Wide Receiver Draft Strategy:

By: Nick Zylak

A complete record of success by year since 2015 can be found by clicking here

Quick Intro:

I highly recommend everyone reads the running back draft strategy article first. Or at the very least reads the introduction to that article. It goes over how I collected the data for this study, and what exactly the data is. It’s not the end of the world if you just skip to the findings, but I do think it’s important to understand the limitations of the underlying data. Also I think this study is really cool, and I’m sure many of you will just be interested in how it was done. Below I have a quick summary of the data if you’re on a time crunch.

Where Did the Data Come From TL:DR

  • I spent 4 months scraping ESPN public leagues
  • I removed:
    • Keeper leagues
    • In-Person drafts
    • 2 QB leagues
    • TE Premium Leagues
    • Leagues with impossible value picks (unreal steals and reaches)
    • Leagues with clear draft pick trading
  • The final dataset includes close to a million teams
  • I used a random sample of 110,000 teams from each year between 2015-2021 (770,000 teams)

When to draft your first WR:

Right off the bat we see a wildly different graph than for running backs. In the running back article we learned how success drops off for every round that you don’t take a running back. With wide receiver…the story is completely different. Teams that waited to draft their first wide receiver until rounds 3-6 won the championship and made the playoffs at a higher than average rate. Teams that drafted their first wide receiver in rounds 1 or 2 did so at a lower than average rate.

If you’ve followed my content for more than a few months, you’re likely not surprised by these results. We know how important running backs are to hit on…and we know that the vast majority of high end running back seasons come from the early rounds of the draft. We also know that there are a ton of elite WR’s still available in the middle rounds. So it’s not shocking that teams enjoyed more success when they waited until at least the third round to draft their first WR.

Also as I mentioned in the running back article, I’m only going to show the graphs for playoff rate. Playoff rate and championship rates follow virtually identical trends, so I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many graphs. I picked playoff rate because it’s more stable. There are years where one player scored say 50 points in the championship game. We don’t want that single performance shifting our entire draft strategy too much. Playoff rates proved to be a more stable representation of success, so I’d rather use that.

But What About Value?

Ok, so we should avoid drafting a WR in the first two rounds. Easy. But those are averages…what about my specific draft? What if I’m not planning on taking a wide receiver, but one become a big value? Should I still avoid the position?

This graphic might give us some level of insight into the answer! Column 1 indicates a WR’s value compared to ADP. Lucky enough to draft the 1.01 at pick 12? Congrats on 11 spots of value (12-1)! Decided to reach on the 12th ranked player at pick 1? Well you get -11 spots of value (1-12)! I’ve removed values 9-11 because there wasn’t enough data. Very few teams were able to get 11 spots of value on a wide receiver in round 1. That should makes sense because a wide receiver would need an ADP of 1.01, and you’d get them at 1.12.

Column 2 compares the playoff rate of teams that drafted the respective value level at WR in round 1, to the average playoff rate of teams that skipped WR in round 1, opting to take their first WR in round 2 or 3. I chose to keep this comparison the same as with RB so that we could evaluate the two.

Finally, column 3 is the exact same as column 2, just comparing championship rates instead.

We saw that by drafting a running back in round one you enjoy an above average playoff and championship rate even if you reach one spot in the first round. At wide receiver you’ll need to be getting 5 spots of value in the first round to make taking a WR worthwhile. Big yikes! 5 spots of value isn’t easy to come by, so make sure you don’t get too excited and think that 1-2 spots of value is enough. You need to be getting a big discount!

Also I did want to point out championship rate in this one. As I discussed above, championship and playoff rates tend to follow the same trends. In this instance, it’s worth pointing out that even teams that got a massive discount at WR in round 1 had a below average championship rate when compared to teams that just drafted a WR in rounds 2 or 3. I think this speaks to the value of hitting on an elite running back, which is easiest to do in the first round of drafts.

In general, do your best to not draft a wide receiver in the first round. Aim to take your WR 1 in rounds 3-6…with a lean towards rounds 3-5.

What About Your Second WR?

In the least shocking news of all time, the best time to take your second WR is shortly after you take your first! And since it’s best to take your first WR in rounds 3-6…that means the best time to take your second WR must be rounds 4-7! Whenever the data backs up common sense, you should feel good about trusting it.

I do want to point out the drop off in waiting until rounds 9+. You want to wait on drafting a WR…but you can’t wait forever. Redraft is slightly different than Best Ball formats like Underdog because you do still have to set your lineup. On Underdog you can make up for waiting too long at WR by drafting a million late and assuming that you’ll capture a few spiked weeks from each. In redraft, you don’t have that same luxury. You still need to decide who to start every week, and you won’t get to capture random spiked weeks from your bench. Because of this, you still do need to devote some early draft capital to the position. I wanted to point that out because I have seen some people take “avoid WR early” a bit too far. There are a ton of elite WR options available in the middle rounds, so if you take RB early, then capitalize on that! Don’t start off RB/RB/TE/QB/RB and assume there are still multiple rounds of elite WR’s left. I would try to leave round 6 with 2 WR’s on your roster. If you don’t, then you risk missing out on the receivers that have truly elite ceilings.

What About Your Third WR?

We start to get into a bit more strategy in answering this question. Taking your first WR after rounds 1 and 2 makes sense (given the importance of the running back position). Then drafting your second shortly after that is also logical. I think most people can be on board with having 3 RB’s and 2 WR’s by the 6th round (meaning you mixed in a QB or TE somewhere). After that I was curious if we’d see any real trend, or if it basically wouldn’t matter when you take your third WR. But the data is fairly clear that it does matter. Since the best teams didn’t draft WR early, it’s important that they continue to attack the position. You’re left with a weak team if you only have 2 WR’s entering the 11th-14th rounds. So even though you’d likely have great RB/QB/TE options…the reward isn’t great enough to justify a full abandonment of the WR position. The main takeaway here is that you need to continue drafting WR’s in rounds 6-9. Don’t be afraid to draft 3 straight WR’s in rounds 6/7/8. If you’ve invested high draft capital at RB (taking 1 or 2 in the first two rounds), then we’ve already learned that you can be patient when drafting RB’s 3 and 4. Use that as an opportunity to hammer WR.

What About Your Fourth WR?

As I did the study I was wondering when WR would flatline. At the RB position we saw a semi flatline when picking your third RB…but that was assuming you started off RB/RB. At WR, the flatline is in taking your 4th WR! By that I mean, the best time to draft your 4th WR is in rounds 9-15…but it’s not overly important when exactly that happens. It’s pretty important to draft your third WR before the 10th round…with an emphasis on rounds 7-9 being optimal. With your WR 4…just try and draft them before 16th, with a very slight emphasis on rounds 9-11. Basically, just try to find the best value you can in rounds 9-15, with the understanding that the longer you wait, the more risk you run that you won’t find a value and you’ll be forced to reach.

When to draft your X WR TL:DR

WR 1: Rounds 3-5

WR 2: Rounds 4-7

WR 3: Rounds 6-9

WR 4: Round 9+

Also, please remember that this study assumes the standard ESPN roster setup (1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 FLEX, D/ST, K). If your league has 3 RB spots, then you need to adjust for that. A good rule of thumb would be to move these ranges up by one round for every extra WR you can start. So if you have 3 WR spots, then your optimal range for your WR 1 would be rounds 2-4 instead of 3-5.

I’d treat a second FLEX spot as a half a WR. So instead of moving everything by a round, do so by a half a round. This format just offers more draft flexibility. You can get away with loading up on one position more than with a standard roster setup, so WR earlier is fine to do. No need to go too crazy though since you could also get even more aggressive with RB.

A Better Way to Display Specific Draft Decisions

The above research does a good job of showing when it’s best to take each respective WR. But as with the RB article, I wanted to create graphs to show what’s optimal for every decision you might have at the WR position. These are 5 graphs that should help guide you through your draft!

I’ll start with drafting your first WR, not only because that makes the most sense, but because it does a good job of showing both what this graph is…and what it isn’t. When a round shows up red on the graph, it means that playoff rate goes down by selecting a WR in that respective round. So for example…assuming you’ve drafted 0 WR’s…your playoff rate will go down if you select your first WR in round 2. The same is true for rounds 3 and 4…but it’s worth pointing out that the difference is extremely minor. It’s basically a neutral decision if you draft or don’t draft a WR in rounds 3 and 4. Once we enter round 5+, the difference skyrockets.

Here’s how I’d use the graph. Let’s say it’s the 4th round and you’ve taken 2 WR’s and 1 RB. You don’t like your QB or TE options, so you’ve narrowed down your choice to a RB and a WR. Which do you go with? Well, let’s look at the respective WR and RB charts! As you can see, WR has a fairly large negative value when drafting your third WR in round 4…but while the RB chart does see a dip in round 4 (indicating that round 4-5 RB talent is typically overvalued), you’re still in the green! So the WR chart says don’t draft, and the RB chart says draft. That makes the choice fairly easy right! Take the RB (as long as it’s not an absurd reach at RB or an absurd value at WR. You do still need to add some common sense to these graphs. These are averages. If a first round WR is still there in the 4th then you’re taking them).

There will of course be difficult decisions where the graphs don’t provide a clear answer…but that’s what the rankings are for! I don’t recommend drafting purely based off these graphs. Study these and understand what they’re saying. These should be used as warning messages for when you’re attacking a position too aggressively, or perhaps waiting too long.

THIS IS ALSO IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND. This graph is not saying that the best time to draft your first WR is in round 7! We’ve already discussed how the answer to that is rounds 3-5. What this graph actually says is this:

If you happen to find yourself in round 7 with 0 WR’s on your roster…you should definitely draft your first WR! That’s because your playoff rate is much higher if you take your first WR in round 7 compared to passing on that WR and taking your first one in rounds 8+.

If that doesn’t make sense to you, please read this section again. The highest points on each graph indicate the times when you’d do the most damage to your team by not doing what the graph says (i.e. not drafting a WR if it says to). The same is true for the lowest points. You do the most damage to your team if you draft a WR at a round where it’s negative on the graph. This is because your playoff rate goes down by drafting a WR in a round that’s red on a graph. Do not wait until round 7 to take your first WR.

Also, please make sure you use the correct graph! Once you use one and draft a WR…you move onto the next. So you’d start by using the one that says Drafted 0 WR’s…then once you draft one you move on to the one that says Drafted 1 WR and so on. Looking at the wrong graph is going to mislead you!

I’ll post them all below here in order, so you don’t get confused.

All 5 WR Draft Decision Charts:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Many WR’s Should You Draft?

The last thing we’ll go over is how many WR’s you should draft in total. Again, this study assumes a standard ESPN roster construction. That means 2 RB’s, 2 WR’s and 1 FLEX. If your league has more than that, adjust accordingly.

All else being equal, it’s best to draft between 3 and 5 WR’s…though 6 is perfectly fine as well. I would say that my lean is towards the 4-5 range, but the data does show that 3 WR’s still results in an above average playoff rate.

I think the larger takeaway is that your bench should have more RB’s than WR’s. The optimal range for RB was 5-6…with 5 still being the best number even if you start out RB/RB. Here we see that slightly fewer WR’s is optimal, and that trend holds even when we again only include teams that started off RB/RB.

That last point was surprising to me. I expected 6 or 7 WR’s to pop for teams that went double RB to start. The basic thinking being that you could allocate high draft capital to RB and then still be strong at WR by drafting with volume (i.e. lots of WR’s). But the data shows that this is a best ball only strategy! You’re still better off drafting RB/RB, but that doesn’t change what’s best at WR. You should still stick to 4-5 total WR’s. There’s no benefit in drafting a bunch of WR’s late to make up for drafting multiple RB’s early.

Finally, the obvious happens when you start off a draft WR/WR. You’ve allocated a bunch of early draft capital at a position that carries less value than RB (and is also easier to hit on). That means your best move is to draft very few total WR’s. 4-5 was optimal holding all else equal, but if you start off WR/WR then 3-4 total WR’s is your best move. I still am not sure I can get behind only drafting 3 total WR’s, but the idea still stands. If you start off WR/WR, draft 1 fewer WR than you were planning on and allocate that pick to RB.