This isn’t about saying these WRs are bad or won’t even have a great season, but it’s about evaluating their potential return based on their ADP.  Wide receiver is the most stable position in football and it can get crowded at the top and even a slight slip in production can send your early round WR sliding down the rankings.  It’s the difference between projecting a player at his ceiling vs. what is more likely to happen or if there were a 100 seasons, what is the most common outcome.  This list of WRs are elite and if everything breaks right, they could have a monster season, but there are several factors that go into projecting a high-end WR and talent is only half of the game.

1.     Garrett Wilson (ADP WR8)

Garrett Wilson is entering his 3^rd year in the NFL and there is a lot of optimism about how he will perform now that he finally has a competent quarterback under center. While I am certainly willing to bet on improvement, I am not comfortable drafting Wilson as the WR8 in fantasy. Wilson finished as the 31^st ranked WR for fantasy last year despite being 4^th in the NFL in targets. His quarterbacks were definitely awful, but he was still 12^th in the league in catchable targets and there are plenty of players that had similar situations and outproduced him last year including Amari Cooper, Deandre Hopkins, George Pickens and Terry McLaurin; all four of which are being drafted 3+ rounds after Wilson this year. I understand Rodgers should be an improvement over Zach Wilson and Trevor Siemian, but do we really expect a 40-year-old Rodgers who is coming off a torn Achilles to catapult Wilson into a top-five fantasy WR. The seven WRs being drafted above Wilson all finished in the Top-12 last year and six of the seven are under the age of 27 (aside from Tyreek Hill who is Tyreek). Wilson has potential to finish as a top-10 WR but if he’s already being drafted as the 8^th WR, then how much higher is his ceiling to pay off this draft capital and is it worth the risk given we already know how low his floor is. I want to be in on Wilson, but I am unwilling to do so at a late first or early second round price. These rounds should be reserved for players that are either proven commodities or generational rookie talents and I am not sure I would place Wilson in either category.

2.     Chris Olave (ADP WR11)

Chris Olave was one of my favorite targets in fantasy last year, but unfortunately, he was widely considered a disappointment. He finished last season as WR21 despite being drafted as WR11. The core argument for Olave last season was that he was coming off a 1K yard rookie season and was getting a significant Quarterback upgrade in Derek Carr (replacing Andy Dalton) who had just helped Davante Adams produce a Top-three WR fantasy finish. Unfortunately, we saw last year that Carr just wasn’t very good. He consistently missed Olave deep and dumped off to Kamara incessantly at the first sign of pressure. This season Carr returns to the Saints another year older with the same coaching staff, so I don’t really understand what has changed to project Olave as a top-12 WR this season, as he has a current ADP of WR11. Last year, Olave was 12^th in the NFL in targets with 138 and it’s hard to project that he gets significantly more opportunity even with the departure of Michael Thomas. Maybe he gets more than five touchdowns, but he isn’t an elite red zone target nor are the Saints an elite offense. I still love Olave as a player and talent, but I don’t trust Carr or the New Orleans offense enough to be confident in Olave as a second-round pick in 2024.

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