No matter how much you might profess that you’ll draft any player in fantasy football at the right price, when the clock is counting down, there nearly always seems to be a few players that are just too hard to click on. For whatever reason, they’re not players we enjoy rostering.
Maybe they’ve let you down before, you hate their team or you don’t see a ceiling outcome in their possibilities. The wide receiver position tends to be the most polarizing due to the volume of them drafted in fantasy. Below are four of the most polarizing wideouts in fantasy football.
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Polarizing Fantasy Football Wide Receivers
Zay Flowers (WR – BAL)
Coming off his second straight Pro Bowl, Zay Flowers still hasn’t won some people over. Flowers now has the fifth-most receiving yards (3,128) of any player in Baltimore Ravens history. Even Ravens fans have issues with Flowers, though, citing his trademark twitchiness and cutbacks as problematic at times when he could simply run in a straight line. Flowers is undeniably Lamar Jackson‘s favorite target and has been since he stepped onto the field in his rookie season, but it doesn’t always translate to fantasy points.
zay flowers is an hilarious receiver because you think "oh yeah he's made some good plays this year" and then you look and see he's top 15 in yards per route run for the second year in a row
— Tej Seth (@tejfbanalytics) December 16, 2025
Flowers ranked 23rd in targets per game last year (6.9), but this was the eighth-highest target share among wide receivers, and his 1,211 yards were the second-most in the AFC and sixth-most overall. There’s no denying that Flowers boosted his fantasy points per game ranking in PPR formats with a late-season surge, scoring between 13 and 29.8 points in each of his last five games, but while some people view that as a ceiling and worth chasing, others view him as volatile. Flowers had 13 games outside of the top 18 wide receivers in weekly finishes, but he only finished outside of the top 30 on five occasions.
Flowers is a reasonable floor and high ceiling player who requires a little more nuance when drafting. If you start your draft running back-heavy, Flowers isn’t an ideal candidate to be your WR1, but if you start wide receiver-heavy and have drafted one or maybe even two before selecting him, he’s a much easier click. Perhaps a new head coach and offensive coordinator can unlock a side of Flowers we’ve yet to see.
Rome Odunze (WR – CHI)
Mostly due to circumstances beyond his control, Rome Odunze is now seen as a polarizing player. In his rookie season, Odunze picked up steam after his Week 7 bye, averaging 6.6 targets per game for the rest of the season and ranking 24th among wideouts in total targets for that period. Unfortunately for Odunze, among receivers with 25+ targets, his catchable target rate of 57.6% ranked dead last, per Fantasy Points.
The hope was that with Ben Johnson in Chicago, Caleb Williams would be able to play better and get Odunze the ball more often. The season started well with four top-20 weekly finishes and scoring over 15 points in each game before a slump took over. Awkward injuries piled up as the season went on, and Odunze didn’t play in the regular season after Week 13.
Odunze was the belle of the ball a year ago, but now Colston Loveland and Luther Burden III are also attracting clamor, and some seem to think Burden could be the better of the two. In our early 2026 expert consensus rankings (ECR), Burden is 18 spots ahead of Odunze. It wouldn’t be surprising if Odunze, who played more snaps consistently than Burden, got back on track and outperformed him.
Josh Downs (WR – IND)
If you talk about how Josh Downs could be a value this year, due to the fact that one of Michael Pittman or Alec Pierce seems likely to move on, the common push back is that he doesn’t play outside the numbers enough to be an every-down type player. That may be true, but it’s probably worrying a little too much about one specific thing. Downs currently ranks 136th in ECR, and yet is only one full year removed from a season where he averaged 13.1 PPR points per game.
If Alec Pierce leaves in free agency the door is wiiide open for Josh Downs ???? (for real this time) pic.twitter.com/KzdIwewmRb
— FantasyPros (@FantasyPros) February 17, 2026
Downs wasn’t playing every down that season, but he did play 72% of the snaps, 9% more than he did in 2025. Should Pierce or Pittman move on, it seems fair to consider a world where Downs sees an increased role. The Colts need to consider whether they’ll want to pay him as he enters the last year of his contract. Downs, for his part, still earned targets when on the field with a team-high targets per route run rate of 0.24. Even in a “down” season, he earned 84 targets.
DK Metcalf (WR – PIT)
Entering year eight of his career, DK Metcalf has been polarizing throughout it. Metcalf has 99+ targets in every season, but has only been above 66 receptions in three of them. The nature of the way Metcalf is used downfield is a big part of this. Targets near the line of scrimmage make players like Wan’Dale Robinson viable in a way that Metcalf will never be.
Metcalf has developed as a player over time. In his rookie season, he was used predominantly on vertical routes and as a one-trick pony before Seattle took a more creative approach with him. He had his most productive campaign the following season with 1,303 yards. Metcalf pushed for a trade away from the Seahawks a year ago, wanting to play for “a true contender” in one of the more questionable decisions of the last few years. He found himself the clear alpha in Pittsburgh.
Playing with Aaron Rodgers means you have to play differently, though, particularly with Rodgers’ comparative lack of arm strength these days as well as his unwillingness to force the ball into tight areas where Metcalf has succeeded previously. Metcalf talked in the offseason about how he wanted to get better at creating yards after the catch (YAC). He needed to. Metcalf had averaged 4.25 YAC/reception through his six years in Seattle, all too often catching the ball and coming to the ground as a result of difficult throws.
In Pittsburgh, he smashed, averaging 7.2 YAC/reception, the fourth-highest rate among wide receivers with 50+ targets. Metcalf has had only two seasons with double-digit touchdowns. If he can find some positive regression there, though, as well as displaying his newfound YAC abilities, we could be looking at another strong season from him.
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