Thoughts on prospect evaluation and a sneaky WR prospect

A borderline Day 2 pick who is an arbitrage play on a potential first-rounder

I closed my recent look at the top 30 or so fantasy rookies in the 2023 class with a note about a wide receiver I like that I haven’t heard much about. I want to start by mentioning this isn’t a situation where I did extreme diligence on every WR in the 2023 class and this is my one sleeper. It’s almost exactly the opposite. This is merely a name I came across a couple places but not enough that I had heard what his deal was, so I had to do a little more research into him.

As I completed my recent pre-draft rookie draft, I did this type of research on a handful of guys, and done additional research on another few guys I was hearing about and kind of knew the deal on. And so in that regard, I don’t want to act like I’m not standing by this take, either; not every player I’ve dug into has interested me, and in fact few have. But this guy is intriguing, and I think he’s an arbitrage opportunity on a much earlier pick in early rookie rankings. In fact, in my single-QB rookie draft, the guy my guy is an arbitrage version of went 1.05, while I got my guy at 4.02. So that’s the potential cost gap that leads me to write about this, and while draft capital and landing spot are going to shift this equation in just a couple days, having this guy in mind will be helpful to quick reactions in the early days post-draft, assuming everything goes well during the draft.

But before I dig into that player, I want to start with broader discussion of this WR class. First of all, I want to give a shoutout to four people whose work I’m a big fan of, where I’ve gotten a ton of information this offseason. My Stealing Bananas cohost Shawn Siegele is my most trusted opinion on everything rookie-related, and we’ve been discussing this year’s rookie class on two recent shows. My Ship Chasing cohost Pat Kerrane isn’t far behind on the pantheon of voices I trust, and his new site Legendary Upside has my favorite individual player profiles in the industry. JJ Zachariason’s Late Round prospect guide is another invaluable resource to understanding the various profiles. And then Jakob Sanderson has a new Substack I can’t recommend enough that is a great place to look for dynasty theory, among other stuff. I would describe Jakob’s work as a better version of my work, with more of a dynasty lens, and he’s someone I’ve talked with a lot this offseason and look forward to doing more work with in the future, so be sure to check his work out.

I was talking with Jakob this morning and he was asking me about my ranking of Zay Flowers in my latest rankings, which was admittedly not a bullish spot to put him. And Jakob made some great arguments about Flowers and why I should be a little higher on him, and I think he’s right that I was a bit harsh to not have him — with his expected first-round draft capital — ahead of the guys I tiered him with in Tier 4. That said, I’m still not in love with Flowers, and he’s indicative of what’s notable about the whole class.

My concerns with Flowers aren’t strong, and like I said Jakob made some favorable ancillary points, and to be clear Jakob I don’t think would describe himself as super bullish on Flowers, either. But basically Flowers is a guy who looks really good from a Dominator Rating perspective but a lot more average from Yards Per Team Attempt, which is odd because those often track. And for a small WR who stayed a fourth year, I just want elite production (and probably against better competition than Boston College faced in the ACC, which is a good league but obviously college football just continues to condense and it’s not an elite league) to be sure he’ll be ready for the next step. That’s the kind of lesson I think I need to learn from the Skyy Moore exuberance last year, and as far as a fourth-year 180-pound WR, there’s a big difference between Flowers’ profile and someone like DeVonta Smith who was truly elite and in the SEC. As smaller WR prospects become more common, and more successful, it’s still a sliding scale and I still want to be making the bets on the ones who show truly high-end ability to produce.

The reason for the gap between Flowers’ Dominator Rating and YPTA would presumably be QB skill, since Dominator Rating is looking at overall team yardage and TD production while YPTA is looking at pass attempts, but that’s not 100% clear. Basically, there were a lot of pass attempts in the Boston College offense that didn’t go for production, either because the QBs sucked, or the other pass-catchers did, or maybe to some degree Flowers wasn’t truly elite but just better than other bad pass catchers while not necessarily elevating things either. What I do know is a guy who had three straight Dominator Ratings over 30% — which Flowers did — is someone I would have been in love with five years ago, but I’ve come to understand it’s a little more complicated. The fact that his raw production wasn’t actually that great, and the YPTA stuff wasn’t as elite, and his DRs are amazing largely because Boston College was truly inept at passing, reads as more of a concern to me than it did years ago. Similarly, my mystery player is one I would have written off five years ago, and so Flowers and that WR and the evolution of prospect analysis all ties together here and is the really fun part of this class.

As Jakob and I wrapped our discussion, Jakob wrote (and I’m sharing this with his permission), “I kinda think they all have pretty big question marks after (Jaxon Smith-Njigba) and (Jordan) Addison,” which I highlighted and said I think is basically the whole ballgame for the 2023 class. I mean, that’s the whole deal.

What I don’t want to do with the 2023 class is split hairs about the class itself, if I think from a multi-year perspective nearly all of them are not on a level where I would chase in any situation because I’m just that confident they will tilt things their way in an antifragile sense (i.e. they are so good all chaotic shocks to the system will benefit them, like I argued for Ja’Marr Chase or A.J. Brown early in their careers).

And then there’s this humility that success or failure isn’t based on strength of profile. That’s just not how it works, every time. Sometimes guys do hit with flawed profiles, even ones with similar profiles to guys in this class that I have ranked quite a bit lower than someone like Zay Flowers, and so what’s important I think is the recognition that with the whole class, you really quickly wind up in a prospect range where draft capital, landing spot, health, NFL situation, and all these ancillary things will have more say on the success and failure of these WRs than I think is typical for WRs, or at least for ones where we’re more sure of the talent (or lack thereof). This is just a class with so much ambiguity, and that in and of itself is a take that is worth getting down. (As I noted in my last piece, my actionable response was to trade into a lot of Round 3 and Round 4 rookie picks and use a quantity over quality approach to my first rookie draft this year; as we look beyond the draft, an approach would be to be more flexible to draft capital and landing spot than usual, and allow situation to dictate your take on certain guys a little bit more.)

This is a big reason I’m so excited about my live NFL draft coverage this week, and I want to real quick say that I’ll be on multiple live streams again this year on Thursday and Friday night. On Thursday, we’ll be over at the Ship Chasing YouTube going through all of the Round 1 happenings with a host of guests and plenty of drinks. It’ll be a blast.

Friday will be a little more focused on the analysis, as my Stealing Bananas cohost Shawn Siegele and I will be over on the RotoViz YouTube channel going through every pick from Day 2. That it’ll be a little more focused on the players — and, for me, a little more sober — works out perfectly, because Day 2 is where a lot of these profiles are made, and the ambiguity I’m describing above will get sorted out. The true first-round possibilities are mostly known, so Round 1 is mostly just about finding out where guys are going to play. But who might land in Day 2 is far more opaque, and in terms of future success, there’s a huge difference between players landing there — as either Round 2 or Round 3 picks — and falling to Day 3.

This year, we have a deep secondary group of RB prospects, a deep TE class, and plenty of WRs whose profiles will be elevated if they get enough draft capital, so both of those streams should be a ton of fun. We might even see my mystery WR land in Day 2, which would be a pretty big boost for him, and was my hope for him when I acquired him in my rookie draft.