Breaking Down the Wide Receiver Craze of 2024

Wide Receiver prices are higher than ever in 2024, and we show why that is and how to strategically attack the WR-heavy drafts.

If you have drafted a best ball team recently at a site like Underdog, you have probably faced the shock of seeing current wide receiver values. Even if you dabbled in some early drafts back in May, and have just returned, it might feel like a whole new world. The relative environment has continued to shift heavily toward wide receiver systematically over the last month. We are going to dive into strategies for drafting wide receivers in your best ball leagues

Here’s a quick summary of the environment. This shows the average number of players at each position selected in the first seven rounds, for each time period listed. Note that the first line shows data from last year, to help illustrate how things have changed.

Time Period	QBs	RBs	WRs	TEs
End of July 2023	9	26	41	8
End of April 2024	9	22	45	8
Mid-May 2024	8	22	46	8
End of May 2024	8	22	46	8
Mid-June 2024	8	20	48	8
End of June 2024	7	21	48	8

We already saw that, right away in 2024, more wide receivers (WR) were being selected in the first seven rounds, and it was initially at the expense of running back (RB). Quarterback (QB) and tight end (TE) were pretty much in line to start the year, compared to last year.

However, we have seen WR pricing continue to steam up, and it has also been at the expense of the quarterback. Teams that drafted Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts near the start of the third round last year had very good advancement rates to the playoffs. Still, they are going about a full round later now, more often available in the fourth round than taken in the third. Joe Burrow and Dak Prescott have seen their average draft position drop at the expense of rising WR, now falling outside the top seven rounds.

Here’s another way of looking at the market, using data from drafts I have participated in. This shows the frequency at which my opponents drafted a specific number of wide receivers in the first five rounds.

Time Period	2 or fewer WRs	exactly 3 WRs	4 or more WRs
May/June 2023	51%	38%	10%
Jul/Aug 2023	52%	35%	13%
early to mid May 2024	36%	42%	22%
late May/early June 2024	23%	58%	18%
mid to late June 2024	30%	43%	27%

My data from last year largely matches up with what Hayden Winks shared here, in terms of the rate that teams drafted 2 or fewer, or more than 4 WRs through five rounds. (Whereas I don’t know if I am seeing anomalous results or not this year).

We observe an interesting response/counter-response in my drafts. It was another year where WR-heavy strategies dominated in advance rate. Out of the 2024 gate, we saw that the rate of drafters going with 4 early WRs was higher than the roughly 10% we were seeing a year ago. Moreover, it nearly doubled to start the year.

Then, as we saw the WR ADPs continue to rise in the first half of the drafts through May, it appears as though it was because “everyone” started drafting more wide receivers. Therefore, the rate of teams willing to have two or fewer through five rounds was cut in half.

In the more recent drafts, since that market rise, we have seen the “zero RB” and heavy WR drafters ramp it up a bit more and put those who might not be fully ideologically on board to the test of whether they wanted to take that specific WR.

So that’s the environment we are in. Now, let’s talk about the why and whether it makes sense, and how to attack it.

Why Do We Need Wide Receivers?

My general position here is that the Best Ball market is moving toward more efficiency. Having enough WR firepower has been a consistent +EV strategy through the early Best Ball Manias. As Winks noted in his “What Has Worked in All Four Years of Best Ball Mania” having 4-5 WRs through seven rounds, and 4-6 through 10 rounds, has worked every year when considering the wide receiver position in best ball.

Let’s see if we can explain the reason by looking at the starting requirements, how these positions score, and how the “best ball” rules impact them. In most Best Ball contests, you start 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, and a Flex (RB/WR/TE). So you have an extra starting spot to fill at WR (though you could fill the flex with RB every time, theoretically, and have the same amount needed.)

Spike Weeks

Here’s a chart showing the average number of spike weeks in a season by positional ADP. For these purposes, a spike week is 15.0 half-PPR points or more, a score that is high enough to hit your lineup at RB/WR/TE/Flex the vast majority of the time. This data is from the 2014-2023 seasons. (This data was also smoothed out by weighting the average results of nearby ranks).

We see that RB and WR are generally close to each other at the same positional rank number when looking at the average number of spike weeks. However, the wide receiver position drops off at a steeper rate from the top WR to the 15th WR and then gets a little more gradual. On the other hand, RB is a little flatter among the top 7 (with injuries/holdouts of some top RBs in the recent past being a factor) and is steeper from RB7 to RB20. Then, RB gets a lot flatter from RB20 to RB40 and beyond, the area commonly referred to as the “dead zone.”

Meanwhile, at TE, the drop-off in the likelihood of hitting several spike weeks is quite steep as you move from TE1 to TE7, and then flattens out for a while.

Looking at that chart, you might wonder, “Why would anyone in their right mind take WR20 over RB8?” Specifically, WR20 has an average expectation of about 4 weeks scoring 15 or more points, while RB8 is around 6 weeks.

That’s a great question. Therefore, we will explore whether that decision is defensible, even under the guise of “I need more Wide Receivers.”

Running Backs Have More Seasonal Variance

If we just isolate the top 12 RBs and top 12 WRs, we see that they have very similar average number of spike weeks as a group (6.0 vs. 5.8) but are different in how that manifests.

This chart shows the distribution of the number of spike weeks (15+ half-PPR points) for RBs and WRs selected in the top 12 in the last decade.

Group	0 or 1	2 or 3	4 or 5	6 or 7	8 or 9	10 or 11	12 or more
Top 12 RBs	13.3%	10.8%	24.2%	18.3%	14.2%	11.7%	7.5%
Top 12 WRs	4.2%	19.3%	25.2%	21.8%	19.3%	7.6%	2.5%

The RBs have produced more truly elite seasons, like last year with Christian McCaffrey, where he scored at least 10 points in 16 games, and at least 15 points in 13 of them. But they have also produced more near-worthless seasons from top picks. A lot of those were due to injury, some due to holdout, and others due to pushing guys up into elite range based on the situation (Montee Ball with Denver, anyone?).

Even the top WRs, during a really good season, will have a few down weeks. CeeDee Lamb had three last year with under 10 points in half-PPR when you might have wanted to replace his score in your Best Ball lineup. The top WRs though, are less likely to turn in complete dud seasons that can kill a team.

This variance pattern is most pronounced at the top of drafts, but we see it throughout. Here’s a chart showing the average number of spike weeks, and the standard deviation, broken into tiers of players in groups of six, by draft position.

Positional ADP	RB AVG	RB S.D.	WR AVG	WR S.D.
1 to 6	6.3	3.8	6.5	2.9
7 to 12	5.7	3.4	5.1	2.5
13 to 18	4.4	2.6	3.9	2.4
19 to 24	2.7	2.5	3.8	2.7
25 to 30	2.7	2.2	2.8	2.1
31 to 36	2.2	2.0	2.9	2.0
37 to 42	1.9	2.1	2.4	2.0
43 to 48	1.6	1.7	1.8	1.8
49 to 54	1.2	1.9	1.5	1.9
55 to 60	1.6	1.7	1.6	1.6

We would expect that the higher the average number of spike weeks, the higher the standard deviation. After accounting for that, RBs typically have more variance compared to WRs.

In English, there are both a few more outlier boom performances at RB and more dud seasons.

MORE FROM POOLGENIUS: The Best Ball Triumvirate: Three Factors to Weight in Best Ball Drafting

Creating an “Upside” Chart to Account for Variance and Top Performances

In Best Ball, we want outlier performances. If you are average, you do not advance to the playoff rounds, and you certainly don’t win the contest. So we should be building teams with the idea that we are hitting on some of the key picks in that draft and building around it. With that in mind, here is a new chart, taking that initial “spike week” chart, but converting it to an upside chart.

Basically, rather than look at it through the lens of what is average in terms of spike weeks, it is looking at how many spike weeks you should expect if you hit a performance at least one standard deviation better than what the typical player has produced at that average draft position.

 

Of course, it looks similar to the previous chart. Tight end is virtually indistinguishable. Want your best chance to hit big seasons? Draft TE early.

But we do see some differences in the RB and WR curves at some key points:

• The RB drop-off starts earlier when we look at the upside of elite seasons because while the early picks have produced some duds, they are also far more likely to produce big years;
• The RB “dead zone” becomes even shallower when we look at the upside. That group in the late 30’s and early 40’s at RB has produced as many really good RB seasons with more spike weeks as the counterparts drafted slightly earlier. This may be due to the prototypes that go there, somewhat riskier picks, but committee backs in ambiguous situations, compared to the “projectable volume” guys who go just before them historically.
• Then, the drop from that group to everyone else becomes more pronounced when looking at upside seasons, and RB45 to RB60 is fairly flat, suggesting we aren’t great at predicting which contingent situations will hit in a bigger way (injuries are not as predictable as people think, and drive a big part of who hits in this range).
• The WR curve looks a lot different between WR10 and WR25 when we look at upside performances. The WRs toward the latter half of this tier may have more downside (role uncertainty, new QB or offense uncertainty, age concerns) but the top tier of performances from this range make the curve a little less steep than looking at the average.

Slotting the Upside Values into the 2024 ADP Environment

Now, let’s take those theoretical values based on the last decade of results, and slot them into the actual drafting environment when it comes to WR in 2024.

I also slotted QB into the chart. For QB, I used “games with 22.0+ points” as our target.

This shows the value if you took a player near the middle of each round (Pick 6.5 in Round 1, Pick 18.5 in Round 2, etc.). For the single positions of QB and TE, I listed the top at each position in the 3rd round (even though they are going closer to the end of that round). It also doesn’t list values after Round 13 for WR, but that’s because we don’t have good historical data once we get past the WR65-70 range (and WR70 this year goes around pick 150). We will have some thoughts on those rounds in a bit.

Round	QB	RB	WR	TE
1		10.1	8.9
2		9.7	6.6
3	9.0	9.1	6.0	6.1
4	8.9	8.8	4.8	5.3
5	8.4	8.1	4.6	3.8
6	8.3	6.8	4.5	3.1
7	8.0	5.5	3.8	3.1
8	7.6	5.1	3.6	3.1
9	6.9	4.6	2.8	3.1
10	6.5	4.2	3.1	3.1
11	6.0	4.3	3.0	3.0
12	5.8	3.8	2.6	2.8
13	5.5	3.1	2.3	2.4
14	4.9	3.0		2.4
15	4.3	2.9		2.4
16	4.1	3.0		2.2
17	4.0	3.2		2.2
18	3.4	3.2		2.1

You can use this chart to get a sense of the value drops at positions based on historical data.

Let’s turn back to that question posed earlier. “Why would anyone in their right mind take WR20 over RB8?”

You can see that, just looking at each draft round independently, the running back available in that round always projects to have more upside to hit more spike weeks than the wide receiver, in half-point PPR. The degree of difference varies, but you are always giving up the expected higher-scoring player when you take WR instead of RB. The RBs available in the 18th round, if they hit as a decent pick, are more likely to produce more spike weeks than the WRs in the 9th round.

The issue, though, is that you need more WRs on your roster and in your lineup. You cannot just draft 10 RBs. So looking at that chart will hopefully help identify some value pockets you need to attack.

Attacking the 2024 Wide Receiver Heavy Drafts

Before getting to strategies I prefer when attacking WR-heavy drafts, though, a quick word on one I think is not as likely to work. I am dubious that simply swimming entirely against the current and starting with three RB picks is a good strategy in this environment.

In the old days of your home league, everyone would draft RB in the first round and you could get two of the top three WRs by being contrarian. But the reverse isn’t true in the current Best Ball environment. Despite most other drafters going WR-heavy, you aren’t going to be able to pair Christian McCaffrey with either Bijan Robinson or Breece Hall.

It’s far easier to build bad structural teams for Best Ball by starting RB-heavy, particularly for new drafters. You have to be spot-on with your three RB picks, then refrain from drafting any more (possibly just adding one more late RB). Those players have to be top performers, and you still risk being below average at the other three positions, or poor at WR if you try to also get a top QB or TE.

Now, to some strategies that I prefer when considering wide receivers in your best ball draft.

Lead the WR Charge Early, then Pivot

The relative drop-off between what you can get in the next round, or two rounds later, is much steeper at WR than RB at the start of drafts in 2024. For example, the difference between the “above average result” RB taken in the middle of round 1 and round 3 is 1.0 spike weeks (10.1 – 9.1). For WR, it’s 2.9 spike weeks (8.9 to 6.0). We see a much steeper upside curve at WR in the early rounds. Historically, the top 22-23 WRs have produced the most upside, and there’s a noticeable downturn in your odds of hitting a big boom pick as you move past that. That equates to the latter half of the third round in 2024.

So a primary strategy is to get several WRs in this upside window, and then pivot to other positions starting in Round 4.

One of the pivots that has led to several high-value teams is to hit an elite QB and TE in this window. We can also see that historically, TE production has fallen dramatically after the first few players, and the 4th/5th round range pairs nicely with this strategy.

While it always takes a little luck in any individual draft, if you can read the room, you can set up some potential pairings. Some common examples:

• Drafting Kansas City TE Travis Kelce in the 4th when he slips a bit, and then catching QB Patrick Mahomes when he falls into the 5th;
• Picking the Baltimore QB Lamar Jackson + TE Mark Andrews pairing closer to the 4/5 turn if Jackson falls that far;
• Taking Buffalo QB Josh Allen when he falls into the 4th round, and seeing if TE Dalton Kincaid comes back around to the latter half of the 5th round.

You can pivot to RB James Cook if Kincaid goes first on the Buffalo example, or pick up one of the other Chiefs’ players that goes between the late 4th and 6th rounds to pair as a teammate with Kelce if Mahomes does not fall. Drafting Arizona TE Trey McBride, then taking QB Kyler Murray a few rounds later, is a similar strategy.

If RB Early, Make it a Hero

A related strategy is that if you take an early RB, you need to rely on hitting on that player. So you wait on taking your 2nd RB, so as not to fall behind at other positions. This is commonly referred to as the “Hero RB” Strategy (or the “Anchor RB” Strategy).

This might look like taking Christian McCaffrey, Bijan Robinson, Breece Hall, or Jahmyr Gibbs early then two WRs. It might be a top WR then Jonathan Taylor or Saquon Barkley in the second half of the second round, or it could be going two WRs early and then getting De’Von Achane or Kyren Williams or Derrick Henry if they fall in the third round.

You have slightly less flexibility to take a second RB, but it’s not impossible. Then you can employ a lot of the same strategies as going WR-heavy through the first three rounds.

Two RBs in the First Five Rounds … If Getting a Big Discount

If you take two RBs through the first five rounds, you have to recognize that you are giving up something else. It might be waiting on QB and not taking one of the top six guys. It might be deferring TE until late in the draft and taking three of them.

Because of that, my preferred strategy is to insist on a big discount for the 2nd RB. It can be a case where they are going on the opposite side of the round from where they typically go, so there is a uniqueness element. It can be a big faller in ADP value.

While this is not my default strategy for entering drafts, it has been a high-value one to shift toward when the opportunity presents itself. Nearly all the teams I have drafted this way are above average in value, including two of my top six teams by current value relative to the ADP market. That’s likely because the drafting environment that leads to this pivot involves too many other teams drafting the same way, allowing value pockets that this contrarian strategy exploits.

For example, my highest value team to date started RB Jahmyr Gibbs/WR Brandon Aiyuk/RB De’Von Achane/WR Cooper Kupp drafting out of the late 1st round position. Achane at that position is a major uniqueness edge and value edge, when he is typically going late 2nd/start of 3rd round. The sacrifice was to wait on QB in a QB-hungry draft room and take three QBs late, which provided values elsewhere throughout the draft.

Hit the Ambiguous RB Window Hard

In 2024, there is a large tier between the late 7th round and the end of the 12th round when it comes to RB. This range includes what has historically been an area full of committee backs and ambiguous situations that can create value. You can see that historically, there’s a pretty big tier break near the end of the 12th round, which would correspond with around the RB44 to RB45 range this year.

The spike week potential of an RB in that “ambiguous” range is as close to the upside of the RBs taken in Round 9 as it is to those backups taken in Round 13.

This “ambiguous RB” window appears to be even wider this year, and it also presents a lot of opportunities. For example, 30% of second-year RBs being drafted in this range have produced “boom” seasons of over 200 points in half-PPR, compared to around 10% for all other backs drafted in this range. There are several second-year backs in 2024 in this range, with Tyjae Spears, Chase Brown, Zach Charbonnet, and Kendre Miller. Veteran RBs who can hit out of an apparent committee with a high TD goal line role have also been a good target in this range, and we have several, such as Ezekiel Elliott (Dallas), Raheem Mostert (Miami), James Conner (Arizona) and when he returns from injury, Nick Chubb (Cleveland).

So one strategy is to attack the WR-heavy environment by getting WRs in other pockets and trying to target multiple backs in this range, whether part of a WR-heavy start, a Hero RB start, or even two early RBs. (For example, in drafts with two early RBs, you could still take two more in this range and then stop, devoting the rest of your roster space to other positions.)

Late Rookie WRs

Hitting on a late WR is a bit like trying to hit the lottery. In 2024, by the time you get to WR61 (Jerry Jeudy), you are only at about the middle of the 11th round.

But recently, there has been value in rookie wide receivers with some rookie WRs proving to be a cheat code as a big upside pick. There have been 13 total WRs drafted in the last five seasons who (a) were outside the top 60 in WR ADP, and (b) produced five or more weeks with 15+ half-PPR points that season.

Nine of them were rookies.

• Puka Nacua, 2023, (9 spike weeks)
• Brandon Aiyuk, 2020 (6)
• Tank Dell, 2023 (5)
• Jayden Reed, 2023 (5)
• Amon-Ra St. Brown, 2021 (5)
• Tee Higgins, 2020 (5)
• Chase Claypool, 2020 (5)
• A.J. Brown, 2019 (5)

You can add in Christian Watson, Deebo Samuel, and Terry McLaurin as rookies who produced at least four spike weeks in the last five seasons.

The market hasn’t been particularly great at ordering which rookies will hit, often overvaluing perceived immediate opportunity or quality of offense, and letting guys with decent draft capital but more uncertain situations or perceived worse offenses drop. But if the WR hits (as evidenced by those names above) they are going to elevate the passing offense.

So if you are trying to battle the WR-heavy drafts and think the prices in certain parts of the draft are bad, focusing on rookies in the later round is another supplemental strategy. You can do this on a Hero RB or Early Duo team, by adding multiple rookies in the later rounds to add numbers at the position. You can also take a “Stars and Rookies” approach to drafting WR-heavy teams and then letting off and focusing on other positions in the middle of the draft. That way, you have both early quality and rookie upside to boost the team.