The best and worst best ball WRs

Obviously, the best fantasy football options for regular gameplay tend to be the best options for best ball as well. High scores are high scores. At no position is this clearer than wide receiver, which you’ll see below. The best wide receivers and the best “best ball” wide receivers have massive overlap.

This week, I’m going position-by-position to identify the best and worst best ball options at each position from the 2019 season. To do this, I established (somewhat arbitrary) thresholds of “elite” weekly performances (25 PPR points for QBs, 20 for RBs/WRs, 15 for TEs) and calculated how often each player reached those marks.

I already conducted this exercise with quarterbacks and running backs. Today, wide receivers, where I’ll take a look at the helpers and hurters for best ball last year and speculate on what that means for 2020.

Best ball helpers

Michael Thomas, New Orleans Saints

(20-plus points 10 times in 16 games, 62.5%)

Thomas is a unicorn in modern football. He’s a short-target guy — only Cooper Kupp (7.3 yards) had a shorter average depth of target than Thomas’ 8.2 yards among the top-25 receivers last year, but he still managed to be a monster, both in total and on a weekly basis. He was the only receiver to put up 20-plus points in half his games, and he blew past that mark. He’s the No. 1 receiver for 2020 in any format.

Davante Adams, Green Bay Packers

(5 times in 12 games, 41.7%)

Adams’ season won’t be remembered as a huge one, but he was actually just fine. Our memories get colored by his early struggles and then his missed time, but in the end he cracked the 20-point barrier more than 40% of the time, the only other receiver to even get to 36. With little in the way of target competition in Green Bay for 2020, there’s not much reason to expect Adams to slide.

Chris Godwin, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (5 times in 14 games, 35.7%)
Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4 times in 13 games, 30.8%)

Combined, Godwin and Evans reached the 20-point threshold nine times in the 14 games they played, and they never did it at the same time. One or the other of the two topped 20 PPR points in each Tampa Bay game from Week 2 until Week 9, with Godwin tossing another one in Week 12. Obviously, the Buccaneer quarterback for 2020 is going to have a big say in how productive these two can be going forward, but it’s hard to imagine a Bruce Arians offense bringing in (or keeping, if it’s Jameis Winston) a quarterback who won’t make the most of those two.

DeAndre Hopkins, Houston Texans
Julio Jones, Atlanta Falcons
Robert Woods, Los Angeles Rams

(Each one 5 times in 15 games, 33.3%)

Each of these three (plus Tyreek Hill, 4 times in 12 games, and DeSean Jackson, 1 time in 3 games) reached the 20-point threshold exactly one-third of the time. There probably aren’t any real surprises there — that’s a list of some of the game’s elite receivers plus the most famous best ball option in the world in Jackson — with the possible exception of Woods. Woods’ 2019 season was weird, with only 3 touchdowns (2 receiving) but still five 20-point games. He closed strong, with four of his five big games coming over the season’s final five weeks. Still, that level of production (and two years running now) has Woods firmly near the top of the list in terms of productive receivers.

Best ball hurters

Mike Williams, Los Angeles Chargers

(0 times in 15 games, 0.0%)

It took Williams until Week 14 to score his first touchdown of the year. He topped 1,000 yards (barely) but only had 100-plus twice, and didn’t score in either of those games. For a guy who had one of the league’s deepest average depths of target and theoretically should profile as a receiver with big boom potential, Williams didn’t realize that at all last year. Was the increasing noodlization of Philip Rivers’ arm to blame? I guess we’ll see in 2020.

Curtis Samuel, Carolina Panthers

(1 time in 16 games, 6.3%)

Most of the guys who struggle to put up boom games are the prototypical slot options, because those guys are less likely to break off huge point-accumulating plays and tend to be high-floor, low-ceiling options. To wit, Trey Quinn (0%), Russell Gage (0%), Albert Wilson (0%), Adam Humphries (0%), Mohamed Sanu (6.7%), Dede Westbrook (6.7%), Danny Amendola (6.7%), and Cole Beasley (6.7%) all rank near the bottom of this list. That’s why Samuel, who is supposed to be a deep option like the aforementioned Williams, stands out. And I’m more than willing to give Samuel a mulligan, owing to the fact that he had a broken Cam Newton and a might-as-well-be-broken Kyle Allen as his quarterbacks for virtually the whole year. Assuming the Panthers have a competent quarterback in 2020, Samuel should do better.

JuJu Smith-Schuster, Pittsburgh Steelers

(1 time in 12 games, 8.3%)

Like Samuel, JuJu had to deal with some less-than-competent backups for much of his season, which stifled his upside. But it was still a disappointing season for a guy who was supposed to be primed for a big breakout after Antonio Brown’s departure. If JuJu can bounce back in 2020, you’ll be getting a big name at what is likely to be a steep draft-day discount.