A Wide Receiver to Target in Each Round of Your Fantasy Football Draft
Round 1: Antonio Brown, Pittsburgh Steelers
ADP: 1st overall (1.01)
There's no reason to get cute here.
If you’re on the clock and Antonio Brown is available, you need to draft him. It’s as simple as that.
Using our in-house FireFactor mechanism, we can see just how much more valuable Brown is than any other player. FireFactor is a Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) formula, so we can easily cross-compare positions. You can check it out in our draft kit, and you can customize the projections to align exactly with your league's settings.
As for Brown, the dude is a bad, bad man. In standard, 12-team leagues, he's the most valuable player by a wide margin.
| Rank | Player | Team | Pos Rk | Pos | FP | FireFactor™ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Antonio Brown | PIT | 1 | WR | 246.51 | 177 |
| 2 | Adrian Peterson | MIN | 1 | RB | 228.17 | 158.25 |
| 3 | Julio Jones | ATL | 2 | WR | 225.19 | 155.42 |
| 4 | Odell Beckham | NYG | 3 | WR | 224.59 | 154.82 |
| 5 | Jamaal Charles | KC | 2 | RB | 221.84 | 151.92 |
| 6 | DeAndre Hopkins | HOU | 4 | WR | 220.95 | 151.18 |
| 7 | David Johnson | ARI | 3 | RB | 214.66 | 144.74 |
| 8 | Todd Gurley | LA | 4 | RB | 208.7 | 138.78 |
| 9 | Lamar Miller | HOU | 5 | RB | 198.16 | 128.24 |
| 10 | Devonta Freeman | ATL | 6 | RB | 196.86 | 126.94 |
The gap only grows in PPR formats as his FireFactor of 270 dusts second-place Julio Jones, who owns a mark of 238.99. In PPR leagues, Brown had an otherworldly floor last season, scoring at least 15 points in 9 of the 11 games where Ben Roethlisberger was under center for the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Brown posted a gigantic 33.05% target market share in 2015. It's hard for that number to go up, but with Martavis Bryant (15.75%) and Heath Miller (13.87%) -- the second- and third-most targeted pass-game weapons for Pittsburgh in 2015 -- both out of commission (for varying reasons), Brown will likely be fed the rock again this year.
Per our algorithms, our top comparable season when projecting Brown for 2016 is Marvin Harrison's historic 2001 campaign. That year, Harrison set the NFL's all time record for receptions in a season, hauling in 143 balls for 1,722 yards and 11 scores.
We could sit here all day and rattle off mind-numbing Brown stats, and it would be a blast. Just know this: if you have a chance to draft him, draft him.
