WR3 By Committee: PPR

Photo: USA Today Sports

Over the past few years, there have been several very popular articles written by myself and our very own Chase Stuart that look at an interesting approach to building a fantasy team with late value picks. Based upon the theory of using both Strength of Schedule ("SOS") and taking two players as a combination to build one very good player, Chase has discussed both Team Defense by Committee ("TDBC") and Quarterback by Committee ("QBBC") as a general fantasy league strategy. In general I think that this is a wise move because very early on in fantasy drafts there are a ton of RB and WR prospects to go after to build a great team. While there are a few studs at QB and also a few choice defenses, I do not see a huge need in leagues to pursue either too hard in the beginning stages of a fantasy draft.

So with this in mind, I started to think about what else can be done with the committee approach. Tight end? Perhaps. Running back? Maybe. Wide receiver? Hmmm, that's really intriguing, but we should probably look at say the third starting option - "Fantasy WR3". What if you could grab two wide receivers later in the draft that could combine to perform on a WR3 - or even WR2 - level, based solely on their current projections and their schedule? Now we're talking. This really got my attention, so I went after this. Let's take a look at how I went about this and then we can digest and discuss the results.

ELIGIBLE RECEIVERS

So how to begin? Defenses and quarterbacks are relatively easy to "committee" together. There's usually only one QB and certainly only one team defense per NFL club, so the approach is pretty simple as far as picking out which players / teams to try and pair up. When it comes to wide receivers, the line is not quite so easy to draw, but I needed some basis to pick which players it made sense to try and combine for a decent committee. I decided that I would use the following criteria to decide which players to start with for evaluating:

CRITERIA #1 - WR37 AND BEYOND

This seems pretty simple. If we want to have a duo that puts up WR3 numbers, that means we want WR36 or better production - else we would just draft WR36 or higher and forget the whole idea. So here is the list of players with which I started, based on their Average Draft Position (ADP):

Table 1: Wide Receivers WR37-WR60 Based on ADP

Now we have 24 guys to pair up and see how they do. That makes 276 potential committees, so there had better be a decent one (or several, we hope) out of all of those couplets. Now, before I go over the method of how to pair them up and the results, we need one more rule:

CRITERIA #2 - NO MORE THAN ONE WR FROM ROUND 7 AND ONE FROM ROUND 8.

This could get tricky here, but understand the overall goal. The point of WR3BC is to "free up" the first 6 rounds of your fantasy draft to pursue 2-3 receivers after grabbing a stud RB in Round 1. After six rounds you can have 2-3RBs, 2-3 WRs and possibly even a stud QB or TE, depending on your personal preference, or even to get your WR3 have the "WR3BC" be your WR4. Flexibility is the name of the game here. We all want value in our drafts, and having the ability to grab two WRs in Rounds 7 and 8 to act as our WR3BC gives us that ability.

There is some good news – all of the WR3BC candidates have ADPs that are either just in Round 7, such as Pierre Garcon or Randall Cobb or in Round 8 or later.  There are some other wide receivers that might go in Round 8, so planning on taking two of them could leave you scrambling for your ninth pick if you wait too long for your WR3BC choice.  I will have to keep all those details in mind when we look at the WR3BC result because it would not make sense to expect two of these receivers to make it into a committee combination based on their ADP.

So what do we do now to figure out some WR pairs?

CRITERIA #3 - USE FOOTBALLGUYS' WR STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE

This sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Just take the WR Strength of Schedule to figure out when certain players are more likely to score well. What I did is similar to what the Projections Dominator and Draft Dominator do for you - take the projected fantasy points and slice them up over 17 weeks based on the strength of schedule. I call this result the "distributed fantasy points" for each receiver.

After I had all 24 wide receivers with distributed fantasy points on a weekly basis, I just compared all of the possible WR pairs to find the best duos for WR3BC. So here we are - time for some results:

Table 2: Wide Receiver #3 Committee Pairs

As we can see from Table 2, we have some very good pairs to select from for WR3BC. There are two wide receivers outside of the Top 36 that are projected to produce similarly to several Top 36 WRs in fantasy scoring in 2017 - both Pierre Garcon and Randall Cobb - so expect to see these names appear quite often as I build these pairs.  I could almost stop right there, but I need to be thorough as the ADPs tend to get very fluid as preseason wears on, and we need to make certain we have the very best pairings in case our draft plans go awry.  So digging in, there are 100 pairs ot Table 2 to consider, so there are a number of options.  Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:

Table 3: Wide Receiver #3 Committee Pair Appearances by Player

As we can see from Table 3, it is not just the Randall Cobb and Piere Garcon show in our Top 100 pairs (granted, you need 200 names for 100 paris), as we have five receivers (Garcon, Rishard Matthews, Corey Coleman, Adam Thielen and Mike Wallace) appearing at least 15 times on the list.  Five more receivers appear at least 11 times, so there is a good diversity represented in Table 2.  Even if we shrink our window down to the Top 24 on the list, five names still appear at least six times, although it is a different Corey (Davis) that replaces Corey Coleman.  Randall Cobb only appears 11 times out of 100 pairings, which is one of the reasons we have to be thorough in the analysis.    

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Now that we have 100 possible pairs to consider, what exactly does that mean? Should we just take one of the best options on the list and call it a day?  Well, yes and no.  Remember our goal - find a pair of running backs that can combine for WR3 (or better) fantasy production. To figure that out we need a better metric, so here are the projections for WR1 through WR36 (and beyond):

Table 4: Projected Fantasy Points for WRs 10-36+

Based on Table 3, we see that WRs beyond the Top 10-14 are really bunched as far as projections.  Allen Robinson (ADP of WR15) is projected for 225.12 points, while Larry Fitzgerald (ADP WR22) and Golden Tate (ADP WR23) are projected to score nearly the same amount.  Even Emmanuel Sanders (ADP WR29) is only 10-15 points behind these WR2 receivers.  This screams opportunity for a strong WR3BC this season.  If we can identify a pair of receivers that can get in this range, we are nearly there.  Taking a typical number projected for a Top 36 (WR3) of 193 points based on the projections listed in Table 3 and adding 10 points for a bye week filler, we next look at our possible pairs to see how many exceed 203 projected points for 2017, and the answer is an incredible 60 pairs.  Raising the bar even further to a lower-end WR2 such as Davante Adams (201.86) and adding 10 points once again gives a higher target of 212 points.  Looking at our earlier data, we find 15 duos in Table 2 that all meet or exceed that mark.  That is a remarkable result, and strongly suggests that 2017 is a great year to go after a WR3BC option.  Choosing the correct pair can give us the result we wanted – high end WR3 production (and borderline WR2) on the cheap.  

Considering all of the results, there are four distinct plans that make sense for 2017:

Plan A:  Draft Corey Coleman in Round 9 followed by Mike Wallace in Round 10.  This gives you the top wide receiver pairing on the table, and also minimizes the investment to two picks in Rounds 9 and 10.  If for some reason Mike Wallace slips through your fingers, his teammate, Breshad Perriman, should be available.  Coleman-Perriman is only four points (and about 2%) less than Coleman-Wallace. 

Plan B:  Draft Pierre Garcon in Round 8:  While Garcon has a higher ADP (WR37, about the middle of Round 8), he makes for a tough "Plan A" simply because if you do not immediately grab Corey Coleman in the next round and lock up the third best pair on the list, you will have to settle (and also reach) for Mike Wallace (or Kenny Britt)  to even get a Top 25 WR3BC.  That's not the best plan, and I might argue that Plans C and D are better as you don't have to blow a Round 8 pick.

Plan C:  Draft Adam Thielen in Round 9.  So you waited past Garcon and wanted Coleman, but he was stolen before you could snap him up.  Now what?  Take Adam Thielen in Round 9 instead, then follow up with either Mike Wallace or Rishard Matthews.

Plan D:  Draft Mike Wallace in Round 9 and Rishard Matthews in Round 10.   So This is not a bad backup-backup-backup plan, as it results in the fourth-best duo with the same picks instead of the first in Plan A.

Executing any of these four plans results in a Top 12 pair of receivers for WR3BC in every case but Garcon-Wallace (second option to Plan B).  That's part of the reason why I say Plans C and D are arguably better than Plan B.

For completeness, I have included Tables 5-10 below, showing the best combinations of WR3BC with each of the highlighted Top 12 pairs from Table 5.  

Table 6: Suggested WR3BC Schedule Plan - Corey Coleman and Mike Wallace

Table 7: Suggested WR3BC Schedule Plan - Pierre Garcon and Corey Coleman

Table 8: Suggested WR3BC Schedule Plan - Mike Wallace and Rishard Matthews