As the NFL continues to grow into a pass-first, pass-often league, more and more wide receivers are becoming fantasy relevant. Consider that from 2010 through the 2013 season there were five quarterbacks in each season to throw for 30-plus TDs. Just last year, there were nine quarterbacks to reach that milestone.
It’s for this reason why I find that wide receivers – and quarterbacks for that matter – are the easiest to find values on draft day. With that in mind, let’s get to my top values for 2015.
Vincent Jackson, Buccaneers (ADP 7.01)
In 2014, not one player did so little with so much opportunity quite like Jackson. In fact, he ranked ninth-best according to my opportunity metric but ranked just 35th in fantasy points. That’s a big gap.
Most of Jackson’s lack of production came from his lack of touchdowns and Mike Clay does a great job showing this with his opportunity-adjusted touchdown (OTD) metric. Last year, Jackson’s OTD of 7.0 – which ranked 18th – was vastly higher than his actual output of 2 TD.
Going into 2015, Jackson should continue to get plenty of targets and has the fearless Jameis Winston under center. I expect his production to regress towards the mean, which means he’s going far later than he should be.
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George Fitopoulos is a writer for PFF Fantasy and can be reached on Twitter @PigskinProf.