If you're looking for young upside at wide receiver you don't just have to look at the top 12. That's where the certainty is. But you can go outside the top 20 and still find young guys who could be Dynasty league winners as soon as 2024. In fact, when looking at the tiers below you can scroll down to Tier 8 and still find those league winners. The tier is full of them. Brian Thomas Jr., Xavier Worthy and Ladd McConkey are the rookies, so they may seem more obvious but it's the three second-year wide receivers Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Rashee Rice, Jayden Reed that I find more interesting.
Smith-Njigba was the first rookie drafted last year but was far from the most productive. And it's not just that DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett took all the targets, the rookie's 6.8 yards per target was abysmal. But there has been a coaching change and Mike Macdonald has spent the summer talking about his expectations for Smith-Njigba. He's another player who could move a lot in the first month of the season because his ranking is more justified than his draft capital than his overall production.
Rice was far more productive, especially in the second half. He averaged 9.9 targets per game in his final 9 games including the playoffs and 9.2 yards per target during the regular season. But by now I'm sure you've heard about his off-field problems, which have cast a cloud over his 2024 and Dynasty value. I'm also not sure what the arrival of Marquise Brown and Xavier Worthy will do to his target share. Last year, Rice's only real competition for targets late in the year was Travis Kelce, but suddenly Patrick Mahomes has a very deep receiving corps. If Rice avoids a suspension and leads the Chiefs in targets in Week 1 his value will spike, but it could go the other way just as easy.
Finally, we get to Jayden Reed of the Green Bay Packers, also known as the most difficult team to project. Reed, Christian Watson, Romeo Doubs, and Dontayvion Wicks all took turns starting, with Reed's 10 total touchdowns standing out. But it was just a year ago that we were saying similar things about Watson and his nine touchdowns as a rookie. If everyone stays healthy this may be a true wide receiver by committee situation, but if Watson's hamstring revelation fails to provide relief, Reed could be a must-start wide receiver.
Here are my updated Dynasty wide receiver tiers:
