Using vacated targets & ADP to find WR value

Tony Cosentino (3 minute read)

In 2021, two of the four players on most playoff rosters were Cooper Kupp (14%) and Debo Samuel (13%). These guys were not going in the first three rounds of your drafts and they were not even the first receivers being drafted from their teams. Two swings from the fantasy community as a whole and two misses. How can we do a better job of identifying players with the potential to break out like Kupp and Samuel did in 2021?

The answer isn’t always clear cut, but one data point we can use to our advantage is opportunity. One way to measure opportunity going into a season is a team’s vacated targets from the prior year. In the case of Kupp and Samuel, they went into 2021 with 142 and 120 vacated targets on their teams, respectively. There’s obviously more to why they made such a big splash but additional targets in each offense is a contributing factor that we’re able to use to more accurately predict these scenarios.  

Another data point we can use to help find value and also mitigate risk is average draft position (ADP). I mentioned earlier that Kupp and Samuel weren’t the first receivers being drafted from their teams in 2021. For the Rams, Robert Woods was the WR14 while Cooper Kupp was at WR18. On the 49ers, Brandon Aiyuk was WR23 with Debo Samuel as the WR36. Kupp and Samuel were the values in 2021 with a slight discount at ADP. That discount (and lower risk) is something we should be taking into account when we’re drafting. Why? Because you’re taking the sure thing in the first couple of rounds (i.e. Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, etc). These picks are in those middle rounds and if we’re seeking the players that are discounted at ADP then our risk on each pick is lowered. Using last year’s example of Brandon Aiyuk and Robert Woods going before Debo Samuel and Cooper Kupp shows just how much that can hurt you.

What now? Well, now we can look at vacated targets from the 2021 season to influence our 2022 drafts. Below is a chart of the top-10 teams in terms of vacated targets from the year prior.

We see the Titans and the Chiefs with massive numbers for vacated targets and in their case its predominately at the wide receiver position. Great, we now have a couple of teams to take a closer look at since we’re discussing receivers here. Below are the top 4-5 players at that position for each team with ADP included.

With the Titans we know Julio Jones and AJ Brown are gone. This year, your best bet would be either Treylon Burks (WR40) or Robert Woods (WR51).

Moving on to the Chiefs, we see JuJu Smith-Schuster (WR27), Sky Moore (WR44), and MVS (WR47).

On both of those teams my preference would be the later receivers (Woods, Moore, MVS) simply because they are cheaper at their current ADP and we know each team has a ton of targets to spread around. I’ll mention it one last time, if you don’t hit on those guys, that’s fine! You’re likely drafting them in the 7^th round or later. You can recover from that versus taking JuJu in the 5^th round to be your WR2 and it doesn’t pan out.

Fantasy is rarely a certainty so taking this approach will at the very least help you find some value in your drafts while at the same time mitigating some risk. Good luck!