2022 WR Stat Sleepers - Slot Performance

April 11, 2022

Antonio Losada dives head-first into slot receiving data to find the wide receiver position's best sleepers and ADP values for 2022 fantasy football drafts.

Plunging into the world of football analytics is without question the best way to find fantasy sleepers for the coming season. Especially in the case of wide receivers, how they are lining up on the field has a direct correlation with production.

Slot receivers don't quite offer the boom-upside an outside receiver will deliver (typically). What they do excel at is running high percentage routes and catching passes in traffic. Many of the games best slot receivers are often regarded as some of the best and most undervalued options in PPR formats.

The goal of this post is to find the best performers at the WR position based on the volume of snaps they played at both the slot and other alignments and the production they yielded in PPR leagues when used in the former and the latter positions. Can't risk those picks come peak draft SZN, so we better start putting on some studying!

2021 Slot Winners and Sleepers

Before we move one to the particular players I chose to highlight, I have included the above chart in this post to make things a little bit easier to understand when it comes to the larger NFL picture. The chart above includes all WR with 350+ snaps from the Slot position in 2021. It also limits the plotted players to those with 150+ PPR points over the full season, no matter the alignment.

The vertical axis represents the percentage of the player's total PPR points that he got while starting his routes from the Slot, while the horizontal axis represents the percentage of snaps such player ran from the Slot compared to all snaps he played into.

I have limited the colored areas from 50% to the right in terms of Slot% to highlight those players that can (at least by the numbers and their usage) be true slot-receivers. Those in the green area produced 50%+ of their total PPR points while getting 50%+ of their snaps coming from the slot (what could be considered true slot receivers producing the most from the slot, which is what we want to highlight here), while those in the red area produced a lower percentage of PPR points from the slot than other alignments compared to their share of snaps started at that position (players who would have been better used heavily in other alignments given their production-profiles).

Marquise Brown - Baltimore Ravens

Hollywood Brown is coming off his third season as a pro and a bona fide one when it came to confirming his top-of-the-order value on the Ravens offense. Brown's total PPR points over 16 games last year were good for a WR22 finish, and splitting his production by alignment, he racked up 73%+ of his total fantasy points running his routes off the slot compared to 25% when used wide. The Ravens decided to make their slot a two-man launching pad as both Brown and Devin Duvernay logged 380+ snaps from that alignment, though Brown destroyed Duvernay's total PPR tally--and it wasn't even close.

Brown's playing profile and skill set calls for heavy usage on the boundaries, of course, but Baltimore would do very good using him heavily on the slot considering his legit exploits playing closer to the OL. Even though Brown barely started 50% of his snaps from the slot, he still finished the year putting up the 14th-most PPR points from that alignment.

Only Justin Jefferson (46%) was used less frequently in the position while getting more PPR points from it than Brown. And Brown was one of only six players used in the slot on 50% or fewer of their total routes while averaging 0.32+ PPR/SlotSnap (PPR/SS from now on) last season (min. 100 slot snaps).

Darnell Mooney - Chicago Bears

With Allen Robinson missing time and struggling mightily when on the field, it was Mooney who led the Bears in snaps--and then some. Mooney's 968 (per RotoWire) snaps ranked as the 10th-most among WRs in 2021. He aligned in the slot in 554 of those plays for a 57% Slot Rate and racked up the 12th-most PPR points from that position among all NFL wide receivers last season. No joke. And for sure one of the main reasons for Mooney's top-24 season last year even though playing in a barren-of-talent offense.

Mooney finished the season averaging a neat 0.29 PPR/SS. That figure ranked 11th in the NFL among WR with at least 50% of their snaps coming off the slot and 200+ snaps off the slot over the full season. Mooney also got 80% of his total PPR points (160.1 of 199.8) while aligned inside.

Only six WRs racked up more yards from the slot than Mooney's 831. As things stand at the moment of this writing, Mooney is projected to be Chicago's no. 1 WR along with Byron Pringle and Equanimeous St. Brown as his main partners in crime. In other words: Mooney will get every opportunity he can handle and more.

Kendrick Bourne - New England Patriots

It's funny how New England went bonkers in last year's offseason signing players left and right to multi-million dollar deals only to find their most valuable acquisition on low-key (compared to other contracts handed out last Spring) signing Kendrick Bourne. Of course, Jakobi Meyers was the better pass-catcher for the Patriots last season, but it was incredibly close between him and Bourne as the former finished with 186.4 PPR points compared to the latter's 182.5 tally over the full season.

Meyers was NE's no. 1 slot receiver with a 80% slot rate, but he wasn't the most productive from that alignment. That was, of course, Kendrick Bourne. Bourne logged 361 snaps from the slot (64% of the total he appeared in last season) and got 123 PPR points from those plays. Surely, Meyers outscored him from that position but it is also true that Meyers more than doubled Bourne in total slot snaps (745 to 361) while getting 162 PPR points. On a PPR/SS basis, Bourne clearly edged Meyers with a 0.34 figure compared to Meyers' 0.22.

The low 14% outside-alignment rate given to Meyers last season paints a clear picture of how New England wants to operate on offense, though it might make sense for the Pats to balance things a bit when it comes to who runs off the slot alignment next year given the production Bourne yielded in 2021.

K.J. Osborn - Minnesota Vikings

The Vikings' slot was a headache for defenses to scheme against last year. All three of Justin Jefferson, Adam Thielen, and K.J. Osborn appeared on it for at least 23% and no higher than 27% slot rates over the year, and all three of them played between 46% and 57% of their particular offensive snaps from the interior alignment. Go figure. The only stat that clarified things a bit was the one highlighting the usage of the three wideouts outside: Jefferson got a 54% outside rate, then Thielen sat at 45%, and Osborn got the lower rate at "only" 38%, making him the bona fide Slot WR of the Vikings even though JJ edged him with 462 to 443 snaps at that alignment.

The Vikings are retaining their receiving corps for next season, but they should hand Osborn a little bit more chances inside rather than giving those snaps to either JJ or Thielen. That's because Osborn racked up 76% of his total PPR points from that alignment. Jefferson was clearly the best option at the position with an average of 0.26 PPR/SS compared to Osborn's lower 0.26 mark, but given how much production Jefferson got from playing out wide, it'd make sense to stick him there while keeping Osborn's presence up by giving him more slot reps.

Osborn is a true sleeper just waiting for that bigger share of opportunities. In fact, Osborn was one of only five WRs (Cedrick Wilson, CeeDee Lamb, Bourne, Brandin Cooks) with fewer than 445 snaps from the slot to reach 116+ PPR points running routs inside from that alignment and he led that group with six TDs. Jefferson and Thielen are going to be the expensive-ADP men of this team and that's reasonable. Keep an eye on Osborn and jump over him if he slips a bit on draft day because of the upside he carries with him.

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