Tier 4: Perennial Values

     16. Amari Cooper – Cleveland Browns

     17. Keenan Allen – Los Angeles Chargers

     18. Tyler Lockett – Seattle Seahawks

These WRs are values every year because they seem to get disrespected with their low ADP (average draft position). Regardless of constantly being very good. They are great players to round out your team because history shows they’ve been good and can provide some spike weeks too. Each of their teams did invest in WRs during the offseason, which could lower some volume. However, they’re still new players that’ll have to kick the veteran off the field, which can take a good portion of the season.

Allen and Lockett will both be playing the 2023 season at 31 years old, which raises some concern, even though they haven’t shown signs of slowing down. 

Tier 5: Upside and Ballers

     19. Jerry Jeudy – Denver Broncos

     20. Marquise “Hollywood” Brown – Arizona Cardinals

     21. Terry McLaurin – Washington Commanders

     22. Brandon Aiyuk – San Francisco 49ers

     23. Christian Kirk – Jacksonville Jaguars

     24. Drake London – Atlanta Falcons

     25. Deebo Samuel – San Francisco 49ers

     26. DJ Moore – Chicago Bears

     27. Diontae Johnson – Pittsburgh Steelers

     28. Mike Williams – Los Angeles Chargers

     29. Mike Evans – Tampa Bay Buccaneers 

     30. Chris Godwin – Tampa Bay Buccaneers

     31. Christian Watson – Green Bay Packers

     32. Jahan Dotson – Washington Commanders

I’ll say it first: Some of these WRs feel too low. Jerry Jeudy showed flashes in his 1st year with Russel Wilson, even though the Broncos were awful on offense. (I feel so bad for them because that defense was so good in 2022). The Broncos just picked up Jeudy’s 5th-year option, which is usually a good sign of a team’s intentions of using that player. Even putting up with poor play calling and bad QB play, Jeudy ended up as the WR21 in 2022. Expect more from Jeudy in 2023.

Hollywood Brown seems to be the only WR in Arizona. We may not know the QB, but during the first 6 games last year when Brown was playing without Hopkins due to his suspension, he was the WR6. Hopkins is gone and it looks like Kyler is projected to miss at least some of the season, but Hollywood is a playmaker and the WR depth chart looks grim.

Begin the disrespect: Oh man, if McLaurin only had competent QB play. Nevertheless, he ended 2022 as the WR14. Terry actually played better with Dotson on the field (scoring 13.1 PPG once Dotson returned from injury and was a full-time player versus his 10.6 PPG during Dotson’s absence).

Aiyuk got his 5th-year option picked up by San Francisco. While the 49ers do have a ton of playmakers all over the field, Aiyuk seems to still find ways to get his. I don’t care who they put in at QB, give me some Aiyuk.

Kirk is now in a timeshare with Calvin Ridley, who hasn’t played football since Week 7 of 2021 (To give you an idea of how I feel about Calvin Ridley in 2023, his ranking hasn’t appeared yet). It feels bad having Kirk, who was a WR1 in 2022, at WR23 for 2023.

Drake London had a 29% target percentage in 2022, which was only surpassed by Tyreek Hill and Davante Adams. That sounds great (and it is), but they are Atlanta targets from bad QB play and on a team that threw the ball at the 2nd lowest rate in 2022. London surpassed 10+ targets just 3 times (meanwhile Tyreek and Adams both surpassed 10+ targets 9 times).

I’m not trying to compare a rookie to these elite, arguably hall-of-fame players, I’m more so trying to point out that team target percentage can be deceptive. They just invested the 8th overall pick on Bijan Robinson and head coach Arthur Smith still wants to pound the rock. Should Desmond Ridder take a step forward (or Taylor Heinicke take over) along with London going into his 2nd year, we could see a sophomore leap.

I’ve got Deebo behind Aiyuk mainly because of his injury history. He hasn’t played a full season in his career, meanwhile, Aiyuk hasn’t missed a game in 2 seasons. Deebo was propped up a bit on his amazing 2021 season and I wasn’t into him in 2022, and I’m still not super into him (especially at ADP as WR16). We know he’s talented and we know I don’t care who the 49ers have at QB, but it’ll take the discount and perhaps a better player in Aiyuk at his current ADP of WR32.

DJ Moore moved north this offseason from Carolina to Chicago to play with Justin Fields. I discussed how Atlanta threw the ball at the 2nd lowest rate in the NFL in 2022. The Bears hold the crown as the team who threw the ball at the lowest rate in football. No doubt they will throw the ball more since they added a stud veteran WR like Moore, but I believe this is more of an upgrade for Fields than it is for Moore. We’ve seen instances of what adding a veteran WR to a QB who needs it can do with Josh Allen/Stefon Diggs and Jalen Hurts/A.J. Brown. Could this be it? Perhaps.

Diontae Johnson was allergic to the endzone in 2022. He even broke the record for the most receptions in a season without a TD since at least 1992 according to Pro Football Reference. Johnson was another player I was out on in 2022 because of his situation: rookie QB. It’s just so rare that we see a rookie QB come in, throw a ton of TDs, and support his WR1.

In 2023, I’m in on Johnson because it’d be hard to score less than zero TDs, and expect Pickett to take a little jump from 7 TDs to around 20. Combine Pickett’s leap with Johnson who was 7th in targets last year and the other WRs with 140-170 targets (a range Johnson has hit in the past 3 years) averaging almost 7 TDs, we should see Johnson bounce back.

The Chargers added Quentin Johnston in the 1st round of the NFL draft this year. Johnston mirrors Mike Williams as a big red zone threat, a part of the field where Mike Williams has thrived. While I believe Justin Herbert gets back on track to throw 30-40 TDs, there are still a ton of mouths to feed with Allen, Ekeler, and now Johnston.

Mike Evans and Chris Godwin have dealt with bad QB play before when playing with Winston and company, but now they’ll likely be playing with Baker Mayfield. Brady threw for at least 4600 yards each of his 3 seasons in Tampa and Winston threw for 4000+ yards in every year he played a full season in a Bucs uniform. Mayfield has never thrown for 4000 yards in the NFL. So the yardage won’t likely be there, and every team in their division just got a whole lot better. The duo is being drafted as WR27 and WR33, which isn’t horrible, but I’m not sure I see the upside here to a finish higher than a low-end WR2.

Rodgers is gone and it’s now the Jordan Love era in Green Bay. Love’s going to need a safety blanket early and often. Given his options, Watson seems like the guy. We saw a very small sample in Week 12 last year and the two connected a few times, taking one TD to the house and almost catching another TD in Love’s very small one quarter sample.

Dotson started his rookie campaign last year with a bang. Catching 4 TDs in his first 4 games in the NFL, but then got setback with a hamstring injury for a few weeks. While we never saw Dotson command double-digit targets in any week, Dotson showed he is a real threat in the red zone. I went back and watched each TD play Dotson made.

In 5 of the 7 he had a defender draped all over him, though he made the grab with strong hands. In one of the other TDs he made a nice move and made 3 defenders miss en route to a TD. Lastly, the final TD was a great route, confused the defense, and got decently open for the TD. His ADP right now is WR39, which is a super value, but come draft time, it may be lower. If there is someone that can make their ranking look silly, it’s probably Dotson.