Wide Receiver Yardage Bounceback Candidates for Fantasy Football

May 27, 2022

Antonio highlights several fantasy football wide receiver draft sleepers and yardage risers, who are likely to rack up more yardage in 2022 and are draft values.

While touchdowns are the most coveted play outcome for wide receivers in fantasy football, total receiving yards must be taken into serious consideration when deciding who to draft for the position. It is true that receivers have to work harder to rack up yards, and that they don't have an overly great value at only one point per 10 receiving yards, but the volume of yards per game WRs gain is much higher than the number of touchdowns they score and much more reliable.

That's why we're always on the look for highly-targeted receivers awarded the most possible chances to catch passes and put up as many yards as possible.

Here, I'm taking a look at some dubious wide receivers from the 2021 season due to bounceback in 2022 in terms of their receiving yards.

Wide Receivers To Accumulate More Yardage?

D.K. Metcalf, Seattle Seahawks

Between the Seahawks' situation regarding trading Russell Wilson away and the rumors about Metcalf seemingly chasing a trade too, nobody is really worried about Metcalf's slight regression last season. Metcalf fell from 1,300+ yards in 2020 to 967 last season. The second and third-year campaigns from the hulking receiver were the exact same in terms of volume (129 targets), but the difference in yardage was up to 336 yards between both years while only catching eight fewer passes. At least DK kept the scoring up with a career-high 12 touchdowns over 17 games.

Now, for what's coming Metcalf's way, things are more encouraging than not. Yes, Metcalf will play under Wilson no more and Drew Lock is definitely not an extraordinary quarterback. That said, Metcalf had averaged 15+ YPR in his first two years in the NFL but he fell behind 13 YPR last year. The targets will stay there because other than Metcalf and Tyler Lockett there are new weapons in tow – unless you consider Noah Fant a threat. There will be worries about the quarterbacking, but even then Metcalf is so much of a black hole that he will put up numbers whether you like it or not.

A.J. Brown, Philadelphia Eagles

In the past 22 seasons, from 2000 to 2021, as many as 57 times a pass-catcher logged 1,000+ yards, then dropped below that mark, and ultimately bounced back above it one year after the flop. The list includes the likes of Antonio Brown, Calvin Johnson, Julio Jones, Keenan Allen, and A.J. Green. It is just not unheard of, and A.J. Brown could (will) join it as soon as next season gets going. Brown had a down season in Tennessee in 2021 when he fell from his über-high standards of 1,000+ yards in his first two seasons as a pro to 869 in 2021. That shouldn't be the case going forward.

First of all, Brown is moving places to Philadelphia. You can argue against that being a negative more than a positive move, but I don't think that's the case. Also, Brown missed four games entirely last season after playing 16 and 14 in the prior two years, which means he should at least appear on a couple more in 2022 than he did in 2021. Brown won't, also, face much stiffer competition from teammates when it comes to targets – who's going to get them other than DeVonta Smith? – while not having a bonafide bellcow rusher like Derrick Henry around. The bounceback is on, folks.

Jarvis Landry, New Orleans Saints

Jarvis Landry has signed with the New Orleans Saints. He will be the WR2/WR3 playing under Jameis Winston and next to Michael Thomas and rookie Chris Olave. Not the best environment as those are three huge mouths to feed--not to mention RB Alvin Kamara--but surely a bombs-away attack in which most eyes will be on Thomas/Kamara and with a quarterback willing to throw any pass that comes to his mind without thinking twice about it.

Landry is not a top-20 WR anymore. Or at least he has not been one for two years running while playing football in Cleveland. He can still stay on the field most of the time (he missed more than one game for the first time last season) and is quite productive on all fronts other than scoring touchdowns.

Landry's reached 840 receiving yards in all years except his rookie one barring last season (570). There is just no way he stays at that level if only because of the five games he entirely missed in 2021. Prorate his numbers to a 17-game pace and he'd be sitting at some neat 800+ receiving yards easily. That's in Baker Mayfield-led Cleveland, mind you. Health, the slightest of quarterback upgrades, and regression to his mean should have him putting up better numbers all across the board.

Amari Cooper, Cleveland Browns

After spending three full seasons in Oakland and three more in Dallas (with an extra season split between both cities), Cooper is moving to his third NFL team in 2022 after Cleveland traded for the wideout this offseason. Cooper is coming off his worst season since 2017. BUT. When that happened in the year before he got traded from Oakland to Dallas (680 yards) he had put up 1,100+ yards the year before and bounced back to 1,005 yards in his multi-team 2018 season. Do you see anything similar happening in the 2021-2022 couple of years? Yessir!

Copper, although getting just 865 yards last season, put up nearly his third-best catch rate (65.4%) while getting a solid 12.7 YPR mark on 68 receptions (104 targets). That volume won't go down in Cleveland because as things stand right now Cooper's best competitor at the position is... Donovan Peoples-Jones? Yikes. The underlying numbers are there for Amari to bounce back and the quarterback downgrade would only be temporary if Deshaun Watson is suspended – which insiders are saying won't ultimately be the case.

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