2015 fantasy football draft ADP trends: Wide receivers

If your league is competitive, you have to know who the trendy players are. Drafting a great fantasy football team is all about value. Ideally, you take each player just before someone else wants to take him. Additionally, you don’t want to have your favorite target go right in front of you.

If you’re new to fantasy football, you may have heard about Average Draft Position (ADP). If you’re not new to fantasy, you probably hear “ADP” more than you’ll hear “TPS Reports” in Office Space. Every fantasy owner should have some idea of each player’s ADP because it gives you an idea when most people tend to take those guys. If you are aware of a player’s ADP, you can gauge when to take him. What’s more, you’ll also want to know which guys are in high demand while which players are falling off.That’s where this column comes in.

We’ll be taking a look at which guys are on plugged-in owners’ radars, when they go off the board and why they’re going there. On the other hand, we’ll look at some guys losing some buzz. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with taking a guy with a falling ADP as long as you’re getting good value on him.

Today, we’ll look at the receivers. Each column will have an ADP graph from the fantastic site FantasyFootballCalculator.com. The numbers you’ll see to the left side of the graph are the round and pick from a 12-team standard draft.

One more thing to mention is that receivers are not going to be as fluid as backs. Generally, there isn’t as much competition on a depth chart, while the running back position battles tend to be more fruitful. If two receivers are competing, the loser of that battle could still have value because many teams have two or more solid receivers for fantasy. However, backup running backs are clearly below the starter on the majority of teams.

Youth, big games in the preseason and injuries tend to be the reason why people reach on receivers. Another popular one is a change in offensive coordinator.

Okay, his graph isn’t really rising too much these days because it has already jumped prior to this month. I still had to throw him on here as a heads-up to those of you only doing mock drafts in public leagues. Bryant is everyone’s favorite “sleeper” this year even though there’s no way you’ll get him after pick 100 in any league worth anything. However, it’s starting to come up again after his first game and he’ll likely be back in the fourth round soon.

This isn’t a huge jump, but more than half a round in the sixth is interesting. Landry looked good in the preseason opener, scoring a 2-yard touchdown. If you’re in a standard league, there is really no way you should be grabbing Landry this soon. However, he’s a solid target in a PPR.

Well, when a trendy player has a touchdown on a national game, that will boost the ol’ ADP. Agholor had a gorgeous touchdown on NFL Network off a WR screen on Sunday and, as you can see, his demand has increased. It will continue to rise for the week, too.

It’s usually the same receivers falling in drafts. If they’re old, slow and are coming off a bad year, people won’t be looking to grab them. Also, an injury could derail their value. Receivers don’t fall quite as sharply unless it’s an injury. If there is a low demand, it tends to stay low. If it’s high, it’ll stay up there because it made it there for plenty of reasons, which is unlike backs where it could just be one hot story.