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WR Targets by Round for a Zero-RB Draft Strategy
When targeting specific wide receivers when implementing a Zero-RB strategy, your selections must be thoughtful and purposeful. You can’t just stack upside upon upside bets, leaving your fantasy points floor (especially during the first half of the season) incredibly low. Conversely, drafting all veterans and older receivers may leave your position lacking upside toward the fantasy playoffs.
Luckily, we’ll be listing some of the best wide receiver fantasy football picks in each draft pocket to give you particular targets, what they can offer you and how they fit into a Zero-RB draft strategy build for this fantasy football season.
Early-Round WR Target
The first half of fantasy football drafts in 2024 are pretty cut and dry with the usual suspects like CeeDee Lamb, Christian McCaffrey, Tyreek Hill and so on. After Bijan Robinson and Breece Hall come off draft boards toward the end of the first round, and you’re staring down the barrel of a flat tier of wide receiver or the next running backs, I’m making one pick virtually every time: Garrett Wilson.
He has been the peripheral stats darling of choice this offseason, and with very good reason. No elite wide receiver stands to make a bigger leap from his 2022 and 2023 surroundings than Wilson does in 2024. Gone are Zach Wilson, Mike White, Chris Streveler, Joe Flacco, Trevor Siemian and Tim Boyle. Back is Aaron Rodgers, hoping that he will play a few more snaps than four in the opening series of 2023, where he ended his campaign by tearing his Achilles tendon.
Suffering the slings, arrows and more missed connections than Craigslist, which comes with catching passes from Jets quarterbacks, it could not get much worse than Zach Wilson at quarterback in 2023. How bad? Garrett Wilson has been no better than 111th over the last two seasons in terms of Pro Football Focus’ catchable target rate, with the Jets having the fourth-highest uncatchable pass rate in the NFL.
Garrett Wilson still found a way to put up back-to-back 1,000-yard seasons. Racking up a league-leading 45% of the team’s air yards and earning 37% of the Jets’ first-read targets last season, ge was and continues to be the unquestioned alpha receiver on this team heading into 2024. With some touchdown regression on the way (just seven combined touchdowns in his first two seasons), little target competition and a full season of Rodgers, Garrett Wilson is set to hit in a major way at the end of the first round for Zero-RB drafters.
Middle-Round WR Targets
At WR32 in FantasyPros’ Expert Consensus Rankings, the market is telling everybody that Tank Dell should have a good season but is well behind Nico Collins (WR18) and Stefon Diggs (WR23) in the Texans’ target tree. If Dell didn’t break his leg in Week 13 last season, would we be drafting him so low?
Dell put up a very solid 23% targets per route run (TPRR) and a very healthy 2.22 yards per route run en route to an incredibly successful rookie season. What’s better: Dell bested Collins in a lot of meaningful categories when the two played together, including target share (22.5% vs. 22.1%) and fantasy points per game (18.7 vs. 18.1).
The exact target distribution is still in question, and the market rarely gets everything right regarding ADP, even with it becoming increasingly sharp. Diggs is heading into his age-31 season after four straight 150-target seasons but only had one game as a top-12 fantasy receiver from Week 8 until the end of 2023. Collins was hugely efficient last season with a YPRR over 3.00 in his third season with the Texans, but the jury is still out on whether he can repeat that after two seasons that made him look like late-career Kenny Golladay.
| Player | YPRR | TPRR | wTPRR | aDOT |
| Tank Dell | 2.22 | 23.1% | 0.66 | 14.4 |
| Nico Collins | 3.10 | 26.0% | 0.68 | 11.5 |
| Stefon Diggs (w/Buffalo) | 1.99 | 26.8% | 0.69 | 10.8 |
We can capitalize on ambiguity here where the market is saying Dell is the third target by ADP. It’s a little more complex than the elite WR2 bets we’ve made in the past couple of seasons with DeVonta Smith, Tee Higgins and Jaylen Waddle. Still, with the Texans’ trio all within the top-36 wide receivers, grabbing the cheapest piece that’s just as elite as his teammates is the best way to play the Texans’ receivers this season while still being price-sensitive.
Heading into his age-32 season, DeAndre Hopkins seems like a funny fit on a Zero-RB roster. An older receiver on the Tennessee Titans, who overhauled their offensive philosophy with new head coach Brian Callahan and added some target competition in Calvin Ridley and Tyler Boyd, Hopkins is the key mainstay here among the top receiving weapons.
While we typically expect older receivers to backslide when they reach their 30’s, Hopkins hasn’t done that. Father Time might be a bucking bull at a rodeo, but Hopkins is as calm as can be. Finishing at tied for WR5 (with the previously mentioned Garrett Wilson and noted grown man A.J. Brown) in ESPN’s Open Score, Hopkins can still separate with the best receivers in the league.
With a 44% air yards share and a top-24 first downs per route run (1DRR) rate among wide receivers with 100 routes last season, Hopkins not only still has the juice to get deep targets from Will Levis but also earn targets on the critical downs to move the chains.
Callahan has repeatedly talked about wanting to pass the ball more. Perhaps, as the former Cincinnati Bengals’ offensive coordinator, he can bring Cincinnati’s top-three pass rate over expected (PROE) to Tennessee and pass the ball in more situations. Getting that kind of volume from Hopkins massively benefits a zero-RB receiver group, as the current WR37 in ECR.
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Kevin Tompkins is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Kevin, check out his profile and follow him @ktompkinsii