5 Overvalued Wide Receivers Heading Into Your Fantasy Football Drafts

Davante Adams

There’s a lot worse places a number-three receiver could be stuck in than Green Bay. With the best quarterback in the league in Aaron Rodgers serving as your spoon, the conventional wisdom is that you’re going to get fed.

The thing is, when your team’s number-one and number-two receivers are as good as Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb are, the ceiling for stealing targets isn’t very high. In 2014, on 520 pass attempts, 53% of those targets (278) were directed at Nelson and Cobb. Adams’ 66 targets are barely more than half of the total number Cobb, the number-two receiver, had directed his way.

And there’s no reason to expect that to change in 2015. Why? Because Nelson and Cobb aren’t just productive by way of massive volume; they’re incredibly efficient on a per-touch basis.

Using numberFire’s signature metric for determining on-field effectiveness, Net Expected Points (NEP), we can see just how good Nelson and Cobb really are. Among all wide receivers with at least 100 targets last year, Nelson and Cobb finished third and second respectively in per-target efficiency. Cobb’s 0.94 and Nelson’s 0.93 Reception NEP per target in 2014 meant that the Packers were essentially adding a full point to their final score every time the ball was directed their way.

So how did Adams fare using the same metric? Among qualifying receivers (those with 65 targets or more), his 0.58 Reception NEP per target barely edged out the likes of Michael Crabtree (0.58), Jerricho Cotchery (0.57) and Kendall Wright (0.57), finishing 65th of 97 eligible receivers. Yeah, not exactly the murderer’s row of receivers if you ask me.

I’m not suggesting that Adams won’t show improvement next year. In fact, I definitely think he will. He showed some flashes of rookie brilliance in a few games last season, particularly in his first playoff game against the Cowboys, boasting a healthy stat line of 7 receptions, 117 yards, and a touchdown.

But Adams’ current ADP as the 38th receiver coming off of draft boards seems like a reach, and numberFire’s projections agree; Adams is projected to perform as the 67th-best receiver in terms of 2015 fantasy production. Arm your drafting strategy with extra caution and let your friends fall in the trap of reading too much into “Davante Adams is really exciting us in training camp” stories.