We have an ongoing google chat running among the UTH writers. Most of the day there is a conversation going on in there. One that ramped up this morning was the idea of the prototypical wide receiver. By the projection model I classify that as at least 6’2″ and with a BMI of at least 28.0. The list is not a long one, but there are plenty of hits since 2000 from this group, here are some historical data points:
*VBD is total fantasy points above baseline in a season – totaled for their career to-date, collected from profootballreference.com*
2000
Jerry Porter: 40 VBD
2001
Rod Gardner: 28 VBD
2002
Ron Johnson: Bust
2003
Andre Johnson: 454 VBD
2004
Larry Fitzgerald: 504 VBD
2005
Vincent Jackson: 284 VBD
2006
NONE
2007
Calvin Johnson: 479 VBD
Legedu Naannee: Late Rounder, 0 VBD
2008
Marcus Smith: Bust
2009
NONE
2010
Dez Bryant: 323 VBD
Mike Williams: 83 VBD
Kerry Meier: Late Rounder, 0 VBD
2011
Greg Little: Raw Positional Convert, Topped out at 9 PPG
2012
Juron Criner: Bounced around, Late Rounder
Gerell Robinson: UDFA, 0 VBD
2013
Mark Harrison: UDFA, 0 VBD
Marcus Davis: UDFA, 0 VBD
2014
Kelvin Benjamin: 59 VBD as rookie
Allen Robinson: 12 PPG as rookie
Donte Moncrief: 6 PPG as rookie
Quincy Enunwa: On NFL Fringe
D.J. Coles: UDFA
Anthony Denham: Stuck between positions
2011-2013 was a dead zone in terms of the prototypical builds aligning with decent NFL Draft position. In 2014, Benjamin, Robinson, and Moncrief all look like good bets to be fantasy starters along the way (Benjamin has already reached that threshold). Does 2015 look more like 2014 or 2011-2013?
