Back in May, I wrote an article after the NFL Draft was completed, Wide Receivers to Avoid (2022 Fantasy Football). Training camps are now underway and the Hall of Fame Game gave us our first taste of preseason football. The Las Vegas Raiders defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars 27-11 back on August 4. The preseason is in full swing and we have a lot more information than we did back in May.
I have said for a long time that no player is off-limits in my league and no player must be on my roster in any league. Average Draft Position is the great equalizer, I want to avoid players that are being drafted significantly above their ADP and I want to draft players that have a higher ADP than they are being drafted. I could see rostering any of the players on this list, but I want to avoid them at their current ADP.
Based on my snap judgments from early in training camp, here are some wide receivers that I would try to avoid in 2022.
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DK Metcalf (WR – SEA): ADP WR17
Metcalf led my list in May and nothing has changed since then to make me rethink that assessment. Metcalf is arguably the most overrated fantasy player in the 2022 ADP Rankings. It is astonishing to me that he is the 17th-ranked wide receiver and the 47th overall player. This is a player that had 14 games with 65 receiving yards or less and finished the year with only 75 receptions for 967 yards. The statistic that propped up his fantasy value last year was 12 receiving touchdowns. That did not make up for a horrible stretch from Week 10 to Week 15, where Metcalf failed to gain more than 60 receiving yards in a game or score a touchdown.
I do not see him having 12 receiving touchdowns this year. Russell Wilson was the quarterback there last year and even though he missed three games with a finger injury, he still played 14 games and he was the quarterback in that horrible Week 10 to Week 15 stretch that Metcalf posted at the end of the season. Metcalf was too up and down last year for a wide receiver playing with a quarterback of that caliber, even in a down year for Wilson.
I had hoped in May that the Seahawks would make a trade for either Baker Mayfield or Jimmy Garoppolo to ease the sting of trading Wilson to the Denver Broncos. The quarterback room has remained unchanged since May, the starter is either going to be Drew Lock or Geno Smith. Smith appears to be the favorite to start early in the season, but I expect both players to make starts this year. Smith has 34 career TD passes in 45 career games and 34 career starts. Lock has 25 TD passes in 21 career starts and 24 career games. It is not realistic to expect Metcalf to be a dominant wide receiver with this quarterback room. This looks like a team that is destined to finish in the bottom five in yards gained and points scored. I do not think there is much upside to picking Metcalf this high in a fantasy draft, he still does not have a quarterback that is going to allow him to live up to that ADP.
DK Metcalf Game Logs Week 10-15
| OPP | SCORE | REC | TGT | YDS | Y/R | LG | TD | POINTS | |
| Week 10 | @ GB | L, 0-17 | 3 | 8 | 26 | 8.7 | 18 | 0 | 4.1 |
| Week 11 | vs. ARI | L, 13-23 | 4 | 8 | 31 | 7.8 | 14 | 0 | 5.1 |
| Week 12 | @ WAS | L, 15-17 | 1 | 4 | 13 | 13 | 13 | 0 | 1.8 |
| Week 13 | vs. SF | W, 30-23 | 5 | 8 | 60 | 12 | 33 | 0 | 8.5 |
| Week 14 | @ HOU | W, 33-13 | 4 | 8 | 43 | 10.8 | 22 | 0 | 6.3 |
| Week 15 | @ LAR | L, 10-20 | 6 | 12 | 52 | 8.7 | 12 | 0 | 8.2 |
| Total | 23 | 48 | 225 | 9.7 | 33 | 0 | 34 |
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Mike Williams (WR – LAC): ADP WR19
There is no denying Williams’ elite talent. At 6-foot-4 and 218 pounds, he has the size to be a red zone threat. He has good vertical speed, he ran a 4.49 40-yard dash at his Pro-Day back in 2017. His blend of size and speed is a big reason why the Chargers made him the seventh pick in the 2017 NFL Draft. When he is on, he is one of the best wide receivers in the league paired with Justin Herbert. Last year Williams had a game against Cleveland where he tallied 16 targets, eight receptions, 165 yards receiving and two receiving touchdowns. The Cleveland secondary was eighth against fantasy wide receivers last year and they had no answer for Williams.
Why am I writing all these positive things about a wide receiver in an article that is about wide receivers to avoid? Because Williams also had four targets, one reception and 11 yards receiving against the Las Vegas Raiders last year. He had five targets, two receptions and 19 yards against the New England Patriots. He had five targets, two receptions and 27 yards against the Baltimore Ravens. I understand that the season is long and that players do not bring their WR1 game every week. Sometimes the offense just sputters and sometimes players do not have a good day. However, this has been a constant issue for Williams, he had six games where he failed to top 50 yards receiving or score a touchdown in 2021. In 2020, he had seven such games. He is as boom/bust as any player in the NFL.
Darnell Mooney is the 30th-ranked fantasy wide receiver and 74th-ranked overall player. He was a fifth-round pick by the Bears, not the seventh pick in the draft, and he has three fewer years of experience. He played with Justin Fields and Andy Dalton last year on an offense that was 30th in passing yards gained and 29th in passing touchdowns thrown. He is going 23 picks lower than Williams, the 19th-ranked wide receiver and 51st overall player. Yet Mooney had only six games in 2021 where he failed to tally at least 50 yards nor score a touchdown and they both had the same amount of 100-yard games (four). I do not like the low floor that comes along with Williams and even though he finally had a career year at 27 years old last year, I am not high enough on him to take him at a point in the draft where I should be starting him almost every week.
Amari Cooper (WR – CLE): ADP WR26
Cooper was the 27th-ranked fantasy wide receiver last year playing on a Cowboys team that ranked sixth in pass attempts (647), second in net passing yards gained (4,800) and third in touchdowns thrown (40). He is going to a team that is as committed to running the ball as any team in the league. Cleveland was 28th in pass attempts (520), 27th in net passing yards gained (3,320) and 20th in touchdowns thrown (20). Even if they throw the ball more with Deshaun Watson, it seems hard to believe they will turn into an offense that throws the ball like the Cowboys did last year, yet Cooper is being valued as a similar player to last year, ranking 26th in WR ADP and 63rd overall in fantasy drafts this year.
There is a feeling that Cooper has a chance to improve his numbers as the top receiver playing with Deshaun Watson. That may very well come to fruition at some point, as DeAndre Hopkins was one of the most productive wide receivers in the NFL playing with Watson in Houston. Cooper has never been that guy though, as he has never posted more than 1,200 receiving yards in a season and has never scored more than eight touchdowns in a season. Cooper is not a young receiver anymore, he turns 28 years old this year and has played with good quarterbacks in the past, such as Derek Carr and Dak Prescott. I do not see the upside of grading him as a better player than he was last year on the basis that Watson is now his quarterback.
There are also legal issues with Watson that have resulted in him being suspended for six games this year under the Personal Conduct Policy. The NFL has appealed that six-game suspension and it could be changed to a longer suspension or an indefinite suspension. That means Jacoby Brissett would be the starter until Watson is eligible to be reinstated in Week 7 and it could be even longer if the league wins their appeal.
I would avoid Cooper at his current ADP. If you take him, you have to assume he will be playing with Brissett indefinitely and Brissett has only 11 games with more than 225 yards passing in 37 career starts and his career touchdown percentage is only 3%. Playing all those games without Watson is going to hamper Cooper’s upside and even if Watson returns at some point this year, there is no guarantee that Cooper will be an elite fantasy option playing with a quarterback that has not thrown a regular season pass since the 2020 season.
DeAndre Hopkins (WR – ARI): ADP WR35
His ADP among wide receivers is currently 35th, even with a six-game suspension for violating the league’s ban on performance-enhancing drugs, which means that he would need to score about 140 fantasy points in 10 games to live up to that ranking. Hopkins averaged only 12.6 fantasy points when he was playing last year, he missed seven games due to injury. He failed to record a 100-yard game in 2021, he averaged a modest 13.62 yards per reception and the only thing that saved his fantasy season was eight touchdown receptions.
He turns 30 years old and he looked a step slow last year, so it does not surprise me that he got caught using something he was not supposed to be using given how he looked last year. He claims that the violation was unintentional, but we have heard that too many times to count. Regardless, he is in the backend of his career and I think Brown is going to have a chance to fill that featured receiver role and Hopkins is probably destined to average 10 fantasy points or less per game. I certainly would not draft him as the 35th receiver and use a dead roster spot on him for six games. You are not stashing a WR1 for later in the year, he is probably going to be closer to the WR3/WR4 tier. I think the chances that he underperforms this year do not justify handcuffing your depth for six weeks early in the season.
Christian Watson (WR – GB): ADP WR60
It is hard to believe that a second-round pick could be losing his chance to contribute in early August on a team with major question marks at wide receiver, but that appears to be what is happening. Watson was supposed to be the draft pick that took over for Davante Adams. He is 6-foot-4 and 208 lbs. and he can fly with a 4.36-second 40 time. Someone forgot to tell Romeo Doubs that Watson had that starting job locked up. While Watson has been battling an injury most of the summer and is at least a week from seeing the field, Doubs has been making what Aaron Rodgers calls daily “wow plays” in practice. The expectation is that Doubs is going to have a prominent role, even when Watson is healthy enough to return to practice.
I think the Packers’ offense is going to rely more heavily on their running backs this year. Aaron Jones and A.J. Dillon should both see a lot of work on the ground and in the passing game. Allen Lazard looks like he is going to be their top wide receiver. Sammy Watkins will also see time, provided he can avoid some of his past injury issues and stay healthy. After that, nobody knows, but the smart money at this point is that Dobbs ends up with a sizable role early in the season and that he could be a fantasy sleeper given his current ADP. If I was going to take a flyer on a young Packer making an impact in fantasy, it would be Doubs.
Watson may still have a future with the team, but we only care about the 2022 season in redraft leagues and he is going to be very low on the depth chart to start the 2022 season. He is going to either need to work his way up the depth chart or have someone in front of him go down with an injury to make an impact this season. Watson is the 58th-ranked fantasy wide receiver and 147th overall player, but Doubs has already moved up to the 69th-ranked wide receiver and 201st overall player and he should continue to climb in the preseason.
Jamison Crowder (WR – BUF): ADP WR78
I feel like Crowder has had breakout potential for almost a decade, it seems like every summer we are talking about Crowder as a player to watch. Every year he misses some games with injuries and he finishes with 600 to 800 yards receiving and five or six touchdowns and next year is finally the year that he is going to break out. There were high hopes that Buffalo would give him a chance to make an impact because he has never played in an offense like this with Josh Allen leading the offense. Crowder has played the bulk of his career with a journeyman quarterback or a young quarterback that is not proven.
Somebody forgot to tell Isaiah McKenzie that Crowder was going to just be handed the slot receiver position and McKenzie has made the most of that chance. Crowder missed some practices early in training camp with soreness and he is now back, but McKenzie has not given up his job running with the first-team offense. Stefon Diggs looks like a fantasy WR1, Gabe Davis looks like a WR3 with tremendous upside and McKenzie looks like a potential fantasy sleeper. Crowder looks like he will be competing with Jake Kumerow and Khalil Shakir on the second team and that he will not see consistent targets.
McKenzie is the sleeper receiver to take a flyer on in Buffalo. Crowder looks like veteran insurance for the Bills, but not someone that is going to make a huge fantasy impact this year. Crowder is currently the 78th-ranked wide receiver and 214th overall player, which is ahead of McKenzie at the 107th-ranked wide receiver and 268th overall player. McKenzie is the much better value with what has transpired in training camp.
Derek Lofland is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Derek, check out his archive and follow him @DerekLofland
