2024 Rookie WRs: Studs, Starters, and Scrubs

Last week, we covered our 2024 rookie quarterbacks and running backs and, at least for the QBs, saw how they fared compared to history. And while we can learn some things using numbers when looking at the quarterback position, we can only glean so much. It has the most gray area of any position in football.

For receivers, though, we can look at numbers and get a fairly accurate picture of what a career might look like based on their rookie season. That’s what we’re going to do today.

I looked at every receiver drafted from 2018 to 2023 who played at least 8 games in their rookie season, which gave me a total of 137 players to look at for this study. I chose 2023 because that way, every receiver in the sample has played at least two years in the NFL, so we can hopefully draw some better conclusions about these players. I then broke them down into three groups: The Studs, Potential Stars, and Danger Zone. I will be using half-PPR scoring throughout this newsletter.

But before we get into that, here’s some trivia!

Keep in mind that the trivia question includes players drafted from 2018-2024. However, for our study today, we will be looking at players from 2018-2023. Before you scroll down, can you get every name?

💪 The Studs 💪 

For our Studs, I looked at every player who finished their rookie year with more than 750 receiving yards from 2018-2023 and ended up with a sample of 25 players. All of them had at least one WR3 season, and all but three had a WR2 season or better (Rashee Rice (injured), George Pickens, and Josh Downs are the only ones without a WR2 season).

The receivers who finished 2024 with more than 750 receiving yards were Brian Thomas Jr, Malik Nabers, Ladd McConkey, and Marvin Harrison Jr. 

We feel pretty confident about the outlook of the first three, but Marvin Harrison Jr. has been a point of contention for fantasy managers this offseason. But I’d like to break down his season a little bit and provide a big picture view.

Let’s zoom out a bit and see where he stands among our ENTIRE 137 player sample. His receptions and yards were nothing special, but still top-20. However, he had top-10 seasons in targets and touchdowns. He had the fifth most unrealized air yards in 2024 thanks to the Cardinals constantly using him for deep shots. They need to use him more creatively and that could happen in year two. Overall, he didn’t live up to the lofty expectations set for him, but it wasn’t a bad rookie year compared to other rookies. If you can buy low on him, it’s not a bad idea.

While not an official group, I thought I would quickly mention the guys who finished their rookie seasons with over 1000 yards since 2018: Puka Nacua, Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, Garrett Wilson, A.J. Brown, Chris Olave, and Jaylen Waddle. BTJ, Nabers, and McConkey can now join this list. For those counting, that’s ten receivers, and the answer to the trivia question!

If it feels like I omitted a certain receiver, I didn’t. We’ll get to a Bears 2024 rookie in a moment.

📈 Potential Stars 📈 

Now, let’s glance at guys who finished their rookie years between 750 and 500 receiving yards. Interestingly enough, there are also 25 receivers in this group.

Of those 25, 14 had at least one WR3 season, and 10 had at least one WR2 season.

Who are the three 2024 rookies who will join this group? Rome Odunze, Xavier Worthy, and Keon Coleman.

I covered Worthy as a late season breakout in a newsletter a few weeks ago, but put briefly, I think Worthy is going to be just fine. He’s in a good offense and should be able to produce (should he stay out of trouble).

🐻 I haven’t done much on Rome Odunze this offseason, so let’s change that. He narrowly missed the 750 cutoff, with 734 yards in 2024. But let’s go a little deeper.

If we include Odunze as part of this set of 25, he would have the most targets in the group. However, he only caught 54 of them. Does that mean he’s bad? No. QB Caleb Williams just couldn’t hit him. According to PlayerProfiler, only 59 of his targets were catchable. In an offense this year that we project to actually be good and in his second season, Odunze’s arrow is pointing up. He just needed some time.

🦬 As for Coleman, he has his good sides and his red flags. For one, he’s part of this group of guys with potential, he’s in a good offense, and he showed plenty of flashes last season. However, the bad side is that he had the second lowest targets and receptions in this group. Even so, due to the offense he’s in and the capital they invested in him, I think he could have a surge in his second season. If you can buy him in dynasty for cheap, that could be a good investment.

⚠️ Danger Zone ⚠️ 

Finally, let’s take a look at our last group. This group includes every rookie who finished their rookie year with less than 500 receiving yards. I thought about breaking this down further and going into those with less than 250 yards, but it would be redundant and unproductive. 87 players fit into this category of playing at least 8 games and finishing with less than 500 yards. Would you like to guess how many of them had at least one WR3 season?

Three. That’s it. Nico Collins, DJ Chark, and Van Jefferson, and Collins is really the only one we feel good about right now for fantasy.

As you would expect, most of our 2024 rookies would also fall into this category. Some of the names that I will cover here are Ricky Pearsall, Xavier Legette, Jalen McMillan, Adonai Mitchell, Troy Franklin, and Ja’Lynn Polk.

⚒️ First off, before Niners fans get mad at me, I’m going to give Ricky Pearsall a pass. He was shot just before the season started and, understandably, had a slow start. However, he is a first-round talent in an offense that seems to be retooling. If you extrapolated his four starts last year across 17 games, his pace would have been 1,364 receiving yards. He could very well end up as an exception in this data set.

🐈‍⬛ Xavier Legette narrowly missed the 500-yard cutoff, finishing his rookie year with 497 yards. In the first half of 2024, he had three games with less than 10 receiving yards. But once the second half hit, he was on a 608-yard pace. Legette took time to blossom in college, maybe he just needs extra time to blossom as a pro? Still, I’m not certain about his future, as he didn’t blow me away in his rookie year.

🏴‍☠️ In the same article I talked about Xavier Worthy, I mentioned Jalen McMillan. I won’t go into everything I went into there, but suffice it to say, McMillan has some red flags. Being in this low tier group is one of those flags. His touchdown rate is insanely high, and there’s no way he could continue to score at that pace. He also has Chris Godwin to deal with once again, whom the team brought back for a decent amount of money. McMillan’s outlook isn’t all bad, but if there is someone high on him, selling him and getting some value wouldn’t be the worst thing.

🐴 Adonai Mitchell and Troy Franklin both suffered from having deep-threat roles in their rookie seasons, limiting their QB’s ability to hit them. But at least Mitchell has the excuse that his quarterback is one of the most inaccurate quarterbacks in NFL history, and his YPRR was not too bad for a rookie. Franklin's QB (who was also his QB at Oregon) looks like he will have a solid NFL career and he was much less productive per route.

🇺🇸 And now we come to Ja’Lynn Polk. I wasn’t very high on him in the pre-draft process, but like many, I thought he had a chance to produce in a receiving room lacking options. And that did not go well. Here are some players who had more receiving yards than Polk last year: Jordan Mason, Alec Ingold, Emari Demarcado, Mason Tipton, Simi Fehoko, Dante Pettis, and Julian Hill. If you noticed, the first three names are running backs, and Mason is not known as a pass catcher. And Julian Hill, whom I was not aware of before, is a tight end for the Miami Dolphins.

Maybe Polk can develop into Khalil Shakir, who had only 10 receptions in his rookie year to Polk’s 12. But even Shakir had nearly double the yards and four times the YPRR than Polk (1.46 to 0.36). The best outcome of any player in our Danger Zone group with Polk’s production or worse is KJ Osborn, who didn’t even register a catch in his rookie year but had a WR38 finish in 2021. If someone in your league still believes in him, now might be a good time to sell.

I hope you all were able to learn something from this exercise. Whether it was about Marvin Harrison Jr.’s having a fine rookie year, Keon Coleman’s potential upside, or Ricky Pearsall’s blazing pace in his starts. With all the 2024 rookie receivers out of the way, we can turn our attention to the incoming 2025 rookie class.