All season I’ve been thinking about the fantasy scoring that stems from bad offenses. Specifically, wide receiver scoring from poor passing offenses. I suspect that the wide receiver from a bad offense who scores the most fantasy points isn’t a particularly good long term fantasy asset. Though that seems intuitive, I wanted to take a look through history to see if this thought is correct. Gathering data is instructive. You start out looking for one thing, but you never know what you will find once you begin to parse the data.
Data sourced from FFToday.com, Pro Football Reference, and FantasyData.com
Going back to the 2014 season, I’ve compiled the bottom 10 teams for each season in passing yards. I wanted to look at a few things:
Who lead the team in points per game?
How many points per game did that receiver score?
Where did they finish the season overall in per-game scoring?
Finally, how did that receiver fare in the following season?
Please note the following caveat: I only included wide receivers who played at least 10 games.
In short, what I’m trying to determine is whether it’s worth holding, selling, or buying receivers from bad offenses.
To make this easier to digest, I’ve decided to share each subset. For example, today we’ll be looking at the 2014-2015 seasons. After going through a micro review (each subgroup), I’ll also share the macro view to see what lessons, if any, can be taken away from this exercise.
Starting with the 2014 season, let’s see what can find.
I’ve put the receivers into an easily identifiable color-coding system.
- Green = Good: Increase in PPG scoring or finished in a higher tier as the season prior
- Yellow = Okay: Moderate decrease in PPG average, but finished in the same scoring tier as the season prior
- Red = Bad: Significant decrease in PPG average or finished in a lower scoring tier as the season prior
Mediocre as a Group
The first thing you’ll notice is that these receivers did not produce any elite seasons in 2014. No one produced a WR1 season. There were two WR2 seasons from the group. Mike Evans finished as the WR14 and DeAndre Hopkins not far behind as the WR18. Two more wide receivers, Eric Decker and Anquan Boldin, did finish with WR3 seasons. While these 10 teams comprise 32.25% of the NFL they produced 0% of WR1, 8.3% WR2 or better and 11.11% WR3 or better seasons among them.
As we often note on the DynastyTradesHQ podcast, context matters, and adding some context does improve the perception of two players from this group.
Doug Baldwin had shown signs of breaking out prior to the 2014 season. After a disappointing sophomore season in 2012, Baldwin saw his targets, receptions, yards, and fantasy scoring increase each of the 2013 and 2014 seasons.
Allen Robinson finished as the WR38 in 2014, his rookie season. I can’t imagine any of his fantasy owners were disappointed in that result.
This is bad…really bad
- Red = Bad: Significant decrease in PPG average or finished in a lower scoring tier as the season prior
Both Greg Jennings and Dwayne Bowe saw a steep decline in fantasy scoring from 2014 to 2015. Neither player’s 2014 season was very good, so you shouldn’t have been buying either player anyway. After “leading” their respective teams in fantasy scoring for the 2014 season, both players played for different teams the next year. Bowe moved to Cleveland, only played seven games, wasn’t a starter, had the worst season of his career, and then never played again after 2015. After seven straight seasons averaging at least 10.3 fantasy points per season, Bowe’s career flamed out rather quickly. Jennings was cut by the Vikings after the 2014 season. In Miami he had 19 receptions in 11 games, and also never played again after the 2015 season.
Not half bad
- Yellow = Okay: Moderate decrease in PPG average, but finished in the same scoring tier as the season prior
Mike Evans followed up a stellar rookie season where he finished as the WR14 scoring 16.30 points per game with a WR19 season in 2015. Both seasons were good enough for WR2 finishes which isn’t bad for a first then second-year player. Boldin fell from being a high-end WR3 (literally the most high-end WR3) to a low-end WR3. Kenny Britt wasn’t good in 2014 and 2015 was more of the same, but he did finish in the same tier both seasons. Brian Quick would have led the Rams in scoring in 2014, but he only played seven games and didn’t meet my 10 game threshold. He finished outside of the top 120 the following season with 2.2 points per game.
Moving on Up
- Green = Good: Increase in PPG scoring or finished in a higher tier as the season prior
Now we’ve reached the cream of this crop. Five wide receivers who led their teams in fantasy scoring in 2014 saw a per game scoring increase or finished in a higher tier in 2015. Eric Decker was likely a strong buy after the 2014 season. Brandon Marshall joined the Jets for the 2015 season and probably scared off some owners from Decker. But he was able to increase his PPG scoring and finished as WR1, not bad. Allen Robinson had his best season to date in 2015, while Doug Baldwin continued his upward climb to WR1 status and Hopkins established himself as a WR1. James Jones was meh in 2014 and a bit less meh in 2015.
It was a very good year
My belief that wide receivers from bad passing offenses are a bad investment has not been borne out through one season of data. If you owned or traded any of these receivers after their 2014 season based on them being their teams WR1s, you would have been pretty content with that decision at an 80% rate. Just two wide receivers (Jennings and Bowe) saw a significant decrease in fantasy scoring the following season. Three receivers did see a dip in scoring, but just by 1.4 (Boldin), 1.3 (Britt) and 1.1 (Evans) points per game.
Half the receivers in this subset actually increased their fantasy scoring. While James Jones had a modest increase, Decker, Robinson, Baldwin, and Hopkins all jumped up a full tier (at least) and scored between 3.7 and 8.5 more points per game in 2015 than in 2014. While interesting this doesn’t yet prove anything. This could have been an outlier and we’ll find out more as we look through more data.
Thank you for reading the first part of this series. You can find me on Twitter @DFF_Shane. If you enjoyed this article and wish to read the rest of this series sign up for a Factory Sports Membership today.
