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Rookie Wide Receivers - Summary

Draft Recommendation: Rookie wide receivers who were drafted in the top 12 in the NFL Draft are very overvalued in fantasy drafts.

The 2009 National Football League Draft took place once again at the Radio City Music Hall in New York City in late April. Year after year, once the draft is completed, analysts try and determine who were the winners and losers on draft day. Once training camps begin, fantasy sites and fantasy football managers try to predict what impact newly drafted rookies will have on their new teams. I was curious to find out whether rookie players were generally overrated or underrated by the average manager in fantasy drafts. In this article, I will compare the average draft position for rookie wide receivers to their end of year ranking in fantasy points (in a points per reception scoring system) in order to determine whether or not rookie wide receivers are worth drafting.

For this analysis I decided to look at wide receivers drafted in the first four rounds of the NFL Draft who played at least one game in their rookie year. Of the 70 rookie wide receivers since 2000, 28 of them performed better than their average draft position which is equal to 40%. On the other hand, 46.8% of the non-rookie wide receivers with similar average draft positions performed better than expected. As you can see, by drafting a rookie wide receiver, your chances to make a good pick are 6.8% lower than by drafting a non-rookie wide receiver.

Another interesting thing I noticed by looking at rookie wide receivers is that wide receivers drafted early in the NFL Draft performed worse compared to their average draft position than ones drafted later. Since 2000, there have been 15 wide receivers drafted in the first 12 picks of the first round and only two of them performed better than their average draft position in fantasy drafts. In the past few years, Calvin Johnson, Braylon Edwards, Reggie Williams, Troy Williamson, Ted Ginn and Mike Williams are all top receivers who disappointed in their rookie season. As for the group of wide receivers that were drafted outside the top 12, the data is once again in favor of non-rookie wide receivers but only by 3.3%.  

The data presented in this article makes it quite evident that you should stay away from rookie wide receivers drafted in the top 12 picks. You will want to consider rookie wide receivers that were drafted later in the NFL Draft but they are still a risk. We believe it is much easier to predict performance of receivers that have been in the league for at least one or two years than taking a guess on a rookie receiver. One thing is for sure though; do not worry about drafting Darrius Heyward-Bey or Michael Crabtree in 2009 because they are almost certain to be overvalued in fantasy drafts.

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