Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: The WRs who trailed teammates when targeted

(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.)

Our last few Stat of the Day articles have taken a look at QB ratings for WRs. We’ve looked at the WRs with the highest QB rating when targeted and the WRs with the lowest QB rating as well. We also looked at the receivers whose passer rating when targeted was most ahead of their teammates.

Today’s piece will look at the WR whose passer rating is most behind their teammates. The idea is to see if looking at the data this way helps separate WR skill from the skill of their QB or fellow WRs. Shout out to FTN editor Daniel Kelley for the idea.

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Is D.J. Chark still the WR to own in Jacksonville? Is it worth gambling on Breshad Perriman in Detroit?

The chart below shows the 10 WRs (min. 40 targets) from 2020 that were furthest away from leading their team’s WR group in passer rating when targeted.

So for example, A.J. Green had a passer rating of 55.1 when targeted. The top WR in Cincinnati last year had a passer rating of 102.5 when targeted. Thus, Green was 47.4 points away from leading his team in this stat — the biggest gap in the league.

Player	Team	QB Rating When Targeted	QB Rating Pts Behind Team’s #1 WR
A.J. Green	CIN	55.1	47.4
Jerry Jeudy	DEN	58.2	46.3
D.J. Chark	JAC	75.9	40.1
D.J. Moore	CAR	74.5	36.0
Brandin Cooks	HOU	101.6	35.9
Scott Miller	TB	96.5	34.6
Michael Thomas	NO	88.3	34.5
DK Metcalf	SEA	110.7	33.0
Jalen Reagor	PHI	63.5	31.7
Breshad Perriman	NYJ	67.7	30.9

A few thoughts from this list:

Virtually all of the players on this list either have a new home or a new QB in 2021. Of the 10 WRs shown above, only Scott Miller and DK Metcalf will definitely have the same QB and team in 2021.
This list has some elite fantasy names like Metcalf, Michael Thomas, D.J. Chark and D.J. Moore. This doesn’t mean these players were bad last year (an obvious thing to state in the cases of Metcalf and Moore) — but it does indicate that their ceilings may still be untapped.
Speaking of Chark: Is he still the fantasy WR to own in Jacksonville? Laviska Shenault dusted him in passer rating when targeted last year, and Marvin Jones — who dominated Tuesday’s study of WRs who led their team in passer rating — has also joined the team. Chemistry with Trevor Lawrence may go a long way in determining the pecking order in Jacksonville in 2021 and beyond.
Entering his sixth year and fifth team, Breshad Perriman really should not have many opportunities left. Yet he finds himself primed to be a starter for the Detroit Lions. It’s tempting to be drawn into the potential for volume in this role, but I’ll be doing everything I can to stay far away: