A Wide Receiver to Target in Each Round of Your Fantasy Football Draft
Round 9: Torrey Smith, San Francisco 49ers
ADP: 106th overall (9.08)
It's extremely rare to find a high-volume receiver this late in the draft, but Torrey Smith fits this bill this year.
The San Francisco 49ers are not very good, and they don't have much talent offensively. What they do have is a fantasy-friendly coach in Chip Kelly, a guy whose offenses finished in the top two in plays run in 2014 and 2015. If that's not enough to get you intrigued, the 49ers are tied for the second-worst odds to win the Super Bowl, so they should see plenty of negative game scripts, as well.
Basically by default, Smith is going to be among the team leaders in targets for a squad that will probably run a bunch of pass plays. That's a good thing.
He's not as bad as you think, either.
In 2015, among wideouts to see at least 40 targets, Smith ranked 13th in Reception NEP per target. With a SPARQ score in the 95th percentile, he's also a much better athlete than he's generally given credit for, which we can see via PlayerProfiler.com.
Smith finished as WR48 last season while getting just 62 targets. For reference, Keenan Allen was WR47, scoring just 2 more points, and he saw 27 more targets -- despite playing eight fewer games. Smith didn't get much action, but he did well with the targets he saw.
His volume is bound to go up, which is exciting in and of itself, and Smith's per-target efficiency tells us he could be a very solid producer with that volume. Our models rank him 36th among wideouts, and his ADP is WR43, making him a screaming value at this price.
