Dynasty Fantasy Football: Potential 2022 Breakout Wide Receivers
In any given season, around 35-39% of players who finished in the top 12 the year before repeat inside the top 12 in PPR scoring – around four players (4.8 since 2009). They are consistent in being the dominant players, or young players just becoming the dominant players. Last year it was Justin Jefferson, Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs, and Keenan Allen.
On average, two players in the top 12 have returned after having missed the previous year because of injury, missed time, or just lack of production. Last year that was Cooper Kupp and Mike Evans.
That leaves an average of six wide receivers (5.5 since 2009) who break out for the first time. In 2021, we were treated to a once-in-a-decade event – twice – as two rookies joined this group: Ja’Marr Chase and Jaylen Waddle. The others were Diontae Johnson, Hunter Renfrow, and Deebo Samuel.
Ultimately, that means we see more players breakout out into the top 12 for the first time and then repeat last year’s level of production. Unfortunately, that six-player group is the most diverse and hardest to pin down to any trend.
However, we do know some things about them, and we can use that to highlight the most common breakout potential in 2022.
What do we know?
Wide receivers break out into the top 12 for the first time most often in their third career year, which accounts for 33% of all top-12 breakouts since 2012 – 35% of breakouts with top three-round draft capital, and 25% of breakouts for players drafted outside the top three rounds of the NFL Draft.
Players breaking out into the top 12 in their second and third years is most common more broadly. Since 2009, 61% of seasons have seen both types of breakouts.
We also know most top 12 breakouts have finished at least inside the top 36 beforehand: by year two, 51% of breakouts, by year three 64%, and by year four 70%.
As you may know, we’ve had some success using these trends to look for potential breakouts. Last year in a piece called ‘Third-year breakouts for 2021‘, we highlighted both Diontae Johnson and Deebo Samuel who broke into the top 12. We also highlighted Marquise Brown, who broke out into the top 24. We did, however, miss on Terry McLaurin who merely repeated his top 24 performance from 2021.
I went over the process of finding “common breakouts” here.
In 2022, those two rookie breakouts made me think about how we might capture the ‘uncommon’ breakouts. We’ve only seen four rookies break out into the top 12 since 2001, and only two in the top five. There are also about 30% of breakout players who don’t have a top 36 season before breaking out into the top 12.
I found two new data points to add to the list of trends that we can use to assess all players with common or uncommon breakout potential. The first is explained in this table for wide receivers.
There are a few takeaways here but to keep it simple, we’ve been seeing players inside their first three years break out a little more than usual recently, as well as players breaking out outside their fourth year a little less often than unusual (especially if they have less draft capital).
Secondly, while researching the percentage of players who break out with different levels of the previous production on discord a friend of mine, Connor LaPlante (@cplant_), noticed that roughly 70% of breakouts have reached 11 PPG or more the year before a top-12 season. Looking further, I found that if we average the PPG of players the year before each career year breakout we can consistently find a 66-70% hit marker.
Why don’t we skip to the end?
Common breakouts for 2022
So, I did that. Here’s who stood out the most for the 2022 season at the wide receiver position.
The top seven results all had breakout markers over 50% in all our trends and despite a negative recent trend in young players still came out on top in the basic common average calculation I ran (orange column).
CeeDee Lamb, WR DAL
Lamb is the most likely top-12 breakout candidate in 2022. DLF ADP tells us that pretty much everyone knows this, however, as he is going as the third highest-drafted wide receiver this month. So, I don’t want to belabor the point here.
However, I have run across come concerns about his target share. I’m more worried about Dallas sustaining production with the loss of Amari Cooper, the potential “decline” of its star running back Ezekiel Elliott, and the likely late start of Michael Gallup because of injury. However, I looked it up just in case.
Lamb’s 17% target share (per game in eight games played) was above average for top-12 breakouts before they broke out and third-year in particular. Most top-12 breakouts averaged similar target share when I looked at the distribution as well.
So, I’m not worried about it to be honest.
Darnell Mooney, WR CHI and Amon-Ra St. Brown, WR DET
I’m grouping these two because both are lower-drafted prospects with similar situation concerns and I think they are my favorite targets for the 2022 season.
Can Justin Fields overcome a bad rookie start? Will the coaching change help him? Can Jared Goff… well, can St. Brown do a poor man’s Diontae Johnson impression on volume alone?
I have opinions on these things. However, I also know – even as a community – we are at best only a coin flip in terms of accuracy when it comes to predicting them. That’s partly why I rely on trends and career arcs in the first place.
Despite adjusting their hit rates for their draft capital and lowering their expectation because of the recent trend of young breakouts, I still find them both to be likely top-12 breakouts in 2022.
Both rank outside the top 30 at the position in this month’s ADP.
This is, in my opinion, the year to bet on more “ugly” breakouts. Players with lower draft capital are my favorite flavor of “ugly.”
Tee Higgins, WR CIN, and Michael Pittman, WR IND
These are perhaps my least favorite targets this off-season. In my opinion, it would be fun to target Higgins if everyone was worried about rostering two Cincinnati wide receivers in the top 12. But they aren’t. Is it safe to draft Higgins there? Absolutely. I think he has a great floor and has proven to be a great player in the NFL so far. But does everybody else.
Michael Pittman is being drafted outside the top 12, which isn’t the same concern as Higgins, but he is also the only of two players on this list (the other is Mooney) to be inefficient according to fantasy points over expectation per game, and is still being ranked inside the top 24 (which is a very good place to draft him, to be clear). Pittman also scored the lowest in a model I created to project next year’s performance based on a player’s per-attempt production. That’s all a touch “bias” to be honest, and partly because I remain stuck to my rookie profiles which suggested Pittman’s top-24 upside, not top 12.
If either player lights your fire more than mine, I can offer no reasonable (or pure process-driven) reason not to want them on your roster in 2022, to be clear. Get your guy.
DeVonta Smith, WR PHI
Last year, I noticed that we had seen a lack of year three breakouts during the 2020 season. This led me to speculate that third-year wide receivers were “due.” This plus the trends we have mentioned led to the success we had in the breakout article last year. This year, it’s second-year breakouts that seemed to underperform in 2021.
While I find a lot of value in targeting third-year players – as my article last year suggested – I think sophomore players are by far the best targets in dynasty and they are more interesting this year. Rookie seasons tend to be very good indicators of future performance (even outstripping rookie evaluation) and as a community, we have become very good at lowering the ADP of “disappointing players” to the point that 94% of all players we drop by more than 12 have failed to go on to produce a top-24 season.
Notably, Smith is being drafted almost in the same spot – 58th. He found rookie competition in the draft, and I think this is the year to bet against rookies and for sophomores. I’d happily trade a first-round pick in value for him, right now.
If I were to guess, I think he may well be a top-24 player in 2022 since that is much more common for sophomores in general.
Anyway, that’s about all I have time for right now. Next time we’ll talk running backs and tight end breakouts.
UDFA's matter | British ex-pat | Writer of things
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