Fantasy football rankings: Sorting the dynasty WRs into tiers

Following the 2015 season, wide receivers reigned supreme in dynasty fantasy football circles. That season will forever be remembered as the RB-pocalypse – a season in which 19 of the top-24 flex players were wide receivers and tight ends. Following some course correction in 2016 and 2017, the pendulum has swung entirely the other direction and running backs are the toast of the town once more. From a top-200 flex perspective, this has created some great values at the wide receiver position for those willing to veer from the crowd in their dynasty team builds.

Most dynasty leagues allow owners to start at least four wide receivers, so it’s important to keep track of as many names as possible. Most of our rankers go at least 80 deep – however, once you get so far down the list it really becomes an exercise in projecting players based on a range of possible career outcomes than actually having a strong preference one way or another. Want to vehemently debate Mohamed Sanu versus Donte Moncrief for hours?

Me neither.

One of the most helpful ways to make rankings sets more actionable is to add tiers – so I did it. This was done primarily by using the PFF rankings team group average and looking for natural breaks. I also used standard deviation to help draw in tier breaks when the decision could have gone either way. If a player on the edge of a tier had a wide range of ranks (read: lack of agreement) among our team then I dropped him to the lower tier. I ended up dividing our composite top-70 dynasty wide receiver rankings into 10 tiers.

(Check our dynasty tiered rankings for quarterbacks, running backs, and tight ends.)

Tier 1

Beckham and Hopkins each received three first-place ranks and three second-place ranks from our panel of six dynasty analysts, leaving them in a tie for the top overall spot at the position. Each player has finished inside the top-five at the position in PPR scoring twice in the past three seasons, with Hopkins finishing as the top overall scorer in 2017. I prefer Hopkins slightly due to his quarterback situation and long-term contract.