If you’re a die-hard fantasy football player you’ve likely heard discussion of ambiguous backfields: NFL teams where it is unclear heading into the season who will serve as the team’s lead rusher. Targeting an ambiguous backfield in fantasy comes with risk but also high potential reward, as picking the right member of an ambiguous backfield can give you a team’s RB1 at a huge discount.
Today, I’m going to talk about ambiguous receiver rooms. Although they’re not quite as common as ambiguous backfields, a very similar principle can be applied to NFL teams with multiple talented receivers in an unclear pecking order. Teams with ambiguous receiver rooms that are expected to have productive offenses are often a great source of value and upside for savvy fantasy managers.
Heading into the 2024 fantasy football draft season, three teams stand out as fitting this bill perfectly: Packers, Texans, Bears.
If you’re a die-hard fantasy football player you’ve likely heard discussion of ambiguous backfields: NFL teams where it is unclear heading into the season who will serve as the team’s lead rusher. Targeting an ambiguous backfield in fantasy comes with risk but also high potential reward, as picking the right member of an ambiguous backfield can give you a team’s RB1 at a huge discount.
Today, I’m going to talk about ambiguous receiver rooms. Although they’re not quite as common as ambiguous backfields, a very similar principle can be applied to NFL teams with multiple talented receivers in an unclear pecking order. Teams with ambiguous receiver rooms that are expected to have productive offenses are often a great source of value and upside for savvy fantasy managers.
Heading into the 2024 fantasy football draft season, three teams stand out as fitting this bill perfectly: Packers, Texans, Bears.
With talented young quarterbacks and lots of weapons, these teams are going to score plenty of receiving fantasy points… we’re just not sure who will do the scoring. But that ambiguity, and the risk that comes with it, has pushed down average draft positions (ADPs) for these players. For fantasy managers willing to embrace ambiguity, this is a huge opportunity. In this article, I will give my pick for the best (and worst) values at cost from each of these teams. Let’s get started!
This is proof I’m not just going to pick the cheapest player from each team. Nico Collins is expensive, going off the board in the early third round, but he’s worth it. It really can’t be overstated how good he was in 2023. He finished the year with a 91.2 PFF receiving grade and 3.11 yards per route run.
To put into perspective how good those numbers are, new Texan Stefon Diggs, a four-time Pro Bowler, former All-Pro and one of the best receivers of the last few years, has never posted higher than 90.6 or 2.50 in those metrics. Collins’ dominance showed up on the fantasy scoreboard, too, as he finished as the WR9 overall and WR6 in points per game.
The arrival of Diggs throws a bit of a spanner in the works, as the veteran is sure to demand targets. But Collins did everything he did on “only” 109 regular-season targets in 2023. Meanwhile, Noah Brown and Robert Woods combined for 130 targets.
That’s before we consider the Texans are sure to be very pass-heavy in their second year with C.J. Stroud, where last year they had a pass rate 2.6% below expected. More importantly, Collins is simply the best receiver on this roster at this point, and he is going to get his first and foremost. While everyone else is worried about target competition, trust the talent and take the discount on an elite young receiver paired with an ascending star at quarterback.
Worst Pick: Tank Dell (ADP: WR29)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: The problem with Tank Dell as a fantasy asset is that he is unlikely to play in 2-WR sets. Things aren’t as dire for Dell as they were for Reed, as he ran 65 routes in two- or one-receiver formations as a rookie. However, the arrival of Diggs is likely to push Dell off the field in those situations.
Not only is Dell tiny at 5-foot-8 and 165 pounds, but his rookie season was ended by an injury he suffered while run-blocking in the red zone. To be fair, it was a freak injury that likely could have occurred to anyone, but it will likely still be in the minds of Houston’s coaches when they decide who to send out in similar situations. In the very small sample of Week 1 preseason action, Dell did indeed only play in 3-WR sets.
Otherwise, there are only things to like about Dell’s profile. He finished his rookie season as the WR16 in points per game despite having severely limited snaps due to injury in two of his 11 games. He posted a very impressive 2.22 yards per route run, as well as a 14.4 average depth of target (aDOT) that ranked 16th among qualified WRs — he’s not just an underneath receiver. But it’s hard to get around the fact that there are only so many snaps and targets to go around.
Last year, the Texans had three or more WRs on the field for 73% of their passing plays, the 21st-highest rate in the league. That number is almost sure to go up with the arrival of Diggs, but they’d have to get into the top five to be above 80% — otherwise, Dell will likely be missing out on around 20% of available routes per game. And even when he is on the field, he’ll be competing with two absolute target hogs.
Dell does have injury-contingent upside, and it’s tempting to bet on the talent as I was willing to do with Wicks. But WR29 is just high enough of a price that it’s better to let someone else take that gamble in most drafts.
The Other: Stefon Diggs (ADP: WR20)
Stefon Diggs’ ADP is… fine. At times this offseason, I’ve seen him ranked close to or even above Collins, which would be far too rich. But a WR20 price for a player with Diggs’ track record playing with an elite QB in Stroud isn’t too bad. It is worth noting that Diggs’ production declined sharply down the stretch of last season. He averaged just 6.8 points per game in Weeks 10-17, down from 17.8 in the first nine weeks of the season.
There’s a chance he was simply checked out of Buffalo already, or one can blame the Bills’ new offensive system. But Diggs is also 30 years old, and it’s called the age cliff, not the age gentle decline, for a reason. Diggs has shown his talent and should see the targets to outperform his ADP, but don’t get too excited and reach for him.
