5 Overvalued Wide Receivers Heading Into Your Fantasy Football Drafts
Martavis Bryant
Martavis Bryant really generated a lot of buzz last season, coming from being a bench-sitting unknown to an absolute touchdown menace, scoring six touchdowns in his first four games on an NFL field. As such, Bryant’s big frame and elite speed have fantasy owners salivating to get a piece of the action this coming season, and the temptation is reasonable.
Bryant is currently coming off draft boards as the 19th receiver selected according to his current ADP. However, numberFire projects that Bryant will finish the season as the 33rd-highest scoring fantasy receiver.
What could eat into Bryant’s production this season? Actually, a number of factors.
First, the Steelers’ wide receiver group is deep. Antonio Brown is the unquestioned top dog in terms of current ADP and numberFire projections. Brown’s 184 targets from the 2014 season will likely remain in that outrageous range, give or take a few. He’s just that good.
But there is no unquestioned number two receiver on the Steelers roster. Markus Wheaton showed real signs of improvement in his second season, and could be poised for more of a role in the offense next year as well. Moreover, the Steelers spent moderate draft capital with a third round pick to acquire Sammie Coates, the elite athlete out of Auburn with ridiculous burst and a 96th percentile bench press.
Both Wheaton and Coates could potentially eat into Bryant’s target share, which would require outrageous efficiency of the like Bryant displayed last year to live up to his draft-day cost. But this efficiency was a product of more than 26% of his catches occurring at least 20 yards downfield. This kind of performance is likely due for some regression, especially if given more full-time work.
Finally, owning Bryant, based on his short sample size of 10 games played last season, was nothing short of a roller coaster ride. Bryant scored a respectable average of 13.61 points in PPR leagues per game. The downside? His standard deviation between performance, in other words, the amount of variance between week-to-week scores was very high.
With a standard deviation of 9.53 points, this means 68% of Bryant’s scores fell between 4.09 and 22.13 points. That’s not exactly the beacon of predictability I’d be looking for in my WR2 come draft day.
If you can resist the temptation, pass on Bryant for someone a little safer with a more clearly defined role in his team’s offense.
