1075: The Death of the Fantasy Football WR2

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Speaker 1: This is the latest with your host JJ zacheris J J zacher reeveon what's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode ten to seventy five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast. Thanks for tuning in. First off, it feels good to be back. Feels great to be back. Second, wide receivers really sucked in fantasy football this past year. Now I'll be doing my yearly episodes on the things I got right and the things that I got wrong next, but I need to start this offseason with an episode on what I think was the biggest storyline in fantasy football this past year. Wide receivers were really, really bad. It's something that I brought up on the show periodically during the season when I'd make my weekly rankings. Wide receiver was always borderline depressing. There were like eight good players who he cared about, and then there were just a giant group of guys of like twenty to thirty of them who could be mixed around. There wasn't much stability in pretability at the wide receiver position, and end of season data shows that too. In twenty twenty five, wide receivers in some scored the third fewest amount of PPR points that we've seen since twenty eleven. Perhaps what's more interesting is that when you tally up all the running back, wide receiver, and tight end PPR points, wide receivers made up about forty six percent of that total. That was the lowest that we've seen since twenty eleven by a full percentage point. So when we look at the number of Fantasy points scored by non quarterbacks, wide receivers scored their lowest proportion of that pie in the last fifteen years. You can see this on the individual level. Two, if you look only at relevant weeks, so you remove the final game of the season and you use a minimum threshold of seven games played. We had thirteen wide receivers get to fourteen or more PPR points per game in twenty twenty five. That was the second lowest mark since twenty eleven. In twenty twenty four, that number was twenty six, double what we saw in twenty twenty five. When it came to sixteen or more PPR points per game, we had eight of those players in twenty twenty five. In twenty twenty four, that number was thirteen, and since twenty eleven, the average has been twelve point four. It's not until you get to eighteen plus and twenty plus points per game where you start to see some normalization. The super elite wide receivers they existed in twenty twenty five. We had six of them with eighteen ppero points per game or more. We had two of them with twenty or more points per game. So to put all of that another way, wide receivers didn't score a lot of fantasy points in total last year, but we did still have elite wide receivers in fantasy football. It was mostly that next group that really suffered. The obvious question now is why. There are a number of directions that we can go with that question. Were there more wide receiver injuries among the elite players, leaving less elite talent to score points? Did that next tier of wide receivers just not play very well? Did they just have a weird season? From like a touchdown standpoint? Has something fun fundamentally changed with the way offenses are running in the NFL? Now? There might be at least something to that injury thing. If you look at top ten, top twenty, and top thirty wide receivers by ADP and focus only on relevant games again, removing that final week of the season because a lot of players rest. The twenty twenty five season was below averaging games played in each of those groups. When compared to all seasons since twenty fourteen, top ten wide receivers by ADP averaged thirteen point three games played. That's driven largely by Malik Neighbors being out. That was the fourth lowest mark out of those twelve seasons. When looking at top twenty wide receivers, it was actually the absolute lowest. That's because Tyreek Hill, Terry McLaurin, Garrett Wilson, and Mike Evans all missed significant time, and then among top thirty wide receivers were back to fourth lowest. And keep in mind the NFL season has one extra game these days, So could injuries be playing some role in the low wide receiver scoring last year? Yeah, probably some role. When players of a decent caliber get hurt and fearier players are gonna have to step in and fill that void, and that's not easy. Just look at the Jets when Garrett Wilson went down. But that's not everything. To me. The injury stuff is just a small piece of the puzzle. Let's shift back to production. For a second, I already mentioned how wide receivers scored the lowest proportion of points that we've seen since at least twenty eleven. They also saw their second lowest target share during that timeframe. Why not set a target share just above fifty eight percent in twenty twenty five. In twenty twenty four, that number was two percentage points higher the year prior, almost the exact same. We haven't had a target share this lower wide receiver since twenty seventeen. Naturally, a lower target shair means fewer targets, fewer receptions, fewer yards, and fewer touchdowns. Just naturally, touchdowns drive this game, and they can be volatile. So that's another place to look with this wide receiver season and how weird it was. And yes, wide receivers they scored fewer touchdowns than normal in twenty twenty five. In fact, their fifty eight percent receiving touchdown share was almost nine percentage points lower than twenty twenty fours. That's objectively pretty nuts. Their touchdown share from twenty twenty five was actually the absolute lowest that we've seen since twenty eleven. And maybe there's a little favorable regression that's gonna stem from this. The thing is, we know wide receiver targets were down. Their actual targets per touchdown rate wasn't that different from previous seasons, So how wide receivers were converting was actually pretty normal in twenty twenty five. They just weren't getting the looks that they usually got. The piece of information I haven't shared yet that brings a lot of this together and takes us down this new rabbit hole is how targets were generally distributed in twenty twenty five, not just a wide receiver, but at running back and tight end two. Like I already said, we saw this low of a wide receiver target share back in twenty seventeen. The difference in twenty seventeen, though, was that running backs were the ones who benefited most from that lack of wide receiver target share. For example, back in twenty seventeen, when wide receiver target share was the lowest that it's been since twenty eleven, running back target shaars were around twenty one point six percent. That's the highest mark of any season since twenty eleven, meaning those wide receiver targets were basically going to the running back position. But this past year, running back target share was eighteen percent. That was the second lowest running back target chair that we've seen since twenty eleven, beating only the twenty twenty four season. So the last two years have seen the lowest running back target shaars over the last fifteen seasons. There's only one position left who can see targets, its tight end, and that's where this missing target share is going. The game of football evolves, offenses tend to do something new, Defenses then react to that new trend, and then offenses they're forced to find a new way to beat those defenses. Over the last handful of years, in order to keep up with pass heavy, wide receiver heavy offenses, defenses became lighter in faster. We see more defensive backs on the field to counter the evolved passing concepts that we've seen over the last ten to fifteen years. But NFL offenses know this, and many of them they've started to run out of heavier personnel. If you have versatle tight ends who can both block well and catch well, that gives offense as an advantage to run the football better and take advantage of these defenses. We're really seeing this at a macro level, the NFL's pass rate this past year was the lowest of any season since at least twenty eleven. Last year, it was the second lowest, so we've seen the two run heaviest seasons over the last two years. Meanwhile, according to Fantasy Life data, the average team ran out of twelve personnel two tight end sets at about a twenty two point four percent rate in twenty twenty five. That was the highest since twenty twenty when this data dates back to the twenty twenty four season was at twenty one point eight percent. That was the second highest mark. All other seasons were under twenty percent. To give you some more context around this, last season, seven teams ran out of twelve personnel on thirty percent or more of their offensive snaps in twenty twenty four. That was five teams from twenty twenty through twenty twenty three, So across four NFL seasons there were a total of six teams who did that a total of them. Last year alone, we had seven. When a team runs more twelve personnel, it means they're not running as much eleven personnel or an offensive grouping with three wide receivers on the field. Eleven personnel really spiked when Sean McVeigh was introduced to the world when he became the Rams head coach back in twenty seventeen, but we've seen eleven personnel usage decline over the last couple of seasons. It really declined though in twenty twenty five. This past year was exceptionally different. According to Fantasy Life data, teams on average ran out of eleven personnel on about fifty six fifty seven percent of their offensive plays. Just last year that number was sixty one percent. That's a pretty big decline. But what's kind of interesting here is the frequency in which teams ran a lot of eleven personnel. I'm talking like over seventy percent of their snaps. Not a single team was over that seventy percent mark in twenty twenty five, ten of them were over that mark in twenty twenty four, and the average from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four has been six point eight teams per season hitting an eleven personnel rate of seventy percent or greater. This year, the highest was Tennessee directly at seventy percent. Now, to be clear, football isn't a game of two personnel groupings. Those are just two very very common ones, and they're two that can influence this game that we love analyzing, which of course is Fantasy football. Think about what this shift in personnel really means. Eleven personnel sees three wide receivers on the field at once, twelve personnel sees fewer wide receivers. So in turn, that would mean that wide receivers are generally running fewer routes. And if they're running fewer routes, they're also scoring fewer Fantasy points. And that's generally true. According to PFF eight, a wide receiver saw fourteen year low and routes run per drop back this past year, so wide receiver route share was at its lowest and unsurprisingly, tight end route share was at its highest and at least fifteen seasons. Now, we could stop there and conclude that wide receivers, specifically the non elite ones, they were so bad in twenty twenty five because of this shift in personnel grouping because they were running fewer routes. But there's still a lot more to this story. Not only were wide receivers running slightly fewer routes per dropback, but they were being targeted at a lower frequency too. In fact, their targets per route run rate last year, according to PFF data, was the lowest since twenty eleven. Now, it'd be one thing if they were running fewer routes but being targeted at a higher rate than normal, but no, it's this compounding factor. They're running slightly fewer routes and their targets per route run is also lower. Those two things combined can really lower the output for the position. Meanwhile, tight ends, as we know, they're already running more routes than they have in recent history, and they're also being targeted per route run at a slightly above average rate. What this tells me is that quarterbacks aren't just throwing to tight ends because they're on the field more. That's part of it, of course, but because the targets per route run rates were what they were, it seems to me that quarterbacks might be choosing to throw to tight ends more. They're not just doing it because it's some default fantasy points. Data suite offers first read target shair and it goes back to twenty twenty one, so the last five seasons according to that data, when looking at all first read targets among wide receivers and tight ends by year. Tight End first read target share was highest in twenty twenty five, So it wasn't just general targets going to tight ends. It was the first read for some of these quarterbacks. Now, this is something that's a little bit harder to quantify because I'm not in the building with these teams and with these coaching staffs. But this is sort of the breakdown of what I think is happening for a lot of NFL teams right now, or at least what we saw in twenty twenty five. First, they're adjusting the defenses have given them. Defenses are lighter, they're quicker, and teams have gone heavier, and they're running the ball more. Not only are they running the ball more, though they're doing so effectively. According to some data pulled by Late Rounds Brandon Goadula, twenty twenty five was the third most efficient season since nineteen ninety nine in rushing EPA per rush. Meanwhile, we didn't see that kind of jump from a passing efficiency standpoint. In other words, the advantage of running the football became better in twenty twenty five. Now, another thing to point out here is that two high safeties have become dominant in recent history. Defenses are looking to prevent those splash plays. That's why we've seen wide receiver average up the target drop over the last five or six seasons. This could be another reason that quarterbacks are opting to go to tight ends more frequently. It's not necessarily because wide receivers can't run those shallower routes. It's that tight ends are just doing it more often. And with teams running more twelve personnel, tight ends are on the field more so they're getting some of that lower aid DOT production. So in total, tight ends are running more routes than usual, and they're being targeted at a higher rate per route run, and that's hurting wide receivers a lot. In my opinion, what this shift in personnel grouping does is two things. Number One, it makes lower tiered wide receivers less relevant. If they can't find the field, they're not going to score as many fantasy points, or even if they're on the field, there's a higher chance of them losing targets to a tight end. That wouldn't be the case as much for a stud wide receiver because stud wide receivers they're gonna get good target chairs in any environment. But then number two, we know that teams are now running the ball more because of defensive adjustments and what heavy personnel generally allows you to do against those defenses. So even if you have a stud wide receiver on a team that runs a lot of twelve personnel or a lot of tight end heavy groupings, that stud wide receiver may still have a hard time being a studd in fantasy football because his team isn't throwing the ball as much. And this is a huge reason we saw what we saw in fantasy football this past season. Specifically, it's why we saw such little help from wide receivers in the late rounds of our fantasy drafts. Think about it. What I'm really saying here is that elite wide receivers they're at a premium. With this change in the way NFL offenses are running things, we technically have fewer wide receivers who are relevant to the game. Twenty twenty five had the second fewest wide receivers since twenty eleven get to a ten percent target chair. It tied for the lowest amount of wide receivers getting to a fifteen percent target chair. It was below average when looking at twenty percent target chair players, and it starts to normalize a little bit as you get closer to the high twenties. Target chair is going to correlate to fantasy success, which means the guys who are actually getting those looks, they're the ones separating themselves even more. And this shows up an average draft position data too. You may think that with wide receivers being worse in fantasy that it would mean to wait on the position because the position as a whole is scoring less. Now that would be valid if every wide receiver was scoring less, but that's not the case. What's really bringing this all down are the players who were drafted in the late single digit rounds and into the double digit rounds of your drafts. Fantasy Data's average draft position data goes back to twenty fourteen. I use that data to look at all wide receivers who were drafted after pick eighty four, which represents the end of the seventh round in the twelve team fantasy draft this past year. The twenty twenty five season saw the lowest rate of wide receivers coming from those rounds who finished top twenty four, Top thirty, and top thirty six of the position. I mean, guys, we had one top twenty four wide receiver in PPR points per game come from the eighth rounder later last year one. It was Wandel Robinson. He probably wouldn't even finish that high had the league neighbor's not gotten hurt. Now keep in mind, I'm referring to drafted players here. This goes for all seasons analyzed. Christian Watson, Michael Wilson. They did sneak into the top twenty four, but they weren't drafted. But that happens in other seasons too, that's not unique to twenty twenty five. The fact of the matter is that these secondary wide receivers, they weren't nearly as useful as we've seen in previous seasons. Maybe you could say the market's getting smarter and all the good wide receivers are just drafted early now, but that still results in the same thing when it comes to our draft strategies moving forward, and that's elevating the truly truly elite wide receivers in this game. Like this all doesn't mean that we should avoid wide receivers in the early parts of our draft just because the wide receiver position in total wasn't very good. It means we probably shouldn't rely heavily on wide receivers drafted in the latter parts of our draft. NFL teams are running the ball more, and they're running the ball more out of heavier personnel. That means fewer wide receivers are going to be on the field, and when fewer wide outs are on the field, it means we have fewer relevant ones to choose from in fantasy football. There are fewer chances to hit on a middle and late round pick, and that's only reinforced by the idea that teams are opting to throw to tight ends more frequently. Having an above average wide receiver on your fan n team back in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen could have fielded a pretty nice fantasy season in the right environment. But now those above average wide receivers by talent, they're at risk of losing routes and losing target share to tight ends. That makes the stable pieces, the ones we feel really good about seeing a lot of volume. That makes them more valuable, not less valuable, because they're unicorns targets run this game. For wide receivers. Volume is everything for a wide receiver to see volume, he either needs to have a high target share, playing an offense that throws the ball a lot, or both. With the NFL's offensive environment changing the way it is, the elite wide receivers are still seeing high target shairs. In fact, you could argue the elite wide receivers are seeing even higher target shairs than normal because in heavier personnel groupings, they're competing for targets with tight ends instead of other wide receivers. That makes it easier for an elite wide receiver to see a target on a given dropback because he's easily the best pass catcher on the field. That's just not the case for a more mediocre wide receiver. The downside of that is passing volume teams are naturally gonna run the ball more if their formation includes these bigger bodied players and if they want to beat the ordinary defense in today's NFL. So the players who are being hurt most they're the ones who aren't quite good enough to see an elite target shair because chances are their offense isn't as pass heavy as it was three or four years ago. And that's why the fantasy football wide receiver two is dying it's becoming flatter. Teams are heavier, they're running more and tight ends. They're capable enough to take both route share and target share away from the more average to above average wide receivers. Meanwhile, the elite guys, they're sticking around and look guys. Admittedly, a lot of this stuff has been happening and changing over the last few years, but twenty twenty five was a huge shift in all of it. Whether you look at touchdown share, tight end target share, twelve per or snel usage, all of it was a pretty big shift. But in my opinion, it's gonna be pretty difficult for defenses to fully adjust in just one off season. Maybe this is some apex and things revert back to like twenty twenty four levels here in twenty twenty six, but even if that's the case, we should probably conclude the same thing. Elite wide receivers are really valuable in fantasy football if you can find them, and that's a big if because there's not a ton of them right now, and then that next tier of player it's gonna have a hard time differentiating itself from the rest of the pack. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are bushretting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't for to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. This first week back is gonna look a little bit different than the rest of the podcast schedule this offseason. Usually in the off season I alternate Fridays with the Mailbag and then Perspectives. But this Friday, you'll get an episode of me going over the things that I got wrong this past year to dig into my process to see if I was a moron or if I just got unlucky, and then a week from now I'll do the same thing with the things that I got right. But thanks for listening to everyone. I'll catch you later this week.