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Fantasy Theory: Does the WR1 on a bad team still have value?

Some people will defend grabbing the #1 WR on a bad team by saying "well, someone's got to ctch the balls". But is that true? Should you get that WR1 or are you better off with a WR2 on a better team?


I plotted the WR1s in 2018 against their team passing yardage.



What you see here is the yardage of the WR1 of each team plotted against the team passing yards. The dotted line is the trendline, but it's also an interesting division; above the line you find the stud muffins that are trusted by their teams and receive a large chunk of the yardage; below the line you see players that either took some time off for various reasons (Edelman, Jeffery) or just aren't that good.

In any case, Cole Beasley (DAL), Zay Jones (Buf),Danny Amendola (MIA), Josh Doctson (WAS) and Kendrick Bourne(SF) all had less than 700 yards, so that means WR4 or WR5 territory (even worse for Bourne). Obviously in a 14 team league with 3 WRs and a flex that still has some value, but there were quite a few #2 on other teams that outperformed them.

Let's add some WR2s to the chart:


Now you can clearly see that you are probably better off with the WR2 on the top half of the teams, than a WR1 on the bottom half.

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