Fantasy Football: One Wide Receiver to Target in Each Round of Your Draft
Round 6: Willie Snead, New Orleans Saints
Average Draft Position: 6.06 (WR31)
I want to be real with you -- Willie Snead makes my heart go pitter-patter.
You see, I'm pretty boring in fantasy (OK, in real life, too), so a guy like Snead -- someone with a meaningful role in a fantasy-friendly offense who is pretty safe and probably undervalued -- is my kind of dude. Not sexy but reliable.
Snead has been the PPR WR32 (2016) and WR34 (2015) in the previous two seasons, his only two in the NFL. He's being taken as WR31, so that appears to be a pretty fair value. But it doesn't factor in the upside he now has with Brandin Cooks out of town.
Let's run it back to a piece I did on Snead earlier this offseason, because everything still applies.
With Cooks gone, there are roughly 120 targets -- Cooks had 117 and 129 targets, respectively in the past two years -- up for grabs. Those will likely get divvied up among the Saints’ pass-catchers, but it’s perfectly reasonable to assume Snead will see a few extra targets.
Snead has posted catch rates of 68.3% (2015) and 69.2% (2016) so far in his career, so we can feel pretty good about his ability to turn any extra volume into useable production. He also checks out well according to our in-house NEP metric. Per wideouts to see at least 80 targets in 2016, Snead was 12th in Reception NEP per target, and he ranked 25th in that group in 2015.
Snead finished with 69 grabs, 984 yards and 3 scores last season, so a slight bump in volume could push him over the 1,000-yard mark. In 2016, only two receivers -- Kenny Britt and DeSean Jackson -- finished outside the top 23 PPR wideouts while having 1,000-yard campaigns. Britt was on a horrific offense, something Snead won’t have to deal with, and DJax’s boom-or-bust style dings his production a bit in PPR formats.
Across his two years with the New Orleans Saints, Snead has proven to be a safe WR3, and now he has upside he's never had before in his career.
