Bust WR Candidates for Fantasy Football in 2023

We’re running through our 2023 fantasy sleepers and busts series with a look at 2023 WR busts. Check out more in the series here:

• 2023 QB sleepers
• 2023 QB busts
• 2023 RB sleepers
• 2023 RB busts
• 2023 WR sleepers
• 2023 WR busts (you’re reading it now)
• 2023 TE sleepers (coming 4/24)
• 2023 TE busts (coming 4/26)

Looking for a wide receiver to avoid early in the draft? Here are four potential bust candidates for the 2023 fantasy season. These four WRs are currently being drafted inside the top 24 at their position.

Note: Since these players are being drafted high, they are obviously less likely to bust. But it’s too much of a cop-out to give you a “busts” article and then list players you wouldn’t expect to start anyway.

2023 Fantasy Football WR Bust Candidates

Deebo Samuel, San Francisco 49ers

It’s looking more and more like Brock Purdy will be the 49ers QB in 2023, so let’s take a look at Deebo Samuel’s stats with and without Purdy since 2020:

Using the FTN NFL Splits tool, we see Deebo is down across the board in his eight games with Purdy. These might not be dramatic drop-offs, but it’s certainly not like he saw a bump with Purdy.

Samuel’s magical 2021 also stands as an outlier with the rest of his career. His yards per reception:

• 2019: 14.1
• 2020: 11.8
• 2021: 18.2 (!)
• 2022: 11.3

The 49ers are also returning Christian McCaffrey, Brandon Aiyuk and George Kittle. Samuel will still have some monster games, making him better in best ball, but he’s not a lock to be a high-end fantasy WR2.

Garrett Wilson, New York Jets

Perhaps I’ll get flamed for this one, but Garrett Wilson being drafted inside the top 10 at WR right now doesn’t make much sense to me. The appeal is obvious, but this very much feels like his ceiling, and it also assumes Aaron Rodgers is a lock for the Big Apple.

Wilson had three games with at least 24 PPR points last year, and he had three more games as a fantasy WR1 with about 18 PPR points. But he also finished as a WR3 or worse in 65% of his games.

Similar to Samuel above, this up-and-down profiles as a “better in best ball” pick. Granted, Wilson was just a rookie last year, and he had hot garbage at QB, so a leap to the land of fantasy WR1s is not unreasonable. It’s just assuming everything goes well.

The players going around Wilson are CeeDee Lamb, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Jaylen Waddle. Give me all three of those first.

Christian Watson, Green Bay Packers

Christian Watson is such an interesting case leading in 2023. He went bananas for a month, scoring at least 20 fantasy points in four straight games in Weeks 10-13. But prior to that, he averaged 4.5 points per game, and after that, he finished as WR40 or worse in three of his final four games. 

And now he’s (almost certainly) losing Aaron Rodgers.

The talent is obviously there. You don’t score eight TDs in a four-game span without talent. But how much of that was a top-10 all-time QB locking into the hot hand?

Aside from the obvious downgrade at QB coming in 2023, Green Bay also has absolutely nobody on their WR depth chart right now.

Maybe this will lead to a 25-30% market share for Watson. That’s why you can get away with drafting him in his current range. But it also may lead to just an awful offense.

Drake London, Atlanta Falcons

Drake London started hot last year, posting these stat lines in his first three games:

• 7-5-74-0
• 12-8-86-1
• 6-3-54-1

But then he scored just two more times the rest of the year. He finished 2022 with two games as a top-12 weekly WR, two more as a weekly WR2, and in the rest, he finished as a WR3 or worse.

The fear is that the Falcons will just be a bad team and that London will be a high-volume, low-output player. 

The one potential bright spot is that the Falcons are rolling with Desmond Ridder at QB, and London was decidedly better with Ridder under center:

He didn’t score any TDs with Ridder in four games last year, but he did see 9 targets per game and averaged over 80 yards per game. However, these four games came against the 5-9 Saints, the Ravens (but the Falcons scored just nine points), the 4-12 Falcons and the 8-9 Buccaneers, who rested all of their starters that week.