Tale of Two Seasons - Fantasy Football Wide Receiver Edition Part IV

In Part 4 of his series, Robert Lorge looks at several wide receivers with widely different performances from the first and second half of the 2024 NFL Season. He identifies those players, look at those splits, and pin points their cause to determine which ones are most likely to repeat in 2025.

If you’ve been following this series, you know the drill and what to expect by now. If you haven’t, we’re identifying receivers who had two significantly different splits during the course of the 2024 season.

If you’d like to get caught up and read some of the other previously published editions, you can do so here:

• Entry #1 (Jayden Reed, DK Metcalf, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Davante Adams)
• Entry #2 (Jerry Jeudy, Brian Thomas Jr., and Ladd McConkey)
• Entry #3 (Zay Flowers, Xavier Worthy, and D.J. Moore)

This will be our final entry to this series. We’ll be identifying our last three receivers who experienced two very different seasons during the course of the 2024 season. If you want to take advantage of our great premium tools, please use promo code "BOOM" to receive a 10% discount.

Editor's Note: Discover RotoBaller’s top Fantasy Football Sleepers to gain an edge in your drafts. Our free who to draft tool and expert picks spotlight undervalued players, breakout candidates, and late-round gems for all league formats.

Tyreek Hill, Miami Dolphins

We’ve looked at two consecutive time periods with every other receiver in this series, such as Weeks 1-7 and Weeks 8-18, or something similar. With Hill, it’ll be different. Not surprisingly, losing your starting quarterback, especially when the backup is so vastly different in style and talent, can dramatically affect one’s performance. We saw that with Hill.

His splits will be a bit all over the place. We’ll be looking at his splits with Tua Tagovailoa vs. the plethora of backup quarterbacks the Dolphins used. It’s also important to remember that Hill played with a broken wrist for the entire 2024 season. The Miami offensive line also suffered from injuries, which negatively affected Tua’s time in the pocket. It was a perfect storm if you will, but it was just not a good one.

From the chart above, it’s not difficult to pinpoint some of the massive differences between Hill with Tagovailoa and without. With Tua, Hill averaged eight targets and 63 yards per game. Over 17 games, that would equate to 136 targets and 1,036 yards.

Without Tua, those numbers dropped to six targets and 44 yards per game. Now, we’re talking 102 targets and 748 yards over 17 games. That's a massive difference. That’s not to say Hill didn’t disappoint, even with Tua. He absolutely did. It just wasn’t as bad as it’s perceived at first glance. When Tua was under center, Hill performed as a mid-WR2. Without him, though, Hill was completely unstartable. Then, he performed like Kayshon Boutte.

In his first two seasons with Miami, Hill scored 12 touchdowns from 30 or more yards out. Six per season. This year, he scored just one, an 80-yard score back in Week 1. Did Hill’s game-changing speed disappear? Or did the injuries to Tagovailoa and the offensive line catch up to the entire Miami offense?

Hill mentioned wanting out after the season, but he’s walked that comment back, and fantasy managers should expect him back in Miami for 2025. If he is, he could be a nice value pick, depending on where his ADP ends up. He’s currently being ranked in the WR18-WR25 range. That should be appealing if you can draft him on the backside of that range.

Hill’s days as a game-changer or a top-5 receiver are (probably) done, but that doesn’t mean he still can’t be a high-end WR2 with a penchant for providing some week-winning performances.

Jalen McMillan, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

He’s our third rookie featured in this series. Tampa Bay drafted the former Washington Huskie in the third round of the 2024 NFL Draft. The immediate expectation was that he’d start alongside Chris Godwin and Mike Evans. This was, for the most part, true. However, with Godwin and Evans playing incredibly well, there was very little left for McMillan, and he struggled for the better part of the season.

In Week 7, Godwin suffered a season-ending ankle injury, and Evans sustained a multiple-week hamstring injury. McMillan went from being an afterthought to having to be a legit producer. That can be tough for a rookie, much less a third-rounder. He’s not Marvin Harrison Jr. or Brian Thomas Jr., whose first-round draft capital promotes expectations of immediate production. McMillan wasn’t ready for that kind of spotlight.

In Week 12, Evans returned to the lineup but didn’t play his typical number of snaps. He was being eased back into action. Evans returned to his usual role in Week 13, and this was when we saw McMillan take off. Like some rookies, they need an acclimation period. McMillan got that early in the year, but he wasn’t ready to be “the guy,” so he struggled with Godwin/Evans both out. When Evans returned, however, McMillan was able to play the role of “sidekick.” Now, being fully acclimated to the NFL and the Tampa Bay offense, he excelled. That’s my theory, anyway. In either case, McMillan was a different player in the season's last six weeks.

The chart above details McMillan’s midseason transformation. Right off the bat, fantasy managers may be drawn to his 15.1 half-PPR PPG average in his second split. Take that with a massive grain of salt. He scored seven touchdowns on 34 targets, a 20.6% touchdown rate. Not exactly sustainable. It’s best to avoid looking at that entirely because it’s one of those situations where numbers can lie.

McMillan played a lot better, but it wasn’t close to top-10 status, which is what his half-PPR PPG average indicates. Let’s instead focus on some of the other numbers because there were plenty of positives. His yard-per-game average increased from 15 to 57. Over 17 games, that’s a difference of 255 vs. 969. That’s massive. How did that happen? A couple of things. First, he started earning a lot more targets. His target share doubled, going from 8.3 percent to 16.8 percent. This presented McMillan with way more opportunities. His targets per game average went from 3.0 to 5.5, almost doubling.

On top of earning more targets, he was far more efficient with them. His yards per target went from 5.0 to 10.3, which is another metric where he doubled his earlier season rate. Most significant was what happened with his yard per route run average. From Weeks 1-12, McMillan averaged just 0.72 yards per route run. In the final six weeks, this exploded to 1.88.

McMillan’s 2025 fantasy value will be tied to what happens with Chris Godwin’s free agency. If Tampa brings him back, that’ll be a massive bucket of cold water for McMillan’s value. However, McMillan’s value will soar if Godwin leaves in free agency and signs elsewhere. Godwin’s free agency will be one of the most critical offseason storylines. McMillan will become a popular breakout candidate if Godwin is gone, and fantasy managers should expect his final ADP to rise over the summer. He could finish inside the top 36 of receiver rankings if Godwin isn’t back.

Calvin Ridley, Tennessee Titans

Ridley’s splits are almost as dramatic as Jerry Jeudy’s. They are just massive. We’ll look at Weeks 1-7 vs. Weeks 8-18. So, what changed? Why these timelines? The most straightforward answer is that DeAndre Hopkins was a Titan for Weeks 1-7, and then he was traded to the Chiefs. This likely played a role in Ridley’s performance over the second half of the season, but that’s unlikely to be the whole picture.

Tennessee’s schedule for the first seven weeks of the season was rough! On average, Tennessee’s opponents in the first seven weeks finished 15th in passing yards allowed and 10th in passing touchdowns allowed. In Weeks 8-18, their opponents finished 18th in passing yards allowed and 20th in passing touchdowns allowed. The schedule got much easier. It included the Bengals, Jaguars (twice), Detroit, and Minnesota.

In the first seven weeks, they faced just two teams who finished 20th or lower in passing yards allowed. In the final 11 games, they faced six of them. Without Hopkins and with an easier schedule, Ridley took advantage, as shown in the table above. Ridley’s numbers all shot up dramatically.

His yards per game increased from 31 to 76. Over 17 games, that’s a difference of 527 or 1,292. Pretty significant. He was on pace in the first seven weeks for 97 targets and 34 receptions. Now, compare that to the 128 target and 80 reception pace he had in the final 11 games—just wild differences.

The absence of Hopkins and easier matchups meant more volume. His target share increased from 18.7 percent to 23.9 percent, and his target rate went from 21 percent to 24 percent. Maybe the most dramatic change came in his yard per route run average, from 1.14 to 2.45. Ridley was drafted as a WR3, and in the second half of the season, he performed like one, averaging 11.7 half-PPR PPG.

That’s similar to Garrett Wilson (11.8) and Courtland Sutton (11.8). Compare that to his 6.5 half-PPR PPG average in the first seven weeks, identical to Ray-Ray McCloud III (6.4) and Demarcus Robinson (6.4). Ridley dealt with awful quarterback play during both splits. Tennessee’s offense was one of the worst in the league, and much of that was due to the quarterbacks they used. The Titans’ offense finished with the following numbers:

• 27th in total points
• 26th in total yards
• 27th in yards per play
• 23rd in pass attempts
• 26th in passing yards
• 16th in passing touchdowns
• 21st in completion percentage
• 31st in interceptions
• 28th in adjusted yards per attempt

You get it. It wasn't good. Tennessee has the first overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. They’ll have the chance to draft a quarterback if they want to. They’ve already said they plan to address the position and that Will Levis will have competition.

That’s good news. If Tennessee gets even slightly better quarterback play, it would significantly benefit Ridley. This is still going to be a bad offense most likely and Ridley isn’t a spring chicken anymore. He’ll likely be ranked as a backend WR3 or a high-end WR4. He has some appeal at that price. His numbers from the second half of the season are encouraging, but the upside in this offense is limiting, and that’s the downside.

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