WR3 By Committee - PPR

Photo: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports

Over the past few years, there have been two very popular articles written by 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, he 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 PPR ADP

Great, 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 (especially in PPR leagues) 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 after Round 7.  There are some 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 16 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: PPR Wide Receiver #3 Committee Pairs

As we can see from Table 2, we have some very good pairs to select from for WR3BC. Unlike last year, we have a ton of options that meet or exceed WR37 (Anquan Boldin) by himself.  With 123 different duos to select from, there will be lots of options to try and find a very strong pair for 2013.  To challenge this option further, I am baselining the target WR3BC goal at WR36, Miles Austin, who is projected to have 196.4 fantasy points in 2013.  To make it both more fair and more challenging, I added 10 points for Austin’s bye week, as a WR37-WR60 type player would be inserted into the lineup for Austin for that game, so our target for a successful WR3BC had better achieve 206 or more fantasy points.  That reduces the list from Table 2 to 32 pairs that provide 206 or more fantasy points and combine favorably as a WR3.  Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:

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

As we can see from Table 3, Justin Blackmon dominates the list, with Anquan Boldin claiming a strong second spot.  Three other WRs show up on this list at least four times – Kendall Wright, Emmanuel Sanders and Lance Moore.  All of these names should surprise no one that read Table 1, as these five guys are all near the Top of the WR37 and beyond ADP list. The most intriguing player by far is Justin Blackmon.  Had he not be suspended for the first four games, his ADP would likely have been well in the WR3 range, but as a result of the forced vacation his ADP has dropped all the way down to WR42.  Provided he is healthy and gets decent quarterback play, Blackmon will be a true steal in the WR40 range and be a key part of a WR3BC approach this season.

Putting It All Together

Now that we have over 30 possible pairs to construct a WR3BC, what exactly does that mean? Should WR36, Miles Austin, be the basis of our comparison? Of course not. Remember our goal - find a pair of wide receivers that can combine for WR3 (or better) fantasy production. To figure that out we need a better metric, so here are the projections for WR13 through WR36 (with a few extra receivers), using PPR, sorted by projected fantasy points:

Table 4: Projected PPR Fantasy Points for WRs 13-37

Based on Table 4, we first see that Percy Harvin’s name is on the list.  We will not consider him for WR3BC for fear he will miss too much of 2013.  Next we see that WRs beyond the Top 20 are really jumbled all over the place. Some are going too early in drafts (Pierre Garcon, Tavon Austin) based on current projections, while others are available at what appears to be a discount. Filtering through all of this "noise", we see some players that catch our eye. Steve Johnson (WR30, 207.1 fantasy points projected) is the last of the "upper tier" of wideouts that are projected to top 200 fantasy points in 2012. Taking the 200 point target and adding 10 points for a bye week filler, we next look at our possible pairs to see how many exceed 210 projected points for 2013, and the answer is a solid 21 pairs, with three more just missing the cut.  Digging a little deeper, the top five pairs line up well against Hakeem Nicks (WR19), Eric Decker (WR20) and Pierre Garcon (WR21). This tells us that 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, the recipe looks very clear - get Justin Blackmon. Nabbing him in Round 7 or Round 8 allows you to choose from several other WRs that will post numbers comparable to a WR3. Even with the uncertainty at quarterback in Jacksonville and a slight injury concern for Blackmon, all of that should be settled down by Week 5 when Blackmon should be back in action.  Blackmon offers several pairing possibilities, led by Lance Moore and Emmanuel Sanders.  Sanders is the cheaper option with an ADP that should make him available later, whereas Moore could be gone before Blackmon and should be in most drafts.  That is why I am recommending Justin Blackmon and Emmanuel Sanders as the WR3BC for 2013.  Take Blackmon in Round 7 (late) or Round 8 (early) and follow up with Sanders in Round 8 or 9 to secure the value.  Another option would be to take Lance Moore right after Blackmon if he was to still be available, and smart owners with a flex spot would still snap up Sanders if he lasted to Round 10.

Table 5: Top 56 PPR WR3BC Options for 2013

Here is a final summary of the combined schedules for Justin Blackmon and Emmanuel Sanders, and when the committee approach suggests starting each one:

Table 6: Suggested PPR WR3BC Schedule Plan

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.