5 Undervalued Wide Receivers Heading Into Your Fantasy Football Drafts

Anquan Boldin

Our own JJ Zachariason wrote about the insanity of Boldin’s value recently, but his message is worth repeating. Anquan Boldin is getting sold short by the fantasy football community, and those owners who scoop him up won’t be sorry for two primary reasons. First, you won’t have to spend a premium pick to get him. According to FantasyFootballCalculator.com, Boldin’s current ADP rests as the 51st wide receiver being taken off of draft boards. numberFire’s projected rank for Boldin among wide receivers? 29th!

That brings me to point number two. Anquan Boldin is a good football player, age be damned. Boldin’s only had one season in his illustrious career for which he’s fallen short of 100 targets (2007, 99 targets). And Boldin experienced a career revival in his last two seasons as a 49er.

Using numberFire’s primary metric for determining on-field effectiveness, Net Expected Points (NEP), which measures the effectiveness of a player based on his performance above or bleow expectation, we can determine just how good Boldin’s been as a 49er. With each play comes a general performance expectation that is calculated based on historical patterns, current down, yardage-to-go for a first down, and other football variables.

With Michael Crabtree out for most of the 2013 season, Boldin did grown man’s work, finishing sixth in the league among receivers targeted at least 95 times in Reception NEP. Not only that, but he was incredibly efficient while doing it, besting all of these receivers in per-target efficiency with a 0.93 Reception NEP per target. Basically, every time Boldin was targeted in 2013, he added nearly point to his team’s score. That’s impressive.

While his 2014 season wasn’t quite as effective, it was still nothing to scoff at, and he finished with efficiency levels well above average among qualifying receivers.

With the exit of Crabtree, Stevie Johnson, and Brandon Lloyd, Boldin should continue to see, at bare-minimum, the 130-target average he’s received in the past two years in San Francisco. With the addition of Torrey Smith and his ability to blow the top off of defenses, Boldin can continue to focus on what he does best: getting separation in shorter and intermediate routes and snagging every possible catchable ball thrown his way.

When it comes to Boldin, buy now.