10 Players You Should Be Avoiding in Fantasy Football Drafts
Tyreek Hill, WR, Kansas City Chiefs
There was nothing wrong with Tyreek Hill's end-of-season stat line last year -- he hauled in 75 of 105 targets for 1,183 yards and 7 scores. Those numbers alone don't show anything out of the ordinary.
How Hill produced those numbers was abnormal, though. All of his touchdowns went for 30 or more yards, and Hill scored 7 times despite seeing only 4 red zone targets. That touchdown-to-red-zone-target rate (1.75) was one of the highest that we've seen over the last seven seasons.
| Player | Year | Targets | TD | RZ Targets | TD to RZ Target Rate | Next Season Targets | Next Season TD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robert Meachem | 2011 | 60 | 6 | 2 | 3.00 | 32 | 2 |
| Kenny Stills | 2013 | 50 | 5 | 2 | 2.50 | 83 | 3 |
| Denarius Moore | 2011 | 76 | 5 | 2 | 2.50 | 114 | 7 |
| Danario Alexander | 2012 | 62 | 7 | 3 | 2.33 | N/A | N/A |
| Tyreek Hill | 2017 | 105 | 7 | 4 | 1.75 | N/A | N/A |
| Santana Moss | 2012 | 62 | 8 | 5 | 1.60 | 79 | 2 |
| Tyler Lockett | 2015 | 69 | 6 | 4 | 1.50 | 66 | 1 |
| Kenny Stills | 2016 | 81 | 9 | 6 | 1.50 | 105 | 6 |
Among wideouts who scored five or more times in a season since 2011, only four had a higher touchdown-to-red-zone-target rate than Hill had last year. When you expand that sample to feature players who had slightly lower rates than Hill, you get a pretty similar trend: almost all players scored fewer touchdowns the following season, even if they saw more or similar volume.
This is a fairly obvious notion -- these are deep-ball players, so there could be some year-to-year variance in the touchdown column.
That's the point.
In order for Hill to live up to his average cost (he's WR15 right now, falling off of draft boards in Round 3), he's going to have to be used differently. That might be a little tough, as Kansas City signed Sammy Watkins this offseason. Watkins was arguably Los Angeles' best red zone threat last year, catching 7 touchdowns on just 10 targets. He actually led the Rams' pass-catchers in red zone scores.
On top of this, while Patrick Mahomes has the right skill set for Hill (read: he's got a big arm to sling it down the field), it's very unlikely that he'll do what Alex Smith did last year with the deep ball. In 2017, among passers with 200-plus attempts, Smith ranked fourth in completion percentage on 15-plus air yard throws, first in percentage of yards coming on those tosses, and second in deep ball touchdowns. It wasn't like Smith was just efficient, too -- he ranked 12th in percentage of attempts that traveled 15 or more yards through the air.
Hill could see more volume in the Chiefs' offense this year, especially if they see more negative game scripts and are forced to throw more. The worry is that there's surely some negative long ball regression coming, and Sammy Watkins is now in the mix. It makes Hill a very risk third-round pick.
