Last night I was thinking about Sam Darnold and whether I should fade quarterbacks and then snag him with the final pick in my 14-team league. Sometimes these thoughts lead to a decision. And sometimes I need to dig up research to make the decision more actionable.
In this case, "actionable" is based on a spreadsheet I've updated continually since 2012. It includes about 200 players each season across every core offensive position: their preseason ADP, age, fantasy production, fantasy ranking, etc. I examined the data to try to answer the question, "Do undraftable quarterbacks have a decent shot at being weekly fantasy starters?", where "undraftable" means QBs with ADPs outside the top 25.
A rundown of my findings for QBs and TEs can be heard on today's FF4W podcast. And for today's blog post, I'm going to highlight RBs and WRs. And because there are more fantasy-relevant running backs and wideouts than there are quarterbacks and tight ends, this portion of the research focuses on RBs and WRs ranked outside the top 50. While some non-top-50 RBs and WRs are draftable in many leagues, generally they're either handcuffs are dart throws or both. For example, Ray Davis (RB54 ADP) and Jayden Higgins (WR53 ADP) are not expected to be anything close to weekly fantasy starters. Often guys like these are drafted, sit on benches, and maybe eventually break through.
So I wanted to understand how often non-top-50-ADP RBs and WRs cracked their respective position's top 24. The research spans 2012 through 2023 (I haven't yet made time to update the spreadsheet for 2024).
For the 12 seasons studied, 34 non-top-50-ADP RBs finished the year as top-24 RBs. That comes to nearly three per season. If trends hold in 2025, we might expect roughly three non-top-50 running backs (e.g. Tyler Allgier, Jaylen Wright, and Justice Hill) to post top-24 numbers, thereby essentially making them weekly fantasy starters. For every other RB outside the top 50, we might merely hope for some spot starts, and/or streamable production.
These numbers are very similar for WRs, which have had 36 non-top-50 players finish in the top 24. Again, about three players per year -- a fraction more than RBs. Christian Kirk, Keenan Allen, and Wan'Dale Robinson are solid non-top-50 candidates. Statistically, we might expect three WRs around their ADPs to strike fantasy gold.
Things get more interesting when we dig a little deeper. From 2012 to 2023, 11 non-top-50 RBs have posted top *12* fantasy numbers. So nearly one time per year (on average), a borderline undraftable running back produces like a must-draft RB. But only five non-top-50 WRs have finished in the top 12. That means if we drafted each of those 12 seasons, and in each draft we took a chance on one non-top-50 RB and one non-top-50 WR, we would have had a little more than double the chance of hitting paydirt with each RB versus each WR.
That's pretty significant. And paired with what was discovered about QBs and TEs (per today's podcast episode), it offers guidance on where we should take the highest-probability risks toward the end of our draft.
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