Note: Draft Season is upon us. For the best draft party, have your draft at B-Dubs! Players receive food and drink specials, plus a free draft kit. Sign up HERE today!

One of the easiest starting points for projecting the upcoming season is looking at seasons past. So naturally, one of the easiest ways to find an edge is filtering out those things from the past that are unlikely to repeat themselves.

\Sometimes it's a volume issue because of changes in a player's circumstance, but sometimes it has nothing to do with circumstance at all. Often, what happened in the past is largely unrepeatable, and natural regression -- positive or negative -- is bound to happen.

In this piece we'll look at receivers likely to regress in one direction or another and how it will affect their Fantasy value:

  • Regression gets a bad name, as if it has to be negative, so let's dispel that notion right away. Julio Jones caught three touchdowns last year on 148 targets. Yes, I know Jones' touchdown totals have been frustrating over the years, but this was way out of character. Coming into 2017 he'd caught a touchdown once every 19.4 targets. Last year, it was once every 49.3. At his career average he would have caught seven or eight touchdowns in 2017 and finished as the No. 3 receiver in non-PPR. At the very least you should expect him to double last year's touchdown total, and that's one of the reasons I'm thrilled if I can land him anywhere after the ninth pick in the draft.
  • Jones isn't the only receiver with touchdown regression coming. Michael Thomas (five), Adam Thielen (four) and Marquise Goodwin (two) all had rotten luck getting into the end zone. I expect all will improve on their touchdown rate this year, so if the rest of their numbers hold steady they should outperform the career year they just had. Thielen and Goodwin have at least small question marks surrounding their target numbers, but Thomas should absolutely be grouped amongst the elite receivers in the game.
  • Of course, some regression is negative and that's exactly what you should expect from Marvin Jones, in a variety of ways. Jones' top-five performance from 2017 was anything but sustainable. For starters, Jones averaged 18 yards per reception. No one does that. At the very least you should expect he'll regress back to 16.9, his mark from 2016. Just know that his career mark is 15 yards per reception and that's still a very good average. Also, Jones' nine touchdowns on 107 targets won't likely repeat itself either. Sure, he scored 10 on 80 targets in 2013, but even with those outliers his career mark suggests he'll regress to around seven scores in 2018.
  • It's also hard to believe Tyreek Hill can be as efficient as he was in 2017. Hill was the first receiver in NFL history to catch 70 percent of his targets and average 15.5 yards per reception with at least 100 targets. What's especially troubling is that he only averaged 9.7 yards per reception in 2016. It's true the Chiefs used him differently in 2017 and he has a quarterback with a bigger arm in Patrick Mahomes. But the presence of Sammy Watkins and questions about Mahomes consistency should at least give you some pause. I still like Hill as a top-12 receiver, but any article about receiver regression would be incomplete without mentioning him.
  • Jordy Nelson (9.1) and Jarvis Landry (8.8) both set career lows in yards per reception in 2017. Then they both changed teams, which will make it hard to know whether they're regressing to their career norm or just being used differently. Either way, I'd expect both to see a boost in their yards per reception. Landry should also see his touchdowns regress after last year's career-high of nine. 
  • JuJu Smith-Schuster averaged 15.8 yards per reception last year, but that's very deceiving. Yes, he had six catches of more than 40 yards, and he looks like a big-play receiver. But just removing one 97-yard catch drops his average down to 14.4. That's closer to a more reasonable expectation for his second season. Hopefully a small boost in volume covers that regression up. 

  • So what sleepers should you snatch in your Fantasy Football draft? And which huge running backs do you need to jump all over? Visit SportsLine now to get Fantasy Football cheat sheets from the model that called Alvin Kamara's huge breakout last season and find out.