The Perception/Production Gap in Fantasy Football: WR/TE

Generally speaking, we want to pretend we are purely objective in fantasy football, that we perform the cold calculations and make the best choices and toss fandom to the wind. There are obviously exceptions to that, but the general point is that if you can look back at your season and see that all of your draft picks finished higher in point total than they went by draft pick, you did well, and if the opposite happens, you did poorly.

Sometimes, though, we aren’t that good at it. Sometimes, it’s injury — Christian McCaffrey was the consensus RB1 in 2021 drafts, but he was held to seven games and finished as RB38. Sometimes it’s just poor performance — Allen Robinson was drafted as WR12 and ended WR81. Even with the wisdom of the crowd, we can’t be perfect.

But being off on one player, one year is one thing. Are there any players (or player types) we are consistently wrong on? Ideally, you’d want the draft community to be within a couple spots of a player’s value every year. Failing that, you’d expect the community to underrate a guy one year, overrate him the next, and so on, as opinion and performance bounce around. But maybe other trends develop.

This is obviously an imperfect measure — more of a starting point — but I compared recent positional PPR ADPs (thanks, Fantasy Football Calculator) to players’ end-of-season ranking to see if any trends jumped out. Quarterback and running back Saturday, wide receiver and tight end today.

(I won’t always give a player’s entire career of ADPs, just enough recent years to make the point at hand.)

Wide Receiver

Cooper Kupp, Los Angeles Rams

I mentioned above that you’d largely expect the community to bounce around on a guy — if he’s underrated one year, his ADP spikes the next, leading to him being overrated, leading to his ADP falling, and so on. Cooper Kupp nails this to a T, never finishing within 10 points of his positional ADP. Kupp’s obviously going near the very top among receivers this year (his current ADP is a clear WR1), and you’re never going to go broke betting on a player to not finish first, so this trend probably continues.

Robert Woods, Tennessee Titans

Robert Woods’ torn ACL between Weeks 9 and 10 last year robbed him of a shot at continuing his streak of beating his ADP, but it’s worth noting that he was WR12 at the time of his injury, so just continuing on his pace might have gotten him there. Now on a new (and run-heavy) team, recovering from an injury and turning 30 in April, he’ll have a tough road to beating his ADP again in 2022, but the ADP is also a bit depressed (WR25 in early drafts), so he has a shot.

Tyler Lockett, Seattle Seahawks

Tyler Lockett is the only player I could find who has beaten his ADP each of the last five years, with four straight top-16 fantasy finishes on his record. Granted, he didn’t beat it by much in three of these five years, but hey, a win’s a win. With Russell Wilson gone, Drew Lock arrived, and DK Metcalf taking over as the Seahawks’ No. 1, Lockett’s ADP should plummet for 2022, but there’s every chance he’s a value again.

Odell Beckham, Los Angeles Rams

Everyone wants to recapture Odell Beckham’s early-career brilliance, but between injury, team changes and quarterback play, it hasn’t happened, and it frankly hasn’t come close to happening. Now a free agent and with a torn ACL in the Super Bowl, that means there’s no guarantee he even sees the field in the 2022 season, we’ll just hope things can turn around in 2023. 

Cole Beasley, Buffalo Bills

The best you can say about the fantasy drafting community’s opinion of Cole Beasley is “sometimes they acknowledge he exists.” That’s about it. And he’s never been a big-time producer by any means, but he’s played at least 15 games in nine straight years and almost always landed as a mid-range flex. Obviously, some game theory goes into this — why burn a late draft pick on a low-ceiling guy like Beasley when you can almost always grab someone like that off the wire, better to draft for upside in that range and just move on if you strike out — but Beasley’s persistence in “having fringy fantasy relevance while going ignored in drafts” is fairly impressive. Of course, now he turns 33 in April and is a free agent (and has some public-persona baggage), so we’ll see if he even gets the chance at that fringiness in 2022.

Brandon Aiyuk, San Francisco 49ers

I don’t have any grand point here, because it’s such a small sample. I just think it’s funny that the drafting community thought Brandon Aiyuk would be irrelevant in 2020, and he finished 35th, and then the drafting community thought he’d be a borderline star in 2021, and he finished … 35th. That’s the wrong kind of consistency, friend.

Tight End

Mike Gesicki, Miami Dolphins

Mike Gesicki has yet to have the dominant season some saw for him when he was the top tight end in the 2019 draft class, but he has exceeded value in all three of his seasons. And the Dolphins saw fit to bring him and Durham Smythe back for 2022 (and pay for the right to do so), so we shouldn’t expect their roles to change too much — though Tyreek Hill’s addition to the Miami offense could make it interesting. By the earliest ADP, Gesicki is going off the board 11^th. Don’t be surprised if he beats that.

Evan Engram, Jacksonville Jaguars

Evan Engram had one of the best rookie seasons ever for a tight end in 2017 (he had the most PPR points from a rookie tight end since 1988 until Kyle Pitts came around), and the drafting community has been chasing that high ever since. His 2017 season still features his career high in receptions, yards, touchdowns, first downs, and … well, just about everything we care about. Now in Jacksonville, Engram has settled in at TE18 in early ADP. We’ll see if the change in scenery can help him finally return value.