind of smirking at that and he said that he would give up his number 11, Julian Edelman, for A.J. Brown to To there. It kind of seemed like at this point it was a foregone conclusion and that was months ago based on the time of this recording. Since then, it's only become like more concrete that Brown is likely out the door, most likely to the Patriots. So, Brown's going to reconnect with his former coach Mike Vrabel during their time together at Tennessee. And what does this leave? I mean, based on the off-season, the Eagles have been preparing for an A.J. Brown departure. What does that mean? Well, they drafted a first-round pick in Mekhi Leven. Not only did they draft Mekhi Leven, they traded up to hop the Steelers in the first round to take Mekhi Leven. They ended up trading for Dontayvion Wicks, who has been sort of like this underrated player in the Green Bay passing core. He's been a rotational guy. He's been banged up last year at least. Drops problem the year before that. But, what does Howie Roseman, the Eagles GM, do? He finds value in places. Dontayvion Wicks is like the perfect example of a value guy based on what they traded to acquire him.

Now, the biggest target competition assuming A.J. Brown is gone for DeVonta Smith this year is likely going to be Mekhi Leven. Again, he is a first-round pick, a 22-year-old wide receiver. This is a guy who in college was one of the better wide receivers over the past couple of seasons. That's exactly why he went first round, especially last year when he broke out at USC for over 100 targets, over 1,100 receiving yards, 26% target share. This is a guy who is going to most likely operate out of the slot, maybe out of two wide receiver sets on the outside. He'll have to compete with guys like Marquez Brown and Dontayvion Wicks, veterans in the NFL. But, in three wide receiver sets, Mekhi Leven's probably operating out of the slot and should benefit.

Now, according to the team changes tracker in my fantasy blueprint, you can check it out at jointheblueprint.com, just a very small piece of all the stuff that you get in there, a proven system for winning fantasy leagues. You can see right here, these are all the offensive key changes this off-season. They added wide receivers in Dontayvion Wicks and Marquez Brown. They added talent in the draft in first-round pick Mekhi Leven, second-round pick Eli Stowers. And soon, we're probably I have this little red subtraction left open for when A.J. Brown is officially traded away. But, for the most part, like you're talking about A.J. Brown, a guy who year in and year out with this new Philadelphia team is is like eight targets per game, is averaging like 130 targets per season. That's now completely gone and replaced with the likes of like Donteavian Wicks and rookies. So yeah, Devonta Smith is the most talented player here. He's probably going to benefit the most in terms of seeing his target share increase to a potential elite level.

You could see this on Twitter from Eagles Times. He says that Jalen Hurts and new offensive coordinator Shawn McVay, a former NFL quarterback, have hit it off. The new offense will be more under center for Hurts, more play action, and it's going to look different. Now, I believe all of this. Again, it's hype, it's coach speak in the off season, but I believe all of this because the Eagles have put their money where their mouth is in terms of draft picks, Quez Watkins, Eli Stowers, win in the middle of the field. In terms of free agency moves, Marquise Brown last year as an older wide receiver with the Chiefs was winning out of the slot over 200 slot snaps. Donteavian Wicks had a lot of success in the middle of the field. So I think we might be going from drop back Jalen Hurts throw bombs to A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith to more middle of the field concentration. Now, this is all hypothetical, it's just based on the moves that they're doing this off season to kind of tell us what maybe Shawn McVay's offense will be, but based on that like yeah, Devonta Smith can definitely dominate out of the slot. Devonta Smith, if he is the guy on the outside on some of these more play action reads, that should lead to more explosive plays for him especially in one-on-one situations. In general right now, he's going far too late. You could say what you want about Jalen Hurts and how he wasn't great last year and how the rushing dropped off and the offensive line and the offensive coordinator's probably going to be a piece of that, but part of it is also Jalen Hurts. You could say the behind the scenes smoke about like how he's not getting along with his offensive pieces and that's why A.J. Brown wants to be shipped out and whatever's going on, you can say whatever you want, but when Jalen Hurts is on the field, he has been an above average quarterback. You might be the biggest Jalen Hurts hater, you cannot tell me that he's a bottom five quarterback or even bottom 10 quarterback in the NFL. That is not been the case based on film and based on production. So Devonta Smith, I think he's going to benefit. I I I feel very strongly based on where he currently goes in fantasy drafts. Once A.J. Brown is traded, I wouldn't be shocked if he's going to be jumping up into like the second or third round of drafts, Smith, but as of right now, you can get him in the fourth round. Early fourth round is the 37th overall player, the wide receiver 16. I assume this only rises a little bit into like maybe the wide receiver or the overall 25 to 30 range by the time A.J. Brown is traded and we get to August. So, as of right now, he's a value and all the upside in the world to uh set a new career high with over maybe 12, 1,300 receiving yards this season.

Next up, let's talk about one of my favorite, if not my favorite, overall bounce back candidate for this year. It is the now third-year player Ladd McConkey, the 24-year-old wide receiver for the Los Angeles Chargers. And look, this is a guy who last year, he didn't get there, right? 66 catches, 789 receiving yards. In a lot of fantasy leagues, he was a late second-round pick. If you got him at a value, he was an early third-round pick for you. And if you're going to only have 789 receiving yards, that's not going to pay off. Now, obviously, there's going to be reasons for a year two drop-off. Keenan Allen returned, he soaked up a good amount of targets. Justin Herbert was dealing with injuries. Ladd McConkey was dealing with some bumps and bruises here as the season went on as a somewhat undersized wide receiver. And you can look at this split right here. This is looking at on the left side, according to the RotoViz game splits tools, weeks 5 through 10 last year, when both McConkey and Herbert were on the field together and healthy, you could see in those six games, 17 and a half PPR points per game for Ladd McConkey. He was producing like a second-round pick for you in fantasy drafts. Nine targets per game, 76 receiving yards per game. But the other 10 games, so the start of the season when one of them was banged up and towards the end of the season when him and Herbert were banged up, you could just see seven fantasy points per game, five targets per game, 33 receiving yards per game. Everything went to [ __ ] He did not help you out in the fantasy playoffs. He did not help you get to the fantasy playoffs. So, that's going to make a lot of sense. But at the end of the day, I mean, this is a guy who was dealing with just like shoulder, knee, toe injuries. He also had his quarterback Justin Herbert who was banged up as well. Uh and it makes a lot of sense. Again, those final weeks of the season, specifically if you look at this split, this is also factoring in some of the beginning weeks. But if you were to just look at the final weeks of the season from weeks 11 through 17, let's actually go to that right now here. So, if we just go to weeks 11 through 17, that last game of the season, week 18 is kind of like a rest game. You can see right here, big time struggle, right? This is when all the injuries are adding up. Those final six games, just four targets per game. Not going to cut it for Ladd McConkey.

Now, look, I get it. There was increased competition last year, right? They ended up bringing in Keenan Allen. The rookie Quentin Johnston broke out mid-season for a couple of weeks. Quentin Johnston had the best season of his career. So, all these things are factoring in for a somewhat run-first offense under Jim Harbaugh last year. However, some things have changed here. Keenan Allen is gone, right? If you look at this as well, in the rookie season for Ladd McConkey, he was getting seven targets per game. He was getting a 24 and 1/2% target share. Like I said, now as we look into this, the Chargers did a lot this off-season specifically on their offense in terms of additions and subtractions. They added a lot of pieces for the run game, a center Tyler Biadasz, run-blocking tight end in Charlie Kolar, Alec Ingold comes over from Miami with new offensive coordinator and play-caller Mike McDaniel, right? And you could see maybe the biggest key piece here is the subtraction of Keenan Allen, and the only addition was a fourth-round speedster wide receiver who's mostly going to be a deep threat, maybe a couple of snaps per game, maybe a couple of targets at most per game. Not going to soak up that seven-plus targets per game like Keenan Allen was in the middle of the field. So, the current wide receiver competition for Ladd McConkey, with as of right now 34-year-old Keenan Allen still a free agent, they could bring him back. I don't know if they will bring him back. It's going to be like Quentin Johnston is your biggest threat. It just has dropped off a complete cliff compared to last year. Don't get me wrong, Johnston had some nice weeks, especially a nice start to the season, but I'm not concerned about him being like the 25% target share guy like Ladd McConkey will be in this offense. Maybe Trey Harris takes a step forward this year, former second-round pick, had a lot of success at Ole Miss before his injury. I could see him taking a step forward. Other than that, late-round pick Keondre Lambert-Smith, the rookie from last year, who kind of overlaps with Darius Davis, who they took in a previous draft, I believe, who's just also like another burner. So, I'm not too concerned overall about any target competition here. Like the biggest moves were the tight ends that they added, Charlie Kolar, David Njoku recently, Quentin Johnston entering year two after a strong year one as a pass catching tight end. Overall, even if this offense skews extremely run heavy behind first round pick Amari on Hampton on the ground, Kamani Vidal the backup running back, makes sense in a Mike McDaniel system. With the 49ers and Dolphins, he ran the ball a lot. Even if that's the case, they're going to throw 30 plus times a game and McConkey's going to be walking away with like eight targets a game this year.

Now, McDaniel is known the new offensive coordinator. He is known as like a run first coach, but I mean, we've seen Jaylen Waddle, Tyreek Hill. Tyreek Hill was the number one overall receiver in a Mike McDaniel system in 2023. In that season, the Dolphins ranked number two in 2023 and overall thing points per game scored at 30 per game, they led the entire NFL, I believe in total yardage that year, right? 682 yards, over 400 yards per game, the only team to do that in 2023. Now, these last two seasons, as Tua has broken down, as Tyreek dealt with injuries and then missed all of last year and basically everybody in Miami was getting hurt last season, it has gotten worse, but now you're dropping Mike McDaniel into a a better franchise, at least where they currently are. The Dolphins are in full rebuild mode when the Chargers are pushing for the playoffs and division titles and Jim Harbaugh and you have your franchise quarterback and you have a first round running back and a revamped offensive line, right? So, I'm very interested to see what Mike McDaniel could do for this offense. I think all the guys in fantasy, Amari on Hampton, Justin Herbert, Ladd McConkey on this team, I think they're all due for big bounce backs in strong 2026. Currently, Ladd McConkey is a major value. He goes 44th overall in fantasy drafts to wide receiver 20. To me, this is crazy. He's a late fourth round pick right now. I would be shocked if this is the ADP that holds up by the time we get to August. I would be shocked if he's not a third round pick. I mean, this was the guy who last year was going in the second or third round in a somewhat worse situation in terms of Keenan Allen being target competition there, although being old, he had a connection in the past with Justin Herbert, in terms of it being maybe skewing more run heavy with the first round running back coming in last year. Look, I'm in a situation now where 44th overall, it's really hard for me to ignore if I'm in best ball drafts early on a Ladd McConkey in round four or five.

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Next up, let's go to the Green Bay Packers. Uh potentially their wide receiver three this year, Matthew Golden coming off of a down rookie year for sure. But the reason why we like him is he's currently going outside easily of the top 100 picks in fantasy drafts. That's probably justified, but he shouldn't be going like outside of the top 120 picks like he often is in early drafts. Now based on what he did last year, if you just use that as your context, yeah, he should go nowhere near the top 100. Only 29 catches as a first round pick in a quality offense with a good quarterback that we thought was going to be a fit. Jordan Love, big arm, loves to throw the ball down field, is fine under pressure. That all sets up pretty well for a speedster wide receiver in Golden. Only was able to like average two catches per game. Only was able to average 25.8 receiving yards per game. Now a big piece of this is your rookie wide receiver in an offense that does have veterans, Jayden Reed, Christian Watson in it. Uh Dontayvion Wicks last year, Romeo Doubs, right? So it is a somewhat crowded wide receiver room. And also then you deal with injuries. Midseason you get a shoulder injury, midseason you pick up a wrist injury. Not great for a wide receiver. It is better than the hamstring, the ankle injuries, the lower body, knee injuries for speedy wide receivers. Much better to have a wrist injury. You can get back quicker, it doesn't linger as much, but still these are things that are going to hamper a rookie. But when he finally got healthy in the post season, you saw some nice games out of Matthew Golden, especially in the one playoff game that they had down the stretch, specifically the playoffs against the Bears. Four catches, 84 yards, a touchdown that looked like it could potentially be the game winner late in the fourth quarter. Ultimately, the Bears come back with a crazy come from behind victory, but Golden, I mean, they saw enough from him in like this game and a couple of the games down the stretch to just completely believe in him, right? They took him in the first round for a reason. He ended up coming out of Texas when he transferred in his final year and he had 17 yards per catch competing with guys like Xavier Worthy and tight end Gunnar Helm. 987 receiving yards. This was a guy who, just like in the playoffs for the Packers last year, in the playoffs and down the stretch in his final year of college, top five Georgia team, he had eight catches, 162 yards in the semi-finals against Arizona State, he ended up having seven catches for 149 yards in a big game there, big overtime or fourth down touchdown to force overtime or double OT from when you were there. So, he showed up in the big moments. Packers took him in the first round. And by all accounts, they're putting like all their chips into the Matthew Golden basket in some senses this year because the Packers off season was pretty interesting on both sides of the ball, offense and defense, but for our purposes of this for for the fantasy football on offense, we're focusing on Romeo Doubs leaves, makes sense, he was going to get a big contract, he did from the Patriots. Dontayvion Wicks they traded away, which I was kind of surprised with the way that they traded him, especially it's not like you're getting a big haul in return. Late round draft picks is what you're getting. So, they trade Dontayvion Wicks away, which now means that the Packers wide receivers, after not drafting any and only signing like kickoff returner Sky Moore, the Packers three wide receivers set should be easily Christian Watson, who's in a contract year, best wide receiver last year, Jayden Reed who just signed a three-year extension during the NFL draft, and then second-year player Matthew Golden. Because after that, you have Samori Toure who kind of overlaps as like a bigger Jayden Reed in the way that they use him end around short yardage stuff. Other than that though, like what are we looking at here? Bo Melton who last year in the last couple years like converted to a cornerback, Now he might be converting back to wide receiver. Like this is just a really weird room. I'm surprised they got rid of Dontayvion Wicks and didn't replace him. Then you also look at like their depth chart at running back. You have Josh Jacobs there who's an aging veteran with big workloads. They got rid of Emanuel Wilson, didn't draft or sign anybody. Like they're banking on Marshawn Lloyd who hasn't been healthy his first two years in the NFL and Chris Brooks who has some speed and has shown some upside but never like been tested as a full guy to be trusted if Josh Jacobs was to go down. So this offense in terms of like depth is pretty fragile. That's concerning for like real life in the entire ecosystem of Green Bay but for the purposes of Matthew Golden, it means that he's likely into the starting lineup in three wide receiver sets and maybe even two wide receiver sets over Jayden Reed. I do doubt that based on the contract extension for Reed but it's a possibility.

Another positive for Golden is that he does have a strong quarterback in Jordan Love who does love to to push the ball, no pun intended, downfield. You saw last season Jordan Love was overall top 12 in deep ball attempts. He was one of the most accurate deep ball passers. When he actually did throw deep, we could pull it up right here. Overall EPA expected points added top 10 in the NFL when he was under pressure, he was the number one quarterback in the NFL last year. This is recent as well. According to Packers GM Brian Gutekunst, "I'm really excited to see where Golden goes in year two. I think his ceiling is very, very high. We're very excited about what's going to do for our football team moving forward." That was basically when he was interviewed by Rob Demovsky I believe during the NFL draft or slightly after. Maybe relation to why they didn't take any wide receivers. A lot of trust in Matthew Golden this year. So if Matthew Golden's going to be starting for the Green Bay Packers, at least on paper it seems like that. We know he's highly talented after a bad down year in his rookie year. He's currently going 119th overall. The wide receiver 50 feels just kind of crazy to me. Just a little bit too cheap, too much of a value to ignore. Like I'm not taking Let's just see guys around him. Are we really wanting to take Jordan Mason? Like the upside there compared to Matthew Golden? Do we really want to take Kenneth Gainwell who's behind behind Bucky Irving? Do we really want to take Ihmir Smith-Marsette who's now competing with David Njoku and a a tight end and Charlie Kolar to get on the field in two wide two tight end sets. Like these are the guys, Quinton Johnston, Wan'Dale Robinson, Blake Corum a backup. Do we really want to be taking these guys over a potential breakout year two player in a sound offense with a good play caller and good quarterback? I want to be taking shots on Matthew Golden.

I also want to be taking shots on Rashee Rice. Rashee Rice who is currently going like around the 20th overall player so like a second round, maybe early third round pick in fantasy drafts despite being a top five wide receiver last year. Now albeit it was on a limited sample, but he did have five touchdowns, 18.8 points per game after returning from suspension. He only played eight total games last year due to injuries, returning from suspension. But this guy, I mean, he was just up there in like almost every single category. He was just so dominant. His target rate from Patrick Mahomes in terms of the percentage of times he was targeted per route run, 30% of his routes he earned a target on. His 46.2% red zone target share which included some like design plays, like little push passes, shovel passes, number one in the entire league. His design play rate at 55% of his targets were design plays. That was number one in the NFL, right? 18 red zone targets in just eight games was top 10. This guy is going to earn a lot of touchdowns heading into this season with really no new target competition. And like the biggest question for Rashee Rice now that his off-the-field issues have been thrown out, his most recent off-the-field issues is will Patrick Mahomes off the torn ACL be healthy? Uh according to recent reports you could see from NFL on ESPN, Patrick Mahomes is expected to participate in OTAs. It looks like he's on track to return, hopefully fingers crossed by week one. Maybe he won't be the same explosive player coming off of a knee injury and he's not like a 20-year-old quarterback anymore, but he's going to be out there week one just based on experience and arm talent alone. Obviously that's better than the alternative of a backup being out there. And in terms of the target competition, like there was a lot of thoughts that maybe the the Chiefs would get with their top 10 pick in the draft a wide receiver like a Cornell Tate or Jordan Tyson. Both of those guys went before the Chiefs pick although the Chiefs did trade up ahead of the Saints they could have taken Jordan Tyson. I thought they were going to, but they didn't. Instead they're running it back with Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy. I mean, they got rid of Marquez Valdes-Scantling so who knows who the wide receiver three is going to be? Will be Jaylen Royals? Will Will it be their fifth round pick in Cyrus Allen from this year? Will they pick up like a veteran later on in the process? Is Stefon Diggs still out there? Is Deebo Samuel still out there? Is Keenan Allen still out there? It's yet to be seen. But the Kansas City Chiefs right now did not much this off season to threaten Rashee Rice's insane 30% target rate and 46% red zone rate from last year. Like nobody added in free agency at wide receiver position. Marquez Brown is now gone who was earning a lot of targets out of the slot last year. And the only wide receiver they added so far this off season, fifth round pick Cyrus Allen. Now, by the time you're watching this, maybe the Chiefs end up adding a Keenan Allen for a one-year cheap deal and he tries to ring chase whoever it might be. If it's an older pros or older wide receiver, Keenan Allen's 34, I'm not too concerned about that. If it's somebody like Stefon Diggs, I do think Diggs at this point in his career, still 32 years old, could earn a lot of targets. That would be somewhat of a concern for Rashee Rice. At least a concern relative to his price point. So, I would say that's like the biggest red flag for Rashee Rice if a veteran receiver was brought in as target competition. Obviously, Travis Kelce is still there, one year older, maybe he can only play one more year. Other than that, like maybe you could point to the past injury history. Maybe you can obviously point to the off-the-field issues, although right now those have been thrown out.

And just when I thought Rashee Rice's off-the-field issues were over, I get into the edit and then news breaks that Rashee Rice has more off-the-field issues and also injury issues. Kind of let's break it down. So, here's the report that came out from Adam Schefter. Now, by the time that you're watching this, this report came out about a week ago. I'm recording these videos a little bit ahead of time right now because I'm going on vacation just so I can continue to service you good people out there with the fantasy football takes. So, Rashee Rice, one week before being ordered to serve 30 days in jail, Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver underwent a clean up surgery on his right knee to remove loose debris. Okay, that's the first one. It was causing inflammation, yada yada yada. That's the first piece. The second piece, and what came out first, was that Rashee Rice violated his probation after testing positive for marijuana. He's been ordered to serve 30 days in jail. Now, the 30 days in jail was always going to be a thing. This is from the off-field issue from last year. So, that's not like something new, like, "Oh my god, is he now going to be suspended because of this? No, he smoked pot. Overall, like whatever your stances are on pot, he smoked pot. It's not the end of the world, but yeah, it's pretty dumb. When you're on probation, when you know you're probably going to be having either scheduled drug tests, random drug tests, and you're still smoking pot, not smart. We already know Rashee Rice is not a smart person based off all the off-field issues and charges and and cases he's had against him these past couple of years alone. I would say that at least for like week one availability, this is the biggest piece of news that we got out of those two. Like the smoking pot thing, it's fine. He's not going to get a new suspension based on everything I'm seeing right now. Rashee Rice underwent a cleanup surgery on his right knee to remove loose debris that was causing inflammation. Now, obviously, surgery, anytime you hear that, especially knee surgery for a wide receiver, it's not great, right? But, at the end of the day, this knee surgery is a cleanup. Based on everything I'm seeing, it's a routine surgery, it's a knee scope type thing, and it was causing him inflammation, so this is something that he needs and probably can even help him compared to how his knee was last year playing during the season. Now, in a perfect world, he wouldn't get the cleanup surgery, he wouldn't be smoking pot while on probation, and I wouldn't have to make this little add-on for the video when I'm getting ready to go on vacation. But, it's not a perfect world because Rashee Rice lives in it. But, as far as his like upside for fantasy football this year, maybe it takes a little bit of a knock because the guy is just still a knucklehead and he's not learning his lesson, and maybe he does something else that makes him get suspended. But, outside of that, he's going to play week one, and he's still going to play with this target competition. Xavier Worthy, who hasn't really broken out couple years into the NFL. Tyquan Thornton, who they re-signed, mostly a downfield burner. Other than that, nobody else. They, like we've been talking about, fifth round rookie was added, and then just a bunch of other names, a fifth round rookie from last year or or I believe, yeah, last year in Jalen Royal. So, uh Travis Kelce is aging a little bit more. Overall, it's Rashee Rice with really no target competition or elite target competition on Kansas City. He's still expected to play week one. So, like these new off-field / surgery stuff, I'm not like overly concerned. I saw Twitter going up in storms, oh my god, Rashee Rice again. I get that, but for week one fantasy purposes, I don't really see a big issue. So, Rashee Rice, where he currently goes, 20th overall in round two, feels pretty solid to me. Like, if you're in this range where you could pick Rashee Rice in the late second round, it means that you had an early first round pick. So, maybe you started your draft off and you secured like Puka Nacua and you start wide receiver wide receiver and you have Puka Nacua and Rashee Rice, there's a path where those are the two top wide receivers in fantasy by the end of the year and it wouldn't be shocking. Maybe you got lucky and you got a a Bijan Robinson and at your turn pick and ended up falling to like a Rashee Rice at pick 23 or 24 and you picked back-to-back picks with Rashee Rice and a Brock Bowers and now your team is Rashee Rice Brock Bowers and Bijan, that feels awesome.

Now, before we get into the next wide receiver, I just want to let you know that if you want to get my top 50 overall rankings that will help you dominate your drafts with the top 50 overall rankings, it's completely free right now. It will help you dominate the first five rounds of your draft. You cannot afford to miss out on those picks. So, you can just go to this link in the description below or fantasyrankingsfree.com. It will take you to this page, you just enter your email and then I'll DM you or I'll email you the top 50 overall rankings. Again, so be sure to go to fantasyrankingsfree.com. You can just type it in on your phone right now if you're watching on your TV, laptop, computer, whatever it may be. Or you can just click the link in the description below, type in your email, be sure to check all your folders if you don't see it in your inbox, your spam or promotional folders. Then that'll be the top 50 overall rankings that will help you dominate your fantasy drafts those early first five rounds.

Next up, let's talk about Justin Jefferson, easily the cheapest we've ever been able to get Justin Jefferson. Often in these early drafts, he's not even going as a first round pick, he goes as an early second round pick sometimes, which is crazy. And look, I get it. It makes sense. He had a rough 2025. Was that Justin Jefferson's fault? In my opinion, not at all. It was all the different quarterbacks. I mean, Max Brosmer, J.J. McCarthy, some of the worst quarterbacks we saw play. Carson Wentz was the best quarterback he had last year, the only guy he put up 100 yards with. That's a concern. So, Justin Jefferson, worst finish of his career, 28th overall as a first round pick in last year's drafts, obviously a bust for you, just two receiving touchdowns. But, this was still a guy that was able to stay healthy all season, was able to go for over 1,000 yards after they kind of force-fed him in week 18 of last season, another 141 targets. So, he was still earning an insane amount of targets per game. Uh his target rate was uh 11th in the NFL. His target share was still 30% as elite as it gets, top eight in the NFL last year, 8.3 targets per game, 141 total targets. The problem was a lot of his targets, like over 30% of them were not catchable. He ranked outside of like the top 80 receivers in catchable target rate. And it only got worse as the season went on and Carson Wentz like ended up having surgery and he had to play with J.J. McCarthy and Max Brosmer. Those final seven games of the season heading into the fantasy playoffs and throughout the fantasy playoffs, just seven fantasy points per game, 37 receiving yards per game for Justin Jefferson. Obviously, that's not the Justin Jefferson we know. I think a big part of that was the terrible quarterback play, but now he's going to get a major upgrade. Say what you want about Kyler Murray, maybe you don't like him, maybe you think he's too short. He is way better than what we have seen out of J.J. McCarthy, Max Brosmer, and even this last year's version of Carson Wentz. Kyler Murray is just a year removed when he was healthy in 2024 from throwing 541 times, had almost 4,000 passing yards, and completing almost 69% of his passes. Is this elite production at the quarterback position? No, but it's like average to borderline top 12, which is way better than what the Vikings were getting last year when they were arguably the worst quarterback situation in the NFL. Last year the Vikings had the fourth lowest passing yards on the season. They ranked the number one in interceptions per game. Their pass attempts per game were well below average for a Kevin O'Connell offense. All of those things should increase this year under Kyler Murray. And we've seen Kyler Murray like support number one wide receivers. I mean, we saw it with DeAndre Hopkins during their time together with the Arizona Cardinals. DeAndre Hopkins put up a very solid season. If we were to scroll to it right here, you go down, future Hall of Famer DeAndre Hopkins, you go down to his time with Arizona. You got to go back to prime Hopkins. It was all the way back in 2020 when these guys played together, but what happens for Hopkins in that year? 160 targets, 115 catches, over 1,400 receiving yards, like stud production. That's exactly kind of the part of the career we are in for Justin Jefferson. Is it one of his first four years in this career? No, but he's still in the prime of his career. I'm not shocked if Jefferson has a 100 catch, 150-plus target season this year.

Now his current target competition kind of similar to last year, you're going to get Jordan Addison again, you're going to get another year older out of T.J. Hockenson at tight end. There's no more Jalen Nailor. So far he has not really been replaced this off-season. Speedster Ty Chandler is there. There's been a lot of rumors and maybe by the time you're watching this Jauan Jennings will be signed to this team to replace Jalen Nailor. Probably similar players there as a wide receiver three. And in terms of the run game, Jauan Jennings offers a lot more than a Jalen Nailor, but similar players in terms of in this offense as a wide receiver three with Hockenson also there, you're probably earning like four to five targets a game. But really Minnesota like on offense didn't do a ton this off-season, but what they did strongly benefits one at least as of right now what they've done this off-season strongly benefits Justin Jefferson. They add Kyler Murray, they end up getting rid of Jalen Nailor who was a solid target last season, and in the NFL draft they don't add any serious target competition, just a fifth round tight end and a sixth round running back that's not really threatening Justin Jefferson. So, yeah, I think the guy in Justin Jefferson that we know before last season, this guy's five-year career average was almost 1,500 receiving yards per season. Yeah, I think we're going to get pretty close to going right back to that this year in an upgraded offense now with Kyler Murray still under Kevin O'Connell. Justin Jefferson on average goes as the ninth pick overall in fantasy drafts. Like I said, sometimes he falls below like these running backs like Devon Achane, Asim Janity, James Cook and I see him going like 13th, 14th overall. Ninth overall is great. This was a guy who was going as a top five pick last year. Now you get a little bit of a discount on him in the late first round. You can start Justin Jefferson and CeeDee Lamb or you can start Justin Jefferson and let's just say Devon Achane or James Cook with your first two picks with a late first round pick. That feels very good.

So these have been the five wide receivers who could help you win your fantasy league this year. Now if you want to see the running back version of this video, the five running backs who could be league winners this year, you can check out this video right here. I think you're going to enjoy it a ton and I think it's going to help you a ton. Other than that, I'll see you in the next one.