Breaking Down the 2025 Wide Receiver Class
Picking our favourities in an intriguing class that lacks sure bets
Welcome back to T.A.T.’s coverage of the 2025 Rookie Class. We are almost done our pre-draft content as we get closer and closer to the bid weekend.
So far, we’ve completed deep dives on the top-three QBs (given Milroe’s late rise I’ll make sure to give him a longer write up in my final pre-draft rankings) and two articles analyzing the RB class.
However, we still have the pass catchers remaining at WR and TE.
I’ll be totally honest with you. My method for scouting these players is different than the last two positions — especially RB.
As you (likely) know, I started playing and evaluating fantasy football from an analytical rather than film lens. I love the game and have watched religiously since I was a kid, but my strength was always in numbers first, Xs and Os second.
Over time in the industry, I’ve tried to build a more robust skill-set and improve my understanding of the game to the point I can incorporate more of my own film analysis into my prospecting. However, that’s largely been at the RB position. I focus on RBs more extensively, having written the Hitchhiker’s guide for three years between Thinking About Thinking and PlayerProfiler.
I’ve watched every WR and TE I’m writing about in some capacity, but I’m not incorporating my own film analysis heavily into my rankings. Instead, I’m largely out-sourcing that to Brett Whitefield of FantasyPoints and Matt Harmon of Reception Perception — both of whom provide quantifiable film evaluations of this class and who have a demonstrated history of value-adding analysis at the position. That being said, the most significant proxy for film evaluation to consider is draft capital.
The predictive power of each metric I emphasize in this column is based on its combination with draft capital, not as a replacement for it.
All that being said, I’ve still managed to have success at the position in recent years, notably in the 2024 draft when my stated preference was to trade up or back to Malik Nabers in the first tier, and I was strongly ahead of consensus on Ladd McConkey in the second tier.
What I’ve come to emphasize most at the WR position are players who win in the ways most correlated to our game. You never want to over-generalize, but in my time in the fantasy industry, the players who analytical models most tend to overrate are WRs who have strong (and early) production based largely off schemed touches — especially against weaker competition. Meanwhile, the players who the NFL tends to “over” value (or at least value in ways that don’t translate to fantasy) are field stretchers whose best value-add to an offense is the space they create for others rather than their own production.
To that end, I think there is a disconnect between what a ‘high ceiling’ player is in an NFL context and a fantasy one.
The raw production of Amon-Ra St. Brown and Justin Jefferson is not that different. But if you touch even one blade of grass, you can admit that while both are elite players, Jefferson’s production relative to his role in an offense is more difficult for an NFL team to back-fill with an alternative player.
To varying extents, every NFL offense is going to have easy button production available. You’d much (MUCH) rather have Amon-Ra St. Brown handle this work than Wan’Dale Robinson or Greg Dortch, but in a short sample Robinson or Dortch can stuff a box score on a similar diet of routes. That’s just not possible for a replacement-level player in an X-WR role.
For fantasy players this provides an interesting paradox. On one hand, we know that slot production, screen production, and ‘gadget’ work is less indicative of a player’s NFL value-above-replacement than ‘big boy’ routes against man or press coverage and/or at greater depths. We want to avoid box score scouting players whose games are not well-rounded enough to hang in the league. On the other hand, easy button production is very valuable for fantasy football and we want to draft players who will be deployed in fantasy-football friendly roles on their NFL teams.
Marvin Harrison Jr. and Malik Nabers provide an interesting case study for this. Nabers’ largest advantage over Harrison is his ability to win after-the-catch. Despite his underwhelming production year 1, I still think Harrison Jr. is a very good player and will have an impressive career. However, it seems Nabers will maintain an edge in fantasy production in part because his skill-set is more conducive to our game.
If you’re the Cardinals, the comparative advantage Harrison provides stressing the defense vertically is quite large — but he provides little if any advantage relative to otherwise inferior players on schemed targets or underneath outlet routes. Nabers is so valuable with the ball in his hands that he will be force-fed targets at all depths in all situations. He also seems to simply be the better player at this point, but the gap in fantasy production likely exceeds the gap in their real-life value.
As fantasy players, we want to roster WRs whose real-life value surpasses the threshold required to maintain a full-time NFL role — but whose comparative advantage within that role tilts toward fantasy-friendly deployment.
In evaluating each profile, we want to attempt to balance these two — at times competing — objectives, while evaluating each profile as a whole.
The result for me is that at the top tiers of the class where that threshold is more likely to be met across the board, I put a stronger emphasis on deployment and fantasy-utility. As we get further down the board, I am more willing to swing on players with the most enticing profile in a vacuum.
Sources
I use PFF College for all stats unless otherwise sourced
I review Pat Kerrane, J.J. Zachariason, and Scott Barrett’s rookie models in the course of my preparation and strongly recommend them all
For Wide Recievers, I review Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception, and Brett Whitefield’s film grades for each player in the class
Metric Plots are from Campus2Canton — which also is a fantastic source of college statistics and Data
My Film is sourced from DynastyNerds.
Projected Draft Capital is from NFLMockDraftDataBase.
Measurements and Athletic Testing is from NFL.com.
Statistical Legend
YPTA = Yards per Team Pass Attempt (per game) *Campus2Canton
MSRY = Market Share of Team Receiving Yards (per game) *Campus2Canton
YPRR = Yards per Route Run
TPRR = Targets per Route Run
YPT = Yards per Target
MTF = Missed Tackles Forced
uTPRR = Uncontested Target per Route Run
— TIER 1 —
WR1 — Travis Hunter, Colorado
By the Numbers
Size: 6’0” — 188 lbs.
40-yard Dash: —
Key Metrics (2024): 2.51 YPRR ; 2.75 YPTPA ; 32% MSRY
Projected Draft Capital: 2
Age-Adjusted Production: (see below)
Analysis
Before I dive into any aspect of Hunter’s WR profile I need to cover the elephant in the room: will he play WR in the NFL? And how do you evaluate him while not knowing the answer to that question?
For what it’s worth he’s currently favoured in betting markets to be selected by the Cleveland Browns, the one team in the top-five which stated it views him primarily as a “WR first,” but will let him attempt to play both positions.
The uncertainty in Hunter’s profile essentially means you have to get Hunter right twice. You need him to play WR, and then you need him to be as good as you think he is. Hunter is in a tier of his own in this WR class for me, but I had Marvin Harrison two tiers ahead of Ladd McConkey last year and I’d take the latter first in a dynasty startup today. I feel highly convicted in my Travis Hunter evaluation but there is no guarantee that he becomes the best WR in this class. Uncertainty is our constant companion in this game.
Second, while you need to be right twice, these bets are correlated. I think even the most conservative analyst would expect he’ll at least have a package of snaps on offense given his skill-set and stated desire to play both ways. If he excels in his offensive opportunities he has the capacity to influence whether that package expands over time, and vice-versa. The better he is as a WR, the more likely it is he plays the position full-time.
Third, it’s my opinion — based largely on my gut instinct — that the market is drastically under-estimating the chance he plays both ways close to full-time. On the surface, the prospect of a player playing full-time at two demanding and important positions in a professional football game is preposterous. The obvious comparison is Shohei Ohtani, but there are several differences which cut both toward and against Hunter.
Physically, Ohtani’s feat is more plausible. Baseball requires minimal cardiovascular exertion, players spend approximately 10-15 minutes total at the plate each game, and Ohtani actually plays substantially fewer total innings as a pitcher and hitter than the majority of his teammates who hit and play in the field. Baseball inherently asks every player to play two positions, and Ohtani’s is just different than everyone else’s.
Skill-set wise, Hunter’s positions have much more cross-over — corner is essentially the yin to WR’s yang. Having a deep understanding of one almost certainly helps one with the mental aspect of the other, and they require similar athletic traits. His trump card at each position his otherworldly ball winning.
More important than all that to me however is the idea that Hunter is already an outlier. In fantasy football we want to be wary of betting on outliers. But I mean that in the sense that we don’t want to bet on outcomes which are historically uncommon for a given profile.
Sometimes there are situations where a player is so unique that there is no precedent for it in the first place. In such situations, the market typically doubts the possibility of something unforeseen occurring and defaults to historical precedent. But it’s a faulty precedent.
Yes, there is no precedent for a player playing 100 snaps per game in the NFL. But there is also no precedent for a player entering the NFL as a top-three pick who just won awards as the best defensive player and best receiver in college football.
The denominator on this situation is zero. If you divide something by zero you don’t get zero — you get a big fat error message on your excel sheet.
I think ‘base cases’ are of little value when it comes to projecting a unicorn. It’s akin to predicting the upcoming actions of a horse loose in a hospital. It’s never happened before! Nobody knows what will happen, least of all the horse!
So instead of attempting to bet on a specific outcome I’d rather rely on a few broad heuristics:
Some dudes are simply built different. And I’d rather bet on people who have already defied all expectations continuing to do so than bet against them.
Humans are prone to loss aversion — especially when presented with unprecedented situations. I think it’s more likely the market will over-emphasize Hunter’s floor scenarios than his ceiling scenarios.
Fantasy Football is won by power-law players, and the dynasty market is dominated by the most scarce assets. I want to chase opportunities to grab that caliber of player any time the opportunity cost is palatable.
Lastly, I think much of the discourse on this subject has been to rigid. People have often approached this situation as though there are three outcomes: WR, CB, or both. I suspect the reality will be something in between.
Hunter can steal a lot of plays off on offense while still being for all intents and purposes a ‘full-time’ player. He only needs to play enough run snaps to keep defenses honest when he’s on the field. And he can take a breather on a handful of schemed touch pass plays (screens, RPOs etc.) where he may not be the primary read. Within this context, we could see him play something in the neighbourhood of 60-65% of the offensive snaps, while running 80% of routes and offsetting any lost routes with a higher TPRR.
With that out of the way, let’s get into why he’s worth accepting risk for as a WR in the first place.
You’ll note right away that while his production profile is adequate, it’s a long way off what you’d expect for a truly elite WR prospect.
In fact, it doesn’t even stand out from the top of this class.
But in my opinion, the context is more persuasive than the raw numbers.
Hunter left his game vs. Kansas State in the first-half with a shoulder injury. Then he came back to play the following week vs. Arizona, but left again after re-aggravating the injury. He had just 43 yards combined in these two games — both of which count as full games for the purpose of his YPTPA and MSRY. He had at least 89 yards in all but one other game.
It should be noted of course that snaps missed due to injury do not effect his YPRR. However, as I mentioned in my write-up on Shedeur Sanders, the Colorado offense is extremely unique in its use of 4-WR personnel groups. We know that YPRR is heavily impacted by personnel groupings, because TEs and FBs are less adept at drawing targets than WRs and more likely to be held into block — reducing the ‘target competition’ on each play. Hayden Winks proved this.
The nature of Colorado’s offense has heavily impacted Travis Hunter’s statistical profile. The following is directly quoted from Scott Barrett of FantasyPoints:
Hunter had the lowest expected YPRR of any WR in this year’s class and one of the lowest of any WR since 2019, running over twice as many routes from four- and five-wide receiver sets than three-wide receiver sets.[1] By career personnel-adjusted YPRR, Hunter (+91%) easily clears all other proj. Round 1-2 WR in this year’s class, and is much closer to a Malik Nabers (+105%) or Marvin Harrison Jr. (+104%) than a Tet McMillan (+69%) or Luther Burden (+77%).
In addition, Colorado’s offense relied heavily on screens — and typically opted not to through them to Hunter. Jacob Gibbs pointed out that removing screens from Hunter’s sample had a much more positive effect on his profile than other top WRs in this class.
I know I said I don’t put much weight on my film evaluation of WRs, but it’s impossible to watch Hunter and not immediately recognize that he is a one-of-a-kind specimen. He’s so ridiculously sudden, and has the leaping ability and ball skills of a 6-6, 230 pound player.
Matt Harmon’s Reception Perception was extremely favourable, grading Hunter above the 90th percentile in success rate vs. man, zone, and press. That’s not altogether surprising considering he may be the highest-drafted WR since Calvin Johnson. Given the unique context of Hunter playing half the game at another position, his bizarre college offense, and the broad consensus regarding his exemplary film, I am willing to accept that his production tells only part of the story.
Fantasy Outlook
As mentioned off the top, we want great NFL WRs and we want them in fantasy friendly roles. The fact you need to subtract easy buttons targets away from Hunter’s profile to make it look more favourable isn’t necessarily a positive.
But Hunter’s context is of course unique. According to Harmon’s charting, Hunter went down on first contact on just 36.6% of his “in-space” receptions. His 24 MTFs ranked 8th in college football, and only behind Tetairoa McMillan and Luther Burden III among top options in this class. I don’t think we need to question whether he can succeed on screens in the NFL.
What we do need to question however is whether his role on defense will lead his NFL offensive co-ordinator to reduce his load on offense by scheming non-premium targets to other players who aren’t on the field for 100 snaps per game.
I’m fairly comfortable that the Browns will draft Hunter, and that they plan to use him as a WR primarily. If that changes, I’m guessing it will be because he’s not as dynamic as a WR as we hoped, in which case we’re losing the bet anyhow.
But his usage on screens and gadget touches may rely on whether he’s a WR only or a true full-time player both ways. As a football fan, I want to see him play both ways. As a fantasy manager, his apex ceiling probably depends on him playing the vast majority of his snaps at WR. But I feel strongly that apex is perennial contender for WR1 overall.
Dynasty Valuation: 1.5 Base 1s (would be 2.5 if I *knew* he was only playing WR)
— TIER 2 —
WR2 — Tetairoa McMillan, Arizona
By the Numbers
Size: 6’4” — 219 lbs.
40-yard Dash: 4.55 (pro-day — using Dane Brugler’s reported time)
Key Metrics (2024): 2.87 YPRR ; 3.02 YPTPA ; 44% MSRY
Projected Draft Capital: 11
Age-Adjusted Production:
Analysis
Tet McMillan is the cleanest prospect in this year’s class. He is an early-declare WR with two seasons of 3.0 YPTPA, and two seasons above a 30% MSRY — with an elite peak-MSRY of 44%.
I know YPTPA is the more popular metric these days because it gives more credit to players who play with elite teammates and struggle to dominate volume, but offset this with impressive efficiency. It’s my preferred metric as well, but I like to look at both because MSRY gives more credit to players like McMillan who are forced to carry a deeply sub-par program and face efficiency headwinds.
To the extent McMillan has a red flag it’s his 25% contested target rate. Historically, early-round WRs with high contested target rates have a volatile fantasy outlook.
However, if you’re familiar with my view on this subject you know I won’t be too worried about it in McMillan’s case.
I wrote a lot about this with Drake London back in the day, but I think contested target rate is a poor proxy for what you’re trying to identify with this red flag. The ‘targets are earned’ thesis essentially states that earning targets at a high both necessitates (and indicates) separation ability. But it’s also fair to say that earning an un-contested target is a better measure of separation ability than earning a contested one.
However, who is the better separator? A WR who has 50 targets, 10 of which are contested, or one who has 100 targets, 30 of which are contested. Looking only at the contested target rate would lead you to flag the second player and not the first, when it seems highly likely the second player is the more effective separator of the two — he earned 30 more uncontested targets!
Looking at production profiles in a vacuum and then applying red flags to players based on the percentage of production that is contested strikes me as a complicated and proximate way to measure what you actually care about: how often is a player able to earn un-contested targets?
We can just calculate that number outright: ‘uTPRR’ = (total targets - contested targets) / total routes run
Despite a high contested-target rate, McMillan ranked 10th in college football in total un-contested targets. His uTPRR (21.8%) ranked 49th of 268 WRs with at least 50 targets despite a 13.7 ADOT — which ranked 2nd-highest among my top-10 WRs discussed in this column.
McMillan saw just 4% of his career targets behind the line of scrimmage — tied with Travis Hunter. For comparison, Emeka Egbuka clocked in at 13%, Mathew Golden had 11%, and Luther Burden had 22%. (sourced from Pat Kerrane)
The point being, if we attempt to filter out targets which are less indicative of a WR’s ability to separate, McMillan’s profile still looks strong.
I think the larger red flag for McMillan is that his contested target rate spikes to 38% on deep targets — of which he caught just 39%. His worst-charted route by Matt Harmon was the nine-route. This makes sense given his non-elite speed.
On the other hand, he forced 29 missed tackles — tied for 3rd amongst all WRs in 2024 despite his high-ADOT role.
The conclusion from this is that while McMillan may look like a downfield X-WR, his skillset indicates that he provides the most value as an intermediate posession WR with more potential to succeed in YAC-opportunities than he was given credit for based on his college role.
Fantasy Outlook
McMillan presents as a high-floor prospect based on his sterling production profile and lack of (real) red flags. However, he does have legitimate limitations in his game and the dissonance between his surface-level profile and his skill-set leaves him open to misuse by play-callers.
McMillan should suffice as a startable WR2/3 in any role, but his WR1 upside will depend on a team recognizing his strengths and weaknesses and deploying him as such.
Dynasty Valuation: 1 — 1.25 Base 1s
— TIER 3 —
WR3 — Emeka Egbuka, Ohio State
By the Numbers
Size: 6’1” — 202 lbs.
40-yard Dash: 4.48 (pro-day)
Key Metrics (2024): 2.51 YPRR ; 2.94 YPTPA ; 33% MSRY
Projected Draft Capital: 33
Age-Adjusted Production:
Analysis
Emeka Egbuka is the type of prospect I’ve generally found success being higher than consensus on in rookie drafts.
On the surface he seems like a ‘low-ceiling’ player and maybe for the NFL’s purposes he is.
Unlike every other prospect in my top-five, Egbuka played four seasons of college football. He sported just a 7.9 ADOT in 2024, but only forced 10 missed tackles and ranked 92nd in YAC/reception. Despite a totally passable 4.48 pro-day 40-yard dash and an elite 9.72 RAS, he struggled on down field routes, posting below average success-rates on the ‘go’ and ‘post.’
But what Egbuka does do well, he does at an elite level. He ranked in the 82nd percentile in success rate vs. zone coverage — which Matt Harmon noted would have ranked higher than every prospect in the 2024 class. He especially thrives as a target earner in the short and intermediate areas of the field. This combination of skills sets him up to consistently win out of the slot at the next-level, which is fantasy-rich terrain.
But Egbuka is also an elite run-blocker who brings outside-WR size to the table. On a small sample of routes, Egbuka posted an elite 92nd-percentile success rate vs. press in Harmon’s charting. This should set him up well to stay on the field in all personnel packages as a coveted slot/flanker archetype who moves inside in 11-personnel but kicks outside to stay on the field in 12.
Further, you have to give Egbuka credit for the context of his production profile. He started his career behind the likes of Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave and Jaxson Smith-Njigba, played his best season as the wing-man to Marvin Harrison Jr., and finished his college career next to likely future top-10 picks Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate. Merely hitting thresholds at Ohio State is an achievement.
Fantasy Outlook
Egbuka is not a ‘three-level’ WR. But his limitations and strengths may balance out well for fantasy football. Egbuka is likely to be deployed in the fantasy-friendly slot role and thrive within it. But his game is well-rounded enough to maintain a full-route share.
Ceiling at the WR-position in fantasy comes first and foremost through the ability to earn targets — even if you don’t always look flashy doing it. As a consistent separator in the short and intermediate areas, Egbuka has the potential to pile up WR2 production for a long time. But don’t limit yourself there.
The ‘F-WR’ position — a slot-WR with increased size and ability to effect the run and pass game — is taking the league by storm, and providing plentiful fantasy value for those who occupy it. At the low-end we’ve seen players such as Jauan Jennings or Khalil Shakir greatly increase their production in this role. And at the high-end we’ve seen Drake London, Chris Godwin, Cooper Kupp, and Amon-Ra St. Brown put up WR1 seasons with this deployment. Egbuka is a perfect fit to fill this role at the next level, and as such has a fantasy ceiling that will likely be under-rated in rookie drafts.
Dynasty Valuation: Base 1st / Late 1st
— TIER 4 —
WR4 — Luther Burden III, Mizzou
By the Numbers
Size: 6’0” — 206 lbs.
40-yard Dash: 4.41
Key Metrics (2023*): 3.29 YPRR ; 3.2 YPTPA ; 35% MSRY
Projected Draft Capital: 35
Age-Adjusted Production:
Analysis
Luther Burden III is the most difficult player of the top-five for me to evaluate and has a wide range of outcomes for several reasons.
First, his 2023 season is the most impressive age-adjusted statistical campaign of any player in this class. Coming into this year, Burden was a former number 1 recruit who has ascended to superstardom in year 2 and looked to build off that in his draft-year on route to being a potential top-five pick.
As you can see above, his production in 2024 fell off a cliff in every way. Did Burden get worse? Was he exposed as a limited player? Or are we over-reacting to recency bias in the face of an otherwise sterling profile.
The second question facing Burden is his draft capital. Once viewed as a locked-in Round 1 pick, Burden is now more commonly projected in the second round. That’s in part due to a poor junior season, but is apparently also based on concerns regarding his character and coachability.
In my opinion the most important concern is the way Burden accumulated his production — even at his peak. As referenced earlier in this article, 22% of Burden’s career targets were behind the line of scrimmage. He’s very effective on these targets, leading all of college football in MTF even in his down 2024 season.
Applying the same logic as we did with McMillan, his overall production in year 2 was strong enough that you could still feel confident in his ability to win as a wide receiver even if you removed or reduced the weight of his sub-LOS targets. But because of the way his production dipped, it’s much harder to make that case over the course of his college career.
In 2024, Burden posted a strong 23.9% uTPRR, which followed an elite 26.4% in 2023. But across his career, he has a 42% contested target rate on deep targets — even higher than McMillan.
This demonstrates a high reliance on being force-fed short-area targets in order to produce in the box score.
This is the kind of player I really want to allow for the film to guide me one way or the other but unfortunately it’s a bit of a mixed-bag on that end as well.
Burden posted success rates between the 50th and 70th percentiles against each coverage in Harmon’s reception perception. Because of his short-area deployment and slot role, he predominantly worked against zone, but posted respectable rates in his opportunities vs. man — albeit most of them coming out of the slot. Burden’s worst success rates came on the ‘go’ and ‘nine’ route, though he did find success on the ‘corner,’ ‘dig,’ and ‘out’ — all intermediate concepts he’ll need to produce on to reach his fantasy ceiling.
Brett Whitefield is rather low on Burden, ranking him WR9 and placing him as an early-Round 3 prospect in this class. Whitefield noted that the only players drafted on Day 1 or 2 with a higher % of production on screens or slot fades is Malachi Corley, Tutu Atwell, Wan’Dale Robinson, and Treylon Burks [shivers], and that Burden has only 333 career yards lined up out wide.
This is especially concerning given Burden’s reputation for being a dis-interested blocker.
Fantasy Outlook
It’s hard to have a high degree of conviction one way or the other about Burden if you are alive to the entirety of the profile and its various high and low points.
If Burden can develop into a passable outside-WR across an intermediate route tree, his elite yards-after-catch ability will translate to a fantasy gold-mine.
But if he is a slot-only player who requires the ball being schemed into his hands to produce, he may fall below that viability threshold we need in order to even bother considering how fantasy friendly a player’s skill-set is.
I have obviously never met Mr. Burden. But I’ll admit to being nervous about a player who has clear areas requiring development being surrounded by rumours of un-coachability.
I went back and forth between him and the next WR on my list, but I decided his production profile and elite YAC ability gave him a higher enough ceiling worth chasing at the 1-2 turn of rookie drafts.
Dynasty Valuation: Late 1st / Early 2nd
WR5 — Matthew Golden, Texas
By the Numbers
Size: 5’11” — 191 lbs.
40-yard Dash: 4.29
Key Metrics (2024): 2.10 YPRR ; 2.20 YPTPA ; 25% MSRY
Projected Draft Capital: 20
Age-Adjusted Production:
Analysis
Every year we are bound to have one ‘film vs. analytics’ player who the NFL is preparing to draft higher than his production profile merits.
These debates are always leaving out key context to some degree, but outside of perhaps Henry Ruggs in 2020, I think Golden is the recent player to which this over-simplified framing most aptly applies. So before I go into the positives of Golden’s game I want to stress how poor of a bet Golden is based on his statistical profile.
As Scott Barrett pointed out, Golden belongs to a very dangerous club of players. Since 2014, only the following players have been drafted in Round 1 while averaging sub-85.0 yards per game in their peak season:
Henry Ruggs
Phillip Dorsett
Calvin Ridley
Kelvin Benjamin
Xavier Worthy
Quentin Johnston
Jalen Reagor
Breshad Perriman
John Ross
Of that list, only Ridley is a certain hit while Worthy could certainly establish himself as one. Matthew Golden however is not just among this list… his yards per game mark of 61.7 is the lowest of all of them.
He would quite literally be the least productive Round 1Wide Receiver of the last 12 years.
This is even more concerning when you recall that he played his first two seasons at Houston against poor competition.
Further borrowing from Barrett, Matthew Golden has a career YPRR of 1.85. In the last 12 years, the only hits with a sub-2.00 career YPRR are DK Metcalf, Brian Thomas Jr., and Terry McLaurin. All three however had higher peak-YPRR seasons than Golden, and all three played the entirety of their college career in elite conferences.
Whenever you bring up numbers like this to raise concerns about Golden, you will inevitably have someone in your mentions reminding you that football isn’t played on spreadsheets, and that NFL teams don’t care about YPRR.
I agree with you… I just think maybe they should care more!
There is 100% a possible outcome where Golden becomes an efficient secondary-WR in the NFL who stretches defenses vertically and provides more value to his NFL team than shows up in the box score. If that occurs, it’s possible the NFL is right to value him highly while fantasy managers are correct to be skeptical for the purpose of their objectives.
But most of the players Golden compares to statistically were not just fantasy busts. They were busts in the NFL as well. I’m sympathetic to the capacity of the fantasy community to annoy NFL draft twitter, but the fantasy folks win this specific debate more often than not. The NFL should stop drafting fast, un-productive WRs early.
Despite any ‘off-ball’ value Golden provided to his college teams, he has never been a volume-earning option. His 13.9% uTPRR ranked 226th of 262 WRs with at least 50 targtets in 2024.
With all that out of the way, there are some reasons to think Golden is a much better version of this bet than other recent early picks with poor production profiles.
Golden had a 77th-percentile success rate vs. zone coverage in Matt Harmon’s charting, while posting respectable marks vs. man and press as well. He impressively posted above average marks on every limb of the deep and intermediate route tree: nine, corner, post, out, and dig. Just 11% of his career yardage came on sub-LOS targets which is odd considering his blazing speed. This bodes well for his separation abilities, but also suggests he has un-tapped potential to receive more schemed looks at the next level.
Fantasy Outlook
Matthew Golden’s role is easy to envision in the NFL. He should start as a vertical flanker whose production will come by way of big hits on go-routes, post-routes, corners, digs and other splash play opportunities.
It’s possible he has the toolkit to produce more in the intermediate areas, but he hasn’t shown that thus far.
Golden inherently is a high-risk player due to his production profile. But unlike Burden, I’m not as concerned about being beat by the ceiling if I wind up too low. I think it’s possible he becomes an efficient, vertical WR2 in the mold Brandin Cooks, Jordan Addison, Tyler Lockett or Emmanuel Sanders. If he does he’ll be a hit at his likely dynasty ADP. But it’s also not a player I’ll lose sleep over having passed on.
If I get burnt because a player who has filed to earn an un-contested target on even 1 out of 7 routes turns into a volume hog in the NFL, so be it. But I will make the same bet again next time to be entirely honest.
Dynasty is primarily played by spreadsheet virgins so I suspect I’ll mix in some shares of Golden in the early-2nd round in some of my most ideologically-stubborn leagues. But he’s not a player I’ll walk into drafts planning to target.
Dynasty Valuation: Late 1st / Early 2nd
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