Our Favorite Late-Round Dynasty Rookie Draft Targets at WR

The easiest way to fall behind in dynasty leagues is to Ben Simmons your first-round rookie picks. the same holds true in season-long leagues. you brick your first, second, third-round redraft picks, you’re going to wind up falling kiloyears behind your league-mates. A gap harder to fill in than the hole in my heart left by any Spanish girl under 5’5.

The same holds true with rookie picks. Your rookie picks are the adrenaline injection your team needs to stand up and rejuvenate itself. They are the Saturday night Adderall after pulling a Friday all-nighter. However, missing on your early-round rookie picks is like someone slipping you Nyquil instead of Adderall. Luckily for y’all, there are multiple rounds in our rookie drafts, typically 4, sometimes 5 for the freaks out there.

The later the rookie pick, the less likely they are to breakout, especially with more and more dynasty players becoming savvier to what matters when evaluating prospects. But shit still slips through the cracks like a broken toilet.

You can yell at me about what you’d consider a “late-round pick” in rookie drafts, but we’re going to staunchly settle on anything after pick 3.06 according to our rookie ADP.

Over the last two years, players you could’ve acquired in rookie drafts after pick 3.06 include: James Robinson, Myles Gaskin, Terry McLaurin, Chase Claypool, Gardner Minshew, Adam Trautman, Darnell Mooney, Mecole Hardman, Gabriel Davis and Preston Williams.

I’m not going to act like it’s a goldmine for the taking out here, and I know, not all of these guys have fired at the NFL level, but the goal is to acquire players that eventually find their way into your starting lineups OR accrue value heading into their sophomore season, and we can confidently say all of the guys listed did so.

We’re going to break down some of our favorite late-round picks (3.07+) in the 2021 rookie drafts that we’re hoping will land on ^^ that list when we write this big girl next year.

So, tuck ya shirts in stop yellin and let’s eat.

I mean listen – I personally think Schwartz is more athlete, speed freak than he is NFL wide receiver, but for a guy who got third-round NFL draft capital to be getting taken in rookie drafts AFTER 5th-round (Brevin Jordan), 6th, 7th (Kylin Hill) and fuggin undrafted (Javian Hawkins) players is ludicrous.

Despite OBJ’s contract technically a thing through 2023, there is $0 dead cap after the 2021 season concludes. I’d be surprised if Beckham was a Brown much longer. Jarvis Landry is signed through 2022, but he’s also a $16.5 hit to their cap if staying on the team next year compared to just $1.5M in dead cap if he’s in another uniform come next year. The LSU experiment seems to have run its course on these soon to be 29-year-olds.

Schwartz has track-star speed (4.32) to pair with a 20-year-old breakout age and a 26.4% (79th percentile) college target share.

There’s a chance Schwartz can play the slot role for Cleveland about as effectively as Landry can at this point. Third-round draft capital tells us that the Browns at least think so.

Smith-Marsette was a widely unknown prospect entering the NFL Draft and still is, relatively outside of deep dynasty communities.

He lands in Minnesota where there’s no competition for the WR3 role behind Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen. Thielen is past 30 and we saw his efficiency (outside of absurd TD numbers) dip in 2020 for the first time in recent years.

This isn’t an exciting role/pick by any means, but you want players that get on the field as early as possible, when possible.

ISM didn’t have the sophomore breakout we typically like to see, but he was stuck as the third option in a passing game that featured TWO 1st ROUND NFL pass-catchers in T.J. Hockenson and Noah Fant. He was put on the back-burner until 2019, still giving him an above-average breakout age (20.0) and college dominator rating (32.8%) while making a significant impact on special teams for Iowa. ISM led the Big Ten in kick return yards per return in 2018, 2019 and finished 3rd in 2020. He is currently the all-time Big Ten career leader in kick return yards per return (28.7). He brought two of them byke to the cribbo in 2019.

ISM will get on the field early, either through WR snaps or kickoff return play, possibly both.

Mike Strachan is an absolute wildabeast, standing 6’5-226lbs. Solving his profile is like trying to solve a rubik’s cube that’s battling against you. Some of the highlights, for better or worse:

• 6’5-226lbs
• 87th percentile weight-adjusted speed score
• 7th round draft pick
• Had one single catch in freshman and sophomore year combined. Redshirted as a freshman, and didn’t make an impact in his second-year.
• An amazing sprinter, pursued Summer Olympic track team while playing in college.
• Didn’t breakout until age 21
• But went nuclear, 98th percentile dominator rating, once he did breakout
• Didn’t play at all in 2020 because Charleston’s season was canceled due to COVID.

Strachan has supposedly been TEARING up Colts camp. I can’t say that’s surprising, that’s what guys with his build and speed do in the summertime. He’s been popping up on my Twitter feed in highlight videos out of Indy camp every other day and showed off his big playmaking ability in the Colts first preseason game on this grab

That catch came after two drops. It’s not all good for Strachan, obviously. He’s a 7th round pick that didn’t breakout young. He’s far from flawless. But this is a receiving group that lacks any certainty. We want Michael Pittman to breakout, but that’s a coinflip. T.Y. Hilton’s best days are behind him. Parris Campbell is two years into his NFL career and has a total of 24 catches in 9 games played. Behind that, there’s almost nothing on the Colts depth chart. They don’t have a true pass-catching TE or redzone weapon on the outside. As the tallest receiver on the Colts, Strachan could play that role as he develops into a more refined receiver. Based on his measurables and the hype from Indy camp, Strachan warrants a spot on your taxi squad.

I know what you’re thinking. Another 6’4 wide receiver out of Stanford. J.J. Arcega-Whiteside can’t wait for Fehoko to hit the league saw he can finally stop getting bullied. JJAWs was a well-known prospect byke in 2019, Fehoko isn’t.

Fehoko balled in high school, earning the Gatorade Utah Player of the Year, 2015 Utah Mr. Football, and the USA Today Utah MVP. He smashed every state receiving record that you could think of. But that was about the only thing Fehoko was smashing. Fehoko, as with everyone else in Utah, is a Mormon. Instead of playing ball in college, he headed to South Korea to embark on a two-year Latter Day Saints mission to Seoul, laboring and spreading the word of The Book of Mormon.

He re-acclimated onto Stanford’s campus in 2018 but didn’t make an impact on the field until a year later in 2019, before exploding in the small 6-game sample size this year. Fehoko regained his high-school form and became the Cardinal’s passing offense in 2020, averaging 97.3 rec. yards per game with a near 27% target share. His 584 yards paced all Pac-12 WRs. The man routinely makes highlight plays downfield exemplified by his 23.6 yards per reception in 2019, which not only led the Pac-12 conference but ranked 2nd among ALL NCAA WRs.

Fehoko is a massive human being that rips through opposing cornerbacks like a wet piece of paper. His 3 most comparable players on playerprofiler are Alshon Jeffery, Kenny Golladay and Courtland Sutton. He’s an older prospect (23.4) but we have context behind why. He might get Despite doing the bullying between the 20s, he probably took his fair share of bullying due to the fact that he left to go on a two-year Mormon excursion, sacrificing his young, upper-percentile breakout year opportunities.

Putting context behind his late breakout age (21.8 – 20th percentile), Simi checks about every box. Alpha size, speed score, agility, big-play ability, playground bully, college production

The Cowboys are stuffed with playmakers at WR. Fehoko is a taxi squad player for you, but he’s locked in with Dak during his rookie contract and one of, if not both Michael Gallup and Amari Cooper will be gone by 2022, both by 2023. Gallup will command a fatty outside of Dallas when his contract expires after this year, leaving the WR3 spot in a stupid-high volume passing offense open for a baller like Fehoko. He’s a post-rookie draft priority add. Let him marinate on your taxi squad and the first cut will be juicy like Notorious.