5 Wide Receivers Experts Target (Fantasy Football)

When preparing for your fantasy football drafts, knowing which players to target and others to avoid is important. The amount of information available can be overwhelming, so a great way to condense the data and determine players to draft and others to leave for your leaguemates is to use our expert consensus fantasy football rankings compared to fantasy football average draft position (ADP). In this way, you can identify players the experts are willing to reach for at ADP and others they are not drafting until much later than average. Let’s dive into a few notable fantasy football players below. And you can check out which experts are higher or lower than our expert consensus rankings using our Fantasy Football Rankings Comparison Tools.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice: Wide Receivers

Let’s dive into players Pat Fitzmaurice like more or less than the expert consensus rankings.

Wide Receivers to Target

Wide Receivers

Pat Fitzmaurice’s Rank	Player	ECR	Diff.
4	Brian Thomas Jr. JAC – WR	8	4
16	Tetairoa McMillan CAR – WR	23	7
21	Calvin Ridley TEN – WR	27	6
24	Jaylen Waddle MIA – WR	30	6
32	Emeka Egbuka TB – WR	37	5

Brian Thomas Jr. turned in a sublime rookie season, catching 87 passes for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns. He thrived even when backup QB Mac Jones was forced to fill in for injured starter Trevor Lawrence. And Thomas passed every eye test: running crisp routes, making touch catches, and doing heavy damage after the catch. There was nothing fluky about this performance. Expect more of the same.

Tetairoa McMillan topped 1,300 receiving yards in each of his last two college seasons at the University of Arizona and is now poised to immediately become the Panthers’ No. 1 receiver after Carolina took him with the eighth overall pick in the draft. The 6-foot-5 McMillan is a classic X receiver — although he can also be a matchup nightmare as a big slot receiver. He has a planetary catch radius and good, strong hands. He also has advanced route-running chops, a good feel for attacking zone coverage, and he’s no shrinking violet when asked to go over the middle.

Since missing the 2022 season due to a gambling suspension, Calvin Ridley has produced two straight 1,000-yard seasons and hasn’t missed a game over that span. He endured gruesome quarterbacking in Tennessee last year, and now Ridley gets to play with top overall draft pick Cam Ward, an aggressive downfield thrower. Ridley is the Titans’ undisputed No. 1 receiver, and I think he’s likely to see more than the 120 targets he had last season. There’s a good chance Ridley will provide WR2 numbers at a low-end WR3 price.

Jaylen Waddle is a compelling buy-low candidate after a season in which he had only 744 receiving yards and 2 TDs. Part of that was due to a Tua Tagolaivoa concussion that left the Miami passing game dead in the water while Tua was out. With Jonnu Smith having left Miami for Pittsburgh, Waddle could conceivably get more snaps from the slot and see more of the easy throws that turned Jonnu into a PPR monster last year. Let’s not forget what a good player Waddle is. He had the most yards per route run in college since 2020 (which includes guys like Ja’Marr Chase and CeeDee Lamb). Waddle was the No. 6 overall draft pick in 2021. He had three straight 1,000-yard seasons to begin his NFL career. Don’t sleep on him after a statistically disappointing year.

An NFL-ready slot receiver, Emeka Egbuka is an advanced route runner who gets into his routes quickly and makes sharp cuts. Egbuka isn’t really a burner, but he’s a shifty fellow who consistently makes yardage after the catch. Bonus: Egbuka was able to assert himself at OSU even though the Buckeyes had an abundance of WR talent throughout his time in Columbus, suggesting that he can be productive even on a team with other good pass catchers. Initially, it seemed as if Egbuka landed in a suboptimal spot with the Buccaneers, who already had WRs Mike Evans, Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan. But Godwin has been slow to recover from the dislocated ankle he sustained last season, and McMillan is expected to miss significant time with a neck injury. Egbuka has a chance to be impactful right away.