Every NFL team will rely on at least two, and usually three, wide receivers each game, so logging one of the best eight games allowed by a secondary is a significant feat. Last year, there were 2139 instances of a receiver catching at least one pass in a game. That’s an average of 67 times a secondary defended against a wideout, So Top-8 is certainly an elite performance against that defense.
Below will show how often a player logged the best game allowed by a secondary (Top-1), one of the four best performances allowed (Top-4), and one of the best eight performances (Top-8). With 17 games played, a Top-8 game is “above average” among the best wideout from each opponent.
The “Better than Average” (BTA) score is a weighting of those games.
See Also: Better than average QB | RB | WR | TE
Bottom line: This is a true measurement of how effective wideouts were when schedule influences are removed. It compares them to other wideouts that faced that same defense. If a player rates higher here than they did with 2022 fantasy points, it means they were limited by a schedule and are better than their last year’s stats suggest.
Each season seems to increase the fantasy value and depth of elite receivers. But given the high volume of receivers, logging a top BTA score is a challenge. Justin Jefferson easily rated the best in the metric after his monster season and Davante Adams was the only other wideout with more than half of his games producing Top-8 fantasy stats. Stefon Diggs, Tyreek Hill, and CeeDee Lamb all managed eight such performances but the numbers declined rapidly.
Any Top-4 performance is elite and a difference-maker weekly fantasy score. The players that rose in this rating included Mike Williams, Amari Cooper, DeVonta Smith, and Cooper Kupp who missed eight games last year and would have been at the top as usual had he not been injured. The bigger disappointment was CeeDee Lamb who was solid with eight of the Top-8 games but only three Top-4. He was most often good, but not as often great.
Of the 32 instances of a defense giving up the most fantasy points to an opposing wideout, only three managed more than one such performance. Justin Jefferson is the top wideout this year – and often the first player drafted this summer. Kupp’s two games were among the nine he played. Adams was the only other wideout and had an impressive four top performances, but has since lost his quarterback. He’ll be more challenged to repeat that feat given his quarterback situation is not certain with Jimmy Garoppolo (maybe) signed on but bringing his lengthy injury history to bear. If he stays.