7 Wide Receivers You Are Drafting with Insane Confidence

**Josh** (0:10)
This happens every single year. We watch 18 weeks of football, go through the draft for agency, and then reset our memory, and draft players much higher or lower than where they finished this past season. Is it right? Is it wrong? That's what this episode is all about. Seven plus wide receivers that you all, yes, you, are drafting with insane confidence. The premise here, Hayden, we're gonna name a bunch of wide receivers who are selected much earlier than where they finished last year, and vice versa. Let's start with that group, and the leadoff man is Justin Jefferson, who was drafted as the wide receiver six right now over at Underdog and finished last year as the wide receiver 37 Does that make sense to you?

**Hayden** (0:51)
Yeah, I think that Justin Jefferson is going to ball out again. I think Kyla Murray is definitely a good enough quarterback to get the ball to Justin Jefferson and from 2022 to 2024, he had the most PPR points per game at 20, and most of you guys are drafting in full PPR, and that's if we remove the Josh Dobbs and Jaren Hall games. He's averaging 100 yards per game. So it really just came down to how bad JJ. McCarthy was, which makes me feel very confident that Kyla Murray is going to easily win this job. I think more or less they've already come out and said that, and Justin Jefferson, nothing's changed about Justin Jefferson. Nothing's changed about Kevin O'Connell, and Kyla Murray wants to throw the ball back, shoulders, downfield passes.
That's what Kyla Murray wants to do. It's what Kevin O'Connell wants to do, and it's what Justin Jefferson is so good at. I think we're just going to throw out 2025, get in the baseline from the other seasons. Could Kyla Murray be as good as Kirk Cousins? Of course, and I'm drafting him in the first round.

**Josh** (1:46)
Yeah, he finishes the wide receiver three in points per game with Sam Darnold, then finishes the wide receiver five in points per game with Kirk Cousins and Nick Mullins. It was nothing in terms of Kevin O'Connell putting him in a position of success or failure last year that led him to the wide receiver 37 It was just all about the quarterback play. That was the big change here. Again, pointing out some things that Reeves noted, he commanded 30 percent of his team targets last year, wide receiver four, 39 percent of the team's air yards, that's wide receiver five, and yet that equal to wide receiver 37 season because of environment. I actually went back and watched those Nick Mullins games that they played together in terms of homework for this because I thought, okay, we know what he did with Darnold and we know we did with Cousins.
What can he even do with a quarterback at a tier below that, but also perform better than JJ McCarthy? That was my mindset heading into that. That may be stupid transitional properties, but that's what I'm doing.

**Hayden** (2:42)
I like it.

**Josh** (2:43)
What I learned is that a quarterback, in order to have success in this offense, and especially success with Justin Jefferson, is you have to throw into tight windows, you have to stand tall versus pressure, you need to play on time, and you need to trust the plan to play throwing with anticipation into zone windows. If you do all that stuff, then you're going to have success, and you're going to have Justin Jefferson just making freaking plays for you.
Simply put, JJ McCarthy could not do that last season. Kyle Murray, and we'll talk about a wide receiver that was attached to him last season. It can be up and down with some of that stuff in terms of standing tall, and not falling away from throws, and playing on time. But I also believe that KOC, while the three names that we mainly mentioned there like pure pocket read it out players and throw with anticipation, will also accentuate the strengths that Kyle Murray does have and does bring to the table. I think obviously Justin Jefferson's talent is multiple and feasible enough that he is absolutely worth this end of the first round draft pick that we're spending.

**Hayden** (3:42)
Kyle Murray, he has had 88 yards per game seasons with DeAndre Hopkins, another 80 yard season with DeAndre Hopkins, Trey McBride had 72 yards per game. Kyle Murray for his flaws has elevated players to really high end degrees. Last year was really bad with Marvin Harrison, Michael Wilson and Trey McBride, obviously, but you go back and watch even the first couple of games of the season last year. And I mean, if Marvin Harrison caught the football, like the stat lines would look a whole lot better. And obviously, Justin Jefferson will. So I think that Kyle Murray, I think this is going to be like the floor. And I think it's actually a very similar situation to when Sam Darnold got with Kevin O'Connell and that was the floor of Sam Darnold. And here comes Kyle Murray and it's going to be an excellent season to the point. I think Kyle Murray is like the sleeper quarterback, if you will, who has a chance to be a top five fantasy quarterback that gets drafted as a quarterback 12