5 Wide Receivers Being Selected Too Early in Fantasy Football Drafts
Tyler Lockett, Seattle Seahawks
ADP: WR34
numberFire: WR49
The notorious Matt Harmon "Reception Perception" bump has propelled Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Tyler Lockett from “interesting sleeper” to the fantasy ADP stratosphere. Lockett impressed greatly in the 2015 season, and his fantasy contributions soared in the second half of the season, along with every other member of the Seahawks’ passing offense. Stalwart running back Marshawn Lynch went down with an injury, and quarterback Russell Wilson started passing deeper and deeper, while losing no touchdown or interception rate efficiency. Lockett scored 5 touchdowns on just 40 targets over those last seven games (an unsustainable 12.5 percent rate) and earned most of his yards on deep bombs. If John Brown’s yardage on 65 targets sounds unsustainable, Lockett was on a full-season pace for 900 yards on 90 targets by his second-half stats; only five receivers have done that since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger.
JJ Zachariason did a ton of work on touchdown regression this year, and highlighted in February why the regression bug will bite fellow Seahawks wideout Doug Baldwin; the same is true of Lockett. We also project the Seahawks passing offense to regress in volume to its norm of around 450 passing attempts, and with how many draft picks they spent on running back and interior offensive line this year, that tea leaf reading doesn’t seem ludicrous. To really put the cherry on top, Paul Richardson -- who Seattle selected a year earlier and a round higher than Lockett -- ran ahead of Lockett in the third preseason game. A top-40 selection for this boom-or-bust mighty mite is just too rich for my blood.
