Fantasy Football: One Breakout Candidate From Every NFL Team

Sammy Watkins, WR, Buffalo Bills

While it feels a little dirty to list a player with Sammy Watkins' talent and draft pedigree as a breakout, he's being drafted outside the top 15 receivers, and yet he has the ability to finish among the top tier of wideouts.

Let's get this out of the way -- Watkins wasn't very good last year, posting career-worst numbers across the board.

He played in just eight games, so obvious his year-long stats won't look good, but his rate stats were bad, too. On a per-game basis, he put up 3.5 catches and 53.8 yards. By our metrics, Watkins ranked 82nd in Reception NEP per target among the 92 receivers with at least 50 targets.

But none of that takes into account the fact he was banged up for most of 2016, dealing with a foot issue. He's reportedly still not 100%, which is scary, but if he can get healthy, the ceiling is the roof.

When Watkins was good to go in 2015, he put up elite numbers, finishing first in Reception NEP per target and 11th in Success Rate among wideouts with at least 80 targets.

As our JJ Zachariason pointed out recently, Watkins has been limited to 21 games across two seasons with Tyrod Taylor, and if we extrapolate his per-game production from those games to a full 16-game season, we're looking at 112.80 targets, 67.04 receptions, 1,125.28 yards and 8.32 touchdowns. Those are back-end WR1 numbers.

And, remember, that's with Watkins at less than 100% for a not-so-small chunk of those games. Sure, we could play the what-if game all day, but once you get past the top 10 wideouts (Watkins' ADP is WR18), you're not going to come across many guys -- if any -- with the upside to finish in the top flight of the position.

Watkins has that -- dude just needs to stay healthy.