Fantasy Football: 5 Wide Receivers Who Could Outscore Their Higher-Drafted Teammates
Michael Crabtree, Oakland Raiders (ADP: 4.10)
Teammate: Amari Cooper (ADP: 2.05)
It shouldn’t come as much of a shock that Michael Crabtree leads this list. Despite being drafted later than young stud Amari Cooper in each of the past two seasons, Crabtree has came out ahead of him in terms of PPR scoring in both times.
There’s no guarantee that’ll happen again this year, though. Cooper is entering his third season, which is commonly looked to as a breakout year for wide receivers (though that theory isn't necessarily a slam dunk). And, for what it's worth, our projections see Cooper entering the top-10 receiver crop this season, with Crabtree projected for a 15th-place finish.
But there's one particular trend that's persisted over the past two seasons that could again uproot conventional wisdom. Let's look at our signature player performance metric, Net Expected Points (NEP). NEP provides context to traditional box score stats by quantifying player performance over expectation, which is set by historical down-and-distance data. You can learn more about NEP in our glossary.
These are stats from the red zone -- again, red zone only -- in 2015 and 2016 combined.
| Player | Targets | Catch Rate | Reception Success Rate | Reception NEP per Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amari Cooper | 21 | 42.90% | 55.50% | 0.36 |
| Michael Crabtree | 35 | 42.90% | 93.30% | 0.75 |
| Seth Roberts | 31 | 48.40% | 86.70% | 0.76 |
As you can see, Cooper has been out-targeted by Crabtree by 67% over the last two seasons in the red zone. Despite having a nearly identical catch rate, Crabtree has contributed far more toward the team's chances of scoring on a per-target basis, more than doubling Cooper's 0.36 Reception NEP per target inside the 20.
Crabtree's also performed far more consistently in the red zone than Cooper, registering a 93.30% Success Rate -- the percentage of receptions that generate positive NEP -- compared to Cooper's paltry 55.50% mark. Moreover, Cooper's ceiling, at least for the past two seasons, has been capped by rookie Seth Roberts out-targeting him in this situation, all while matching or besting Crabtree's effectiveness.
Put simply, if Cooper sees the third-most red zone targets among Raiders wide receivers again in 2017, the chances of Crabtree out-scoring him again increases dramatically.
