Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: Receivers with boom-ability

(Leading up to the 2021 NFL season, FTN’s Tyler Loechner will dive into the fantasy football numbers to bring you his Fantasy Stat of the Day, five days a week.)

A “boom or bust” WR is one of the most popular things to aim for when settings weekly lineups. You can’t have a team filled with boom-or-bust players — it’s just too risky — but the payoff potential if you have one or two is huge. It’s often the difference between winning or losing.

Today’s Stat of the Day article will take a look at some of the WRs that had the most big plays (TDs of 40-plus yards) in 2020. This isn’t necessarily a list of “boom or bust” WRs — rather, it’s the WRs who had serious “boom” potential from a single play.

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Tyreek Hill remains the king of long TDs, Will Fuller could be a major value in Miami, and Henry Ruggs’ rookie season wasn’t a complete flop

The chart below shows last year’s leaders based on 40-yard TD receptions. (Note: This doesn’t mean the ball traveled 40 yards in the air, just plays of at least 40 yards).

Not surprisingly, Tyreek Hill tops this list. But not only is he at the top of this list, he completely blows the competition away. Only four WRs had at least 3 deep TDs last year — and Hill had 5. About a dozen (14) other WRs had a pair of deep TDs, and every other player in the league had either 1 or 0. In short, Hill’s 5 long scores is a truly impressive feat.

And the crazy thing is, there’s really no reason to think Hill won’t be able to match that number again in 2021. His burning speed remains, and Patrick Mahomes is still his QB. It’s a match made in heaven, and perhaps no stat exemplifies that fact more than this one.

Will Fuller’s 3 long scores are no less impressive when considering he missed five games because of his suspension. There’s a very legitimate chance he could have matched Hill’s long TD number from last season. How Fuller pans out in Miami without Deshaun Watson obviously remains to be seen, but he’s clearly one of the most explosive threats in the league. If Fuller hits, he hits big. And that will be true in Miami too.

I love seeing Henry Ruggs on this list with 2 long scores last year. Ruggs’ rookie season was lackluster, as he caught just 26 passes. But he did average 17.4 yards per reception with two long TDs, so he lived up to the “fast weapon capable of getting behind a defense” hype in that regard. There’s a really big ceiling with Ruggs, and it would be great to see it come to fruition in 2021.

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