2008 Breakout Wide Receivers

The third year breakout wide receiver theory has become one of the most known theories by fantasy football managers because of a few wide receivers who became dominant during their third season. Unfortunately, this theory is so well-known that most fantasy sites usually rank all third year wide receivers higher than they really should so if you want one of them you will have to draft them early and there are quite a few that do not breakout. In this article I decided to look at all wide receivers in years two to five and find out if there are actually more third year wide receivers that breakout. Moreover I looked at the WRs that did breakout and tried to find criterions that differentiate WRs that do breakout from the ones that don't.

First of all I just want to clarify that I am using the term breakout a little loosely and I still include WRs who might have had a strong rookie season, struggled in their second season and had a solid third season. My two criterions that a wide receiver had to respect to be considered a breakout wide receiver are: at least 150 points in a point per reception scoring system, an increase of at least 40 points per 16 games or a 25% increase in points per 16 games. Since 1993, there have been 110 wide receivers that had a breakout season in their second, third, fourth or fifth season out of a possible 444 which is equal to 24.8% of them. To qualify amongst those 444 the only criterion was that the player had to have at least 300 receiving yards in the previous year. The following chart has the breakdown of the breakout wide receivers by year:

Year	Breakouts	Number	%Breakout
2	24	72	33.3%
3	37	126	29.4%
4	27	132	20.5%
5	22	114	19.3%

The most interesting thing to notice is that there are in fact more third year wide receivers that had a breakout season than any other year but the percentage that did breakout is less than the percentage for second year wide receivers. There is also still quite a high number of fourth and fifth year wide receivers that did breakout but I need to find a way to increase those percentages since a one out of five chance at a breakout wide receiver isn't much. I applied three more criterions which are that the player must have had less than 80 catches, less than 1000 yards and 8 TDs or less in the previous year. These three criterions allowed us to eliminate 93 of the 444 players while only losing eight breakout players which increased the percentage to 29.1%. The following chart has the new breakdown of the breakout wide receivers by year after applying those three new criterions:

Year	Breakouts	Number	%Breakout
2	24	63	38.1%
3	33	107	30.8%
4	26	102	25.5%
5	19	79	24.1%

Those percentages are much better than before and it is quite surprising to see the very high percentage for second year wide receivers compared to third year receivers. I decided to take this one step further and try to find more criterions individually for each year to increase these percentages. Since we are dealing with relatively small samples this is a little tricky and I had to make sure the percentages were real and not simply a random coincidence. To make sure of this, when looking for more criterions, I made sure that I used rounded numbers so that I would not have criterions such as fewer than 63 receptions or over 13.7 yards per reception. The other rule I used is that I could remove players from my sample at both edges but not in the middle such that I don't have a criterion that says a wide receiver must have fewer than 40 receptions or more than 50. Although some of the criterions I will find may still be a random coincidence I think that by using these two rules I will limit that chance.

As shown in the first part of this article, although second year wide receivers are not as hyped as third year wide receivers on draft day they do have a better chance of having a breakout season. To increase the 38.1% chance from the first part of the article, I added two more criterions which are that the player must have had five TDs or less instead of eight and he must have had at least 13 yards per reception in his first year in the NFL. Those two criterions eliminate 30 players of the 63 while only losing seven breakout candidates and they make the percentage jump from 38.1% to 51.5%. This is a great improvement for adding only two additional criterions. It is also interesting to note that only three of the 33 wide receivers had their performance decrease by 25% or more compared to the 17 that improved by 25% or more so drafting players that meet these criterions is a low risk and high reward strategy.

There are three wide receivers that meet those requirements for the 2008 season and they are Calvin Johnson, James Jones and Anthony Gonzalez. Based on statistics from the past 15 years, one or two of these should improve their performance by at least 25%. At this point in the off-season it is too early to tell which of these if any have a favorable situation for next season but they are three players to keep in mind for your drafts.

Third year wide receivers are in demand on draft day and although there are many of them that breakout, many of them don't and it is difficult to predict which ones will. In order to increase the 29.4% chance from the first part of the article, I added three more criterions which are that the player must have had 30 or more catches but fewer than 65 and he must also have had more than 400 yards in his previous NFL season. Those three criterions eliminate 33 players of the 107 while only losing six breakout candidates and they make the percentage increase from 30.8% to 36.5%. Unfortunately it was not as easy as for second year wide receivers to improve the breakout percentage but 36.5% is still pretty good especially since the sample size is much larger than for second year receivers. Out of the 74 wide receivers remaining, there are 27 that increased by 25% or more but still 16 that saw their production drop by 25% or more. This is still pretty good and does show that some third year wide receivers could be worth drafting early and have breakout seasons but there is still a pretty high risk in drafting them.

In 2008 Santonio Holmes is the only candidate who meets the criterions identified above. There are eight wide receivers that had similar stats as him in recent years, four of which saw their production drop by at least 30% and only three had a noticeable improvement. He is someone you might want to consider drafting but it's likely that he'll go too early in drafts to be worth the risk and with Hines Ward recovering from his injuries combined with the strong competition at the WR position in Pittsburgh; I would personally stay away from him.

As shown earlier, the breakout percentage of fourth and fifth year wide receivers is around 25% and much lower than the percentage for second and third year wide receivers. To make the analysis of the fourth and fifth year wide receivers I had to use pretty strict criterions to increase the percentage but whether this is only a coincidence or if it really means something is for you to decide and use your own judgment. For fourth year wide receivers I added the criterions that the players must have had between 10 and 16 yards per reception and fewer than eight TDs the season before, at least 400 yards receiving two seasons before and must be 25 or 26 years old going into next season. By using these criterions I find that 13 out of 32 WRs who respect these had a breakout season which equals to 40.6% of them and only four had a decrease in performance by at least 25%. For fifth year wide receivers I added the criterions that they must be 26 or 27 years old during their breakout year, have less than 70 catches and fewer than six TDs the season before. There were 43 players who respected those, 15 of which had a breakout season which is equal to 34.9% of them. Although this percentage is quite low, it is very interesting to note that only three of those 43 players had their performance decrease by 25% or more which makes these players low risk and high reward.

For the 2008 seasons, there are four candidates who are fourth year wide receivers and five more are fifth year players. Mark Clayton, Matt Jones, Nate Washington and Vincent Jackson are the fourth year players while D.J. Hackett, Drew Carter, Jerheme Urban, Lee Evans and Roy Williams are all fifth year players that could improve quite significantly in 2008. Those nine players will require a more extensive analysis in order to determine if they are truly breakout candidates. However, I'd just like to add that all four of the fifth year WRs who respected these criterions and also had at least 8TDs two seasons ago bounced back in their fifth year which could be a good sign for Lee Evans in 2008. Unfortunately it is difficult to find an explanation for some of these criterions and they could simply be a random coincidence. I do not recommend drafting a player simply because he meets the criterions above but I do believe that these statistics mean something and if you find additional information that leads you to believe these players could be breakout candidates they could be very good players for your team in 2008.

Unfortunately it's not enough to know which players might break out and although I do think that amongst the thirteen I mentioned there are probably five or so that will have very good seasons there are other factors you will want to consider. The most important of those factors is where you expect to draft these players. In my next article I will look at average draft position for wide receivers based on their years of experience in the NFL and their previous year's statistics. Now that we know which players we expect to improve over their previous year's performance, it's important to also know which players the average manager expects to improve and only then will we be able to determine potential sleeper picks at the wide receiver position for the 2008 season.