Fantasy Football: Top high-risk, high-reward picks in each round of drafts

• Running back holdouts are an obvious risk that also create a potential discount: Josh Jacobs, specifically, could be a great bargain if he plays Week 1, but it’s a big “if.”

• Top-10 positional ADP for Deshaun Watson is hopeful: After a poor showing last season, fantasy managers are banking on a huge bounce-back that could go either way.

• Kyle Pitts’ usage and QB situation continue to be a concern: Although the talent and upside are there, there’s plenty of risk in drafting Pitts again this season.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

With fantasy football draft season in full swing, and with ADP starting to solidify during the preseason, there is a wide range of outcomes for a number of different fantasy options for the 2023 season. There are also a lot of unknowns to sort through that could create some high-risk, high-reward choices as we navigate our drafts. 

After going round-by-round to identify the players with the safest range of outcomes on Thursday, this piece will focus on a player in each round with the widest range of outcomes for the 2023 season. These will be players who carry significant risk heading into the year but could also greatly outperform their expectations and ADP.

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Round 1: WR Cooper Kupp, Los Angeles Rams

Consensus ADP: 6.8 (WR4)

There isn’t a ton of risk within the first round of fantasy drafts to get stressed over, as all of these options offer too much upside to be overly concerned about any potential red flags. However, Kupp is arguably the riskiest of the bunch, coming off a Week 10 high-ankle sprain that cost him the latter half of his 2022 season before suffering a hamstring injury in camp this offseason. At 30 years old, Kupp carries a bit more injury risk than almost anyone else in the first round. There is also concern that Kupp’s starting quarterback Matthew Stafford may not be as healthy as he was coming off a spinal cord contusion that ended his 2022 season. 

Of course, Kupp's upside is that he’s been the No. 1 wide receiver in PPR points per game in each of the past two seasons — the ceiling doesn’t get much higher than that. There is nobody on this Rams’ offense that will command a higher target share than Kupp on a weekly basis whenever he’s in the lineup. Although, with both Kupp and Stafford getting older and coming off injuries, it would be understandable if fantasy managers were hesitant about investing a first-round pick on Kupp in 2023.

Cooper Kupp’s ranks among WRs since 2021: