For me, if I am confident a team will have a really lousy passing game – like the Browns or Rams this year – then I tend to lose all interest in their wide receivers. It’s hard, I think, for a player to put up good numbers when the overall team production simply isn’t there. But a couple of players did it last year, so I figure it’s a idea I would explore and measure.
The productive receivers, by the way, were both from the state of Missouri. Jeremy Maclin with Kansas City, and Tavon Austin with St. Louis. Austin did it unconventionally, with 434 rushing yards and half of his 10 touchdowns coming on runs and a punt return, but whatever. He finished as the 19th-best wide receiver last year using the scoring system of 1 point for every 10 yards and 6 for every touchdown.
But anytime we’re looking at this kind of idea, it’s best to widen the study, looking at more players and more teams.
I decided to isolate the 50 teams that in the last 10 years have ranked in the bottom 5 in passing. That is, I took the teams ranked 28th thru 32nd each year for 2006 thru 2015 (using 1 point for every 10 yards and 6 for each touchdown). Then I checked to see how many wide receivers from those 50 teams ranked in the top 30 in scoring (using the same fantasy format) in that given year.
Turns out there were only 12. So on only about one of every four of those teams was their a wide receiver who might be worth having on your fantasy team.
| PRODUCTIVE RECEIVERS ON BOTTOM-5 PASSING TEAMS | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Player | No | Re.Yds | Ru.Yds | TD | Points | Rank |
| 2013 | Vincent Jackson, T.B. | 78 | 1224 | 0 | 7 | 164.4 | 14 |
| 2013 | Anquan Boldin, S.F. | 85 | 1179 | 11 | 7 | 161.0 | 15 |
| 2015 | Jeremy Maclin, K.C. | 87 | 1088 | 61 | 8 | 158.2 | 17 |
| 2010 | Larry Fitzgerald, Ariz. | 90 | 1137 | 0 | 6 | 151.7 | 16 |
| 2015 | Tavon Austin, St.L. | 52 | 473 | 434 | 10 | 150.7 | 19 |
| 2006 | Joey Galloway, T.B. | 62 | 1057 | 9 | 7 | 148.6 | 15 |
| 2011 | Dwayne Bowe, K.C. | 81 | 1159 | 12 | 5 | 147.1 | 20 |
| 2006 | Andre Johnson, Hou. | 103 | 1147 | 14 | 5 | 146.1 | 18 |
| 2014 | Anquan Boldin, S.F. | 83 | 1062 | 4 | 5 | 136.6 | 23 |
| 2011 | Pierre Garcon, Ind. | 70 | 947 | 28 | 6 | 133.5 | 22 |
| 2014 | Eric Decker, NYJ | 74 | 962 | 0 | 5 | 126.2 | 28 |
| 2009 | Terrell Owens, Buff. | 55 | 829 | 54 | 6 | 124.3 | 26 |
So I think, in general, the premise is pretty good. If you’re really confident the team’s passing game will be a pile of garbage, you can kind of write off the wide receivers on those teams.
But there will be some years where you’re wrong. On a quarter of the teams, after all, there will be a decent wide receiver. And there will also be a couple of teams where you THINK the team will be terrible, but you will be wrong. A few years back, for example, the Browns might have been one of those teams you would have dismissed, and Josh Gordon put up some of the best receiving numbers of all time. The Texans last year passed it a lot better than I expected.
—Ian Allan