What Changed in 2023 for Fantasy Football: Wide Receivers

It’s important to have a core set of beliefs in anything, fantasy football included. Just as important, though, is a willingness to reevaluate those beliefs when presented with new information. That’s what we’ll be doing this week, looking at what changed and what we learned for fantasy football in the 2023 NFL season that we can apply going forward.

Today, we tackle the wide receiver position.

(Follow along with the rest of the series: QB | RB | TE)

What Changed in 2023: Wide Receivers

Opportunity Matters … A Lot

Puka Nacua, Michael Pittman and Adam Thielen are good receivers no matter what. But all three also had the benefit of very light target competition for some or all of the season, and that’s a big part of the reason why those guys finished as the WR4, WR13 and WR17, respectively (and Thielen was WR3 through the Panthers’ Week 7 bye). I’ll give myself some plaudits for being in on Nacua basically from draft day (and then lose them by being out on Pittman and Thielen), and while it’s clear Puka is plenty skilled in his own right, he’d never have gotten the chance to go off like he did as a rookie if he had been a fifth-rounder for a team that didn’t have a massive opening for the Rams, who had only Cooper Kupp as a trustworthy name, and then he got hurt to start the season. The door was already open for Puka Nacua, and he broke it down anyway. 

Meanwhile, Pittman set a career high in fantasy scoring for a Colts team that had either a run-first rookie or a questionable backup at quarterback all season, and Thielen topped 1,000 yards for the first time since 2018 despite Panthers’ QB Bryce Young having an unmitigated disaster of a rookie season. Both Pittman (1.9) and Thielen (1.6) averaged under 2.0 yards per route run (Stefon Diggs was the only other top-17 WR under 2.0). How did they do that? Target shares. Per the FTN Player Utilization Tool, Pittman (30.5%) was one of only six players with at least a 30% target share, and Thielen (25.7%) was one of only 17 with at least a 25%. A receiver being good is important. A receiver being good and having the chance to show how good he is is even more important.

Adjust Your Thresholds for Depth

Divide receivers into groups: WR1-12, WR13-24 and WR25-36. By average PPR scoring from those groups, 2023 was only fifth highest for Group 1 (WR1-12) over the last decade. In other words, the top of the heap is, within a little margin of error, about the same as ever. But Group 2 (WR13-24) had its second-highest group average (behind 2021) in that last decade, and Group 3 (WR25-36) had the highest … and not by a little, with WR25-36 in 2023 averaging 203.2 PPR points and no other year’s group topping 193.9. 

The elitest-of-the-elite fantasy receivers are still worth their weight in gold (CeeDee Lamb just had the third-best fantasy WR season of all time; Tyreek Hill was ninth). But the gap between, for example, WR5 and WR25 is shrinking. For example, in 2023, A.J. Brown was WR5 (289.6 points) and Jayden Reed WR25 (217.2). Ten years ago, in 2013, Brown’s 289.6 would have been WR8, and Reed’s 217.2 would have been WR20. There were 72.4 points between WR5 and WR25 last year; there were 106.2 a decade ago. 

In short: Get your top-of-the-line receivers. But if you miss out on the 1, 1A, 1B, then recent trends indicate you can wait to go receiver, because the next tier is closer to the subsequent tiers than it has been in some time.

Don’t Let Age Scare You

In 2004, 10 of the top 24 fantasy receivers were 30-plus years old. It was nine in 2005, eight in 2006, 2007 and 2008, and seven in 2009. It was under six each of the next 12 years except for 2012 (when it was exactly six) until 2023, when there were again six receivers in the top-24 age 30 or higher. For further context, there were six top-24 receivers in 2023 age 30 or older, and there were six such receivers total in the four years 2019 to 2022.

Mike Evans (WR7) and Stefon Diggs (WR9) both played their age-30 seasons in 2023, but that also includes Keenan Allen (31), Davante Adams (31), Adam Thielen (33) and DeAndre Hopkins (31), so it’s not solely a function of a group of stars reaching the 30-year mark.

I’ve written a piece each of the last few years noting that the production of fantasy options 30 and over has gone into the tank, and this year is the first in a while that I’ll have to reverse course. So heading into 2024, don’t be so quick to dismiss the older options. In addition to the aforementioned names, that includes Cooper Kupp, Odell Beckham and Michael Thomas, and guys who are just entering their age-30 season like Tyreek Hill, Calvin Ridley, Amari Cooper and Mike Williams.

Don’t Let Lack of Age Scare You Either

Counterintuitive? Maybe. But while the note just above this is about how older players are more valuable than ever, we also have to note that younger players are more valuable than ever as well. In the last five years (2019-2023), 27 wide receivers age 23 or younger have finished as top-24 receivers (5.2 years). That’s more than did so in 2004-2012 combined (26). In the last 20 years, there have been seven years with at least five such finishers, and four of those seven came in the last five years.

(And that’s without including guys who have reasonably arguments for deserving top-24 finishes, like Jayden Reed (WR25), Garrett Wilson (WR26), Rashee Rice (WR27) and more – you can play that game with young guys every year, so it’s not helpful, but it is worth noting.)

So younger receivers are more valuable than ever. And older receivers are more valuable than ever. Who is losing out?

What used to be “the sweet spot.” In 2017, there were 19 top-24 receivers between 24 and 29. In 2018, there were 20. Then 17, then 17, then 18. In 2023? It was 14. Yes, that’s still more than half. But also there are more receivers between 24 and 29 (by a lot) than there are above or below that number.

In short, it’s clear that we no longer have an age range that serves as the sweet spot for fantasy receivers. Third-year breakout? Easing-in period? Late-career cliff? A lot of our trusty aphorisms about fantasy receivers just don’t work like they used to work.