There are no great slot receivers in fantasy football. It’s the title of this article and it might sound like “click bait” but I’m going to explain to you why that’s actually true. I bet you’re sitting there right now thinking in your head “yeah but Coop what about so and so?” No I get it, we are going to talk about that guy or guys just like him. So hold your horses.  

Josh Norman has a pretty good grip on this one

The beauty of this topic is that it boils down to one simple question that you need to ask yourself when deciding which “slot guys” to draft. Here is that question.

Does he play in two wide receiver sets?

If the answer is yes then you want him in fantasy football. If the answer is no then you likely don’t want him at his ADP. But here’s the rub and why the article is titled the way it is - if the answer is yes then he isn’t really a “slot guy” is he?  If he’s playing in two WR sets opposite of the split end, then in reality he is a flanker that plays in the slot in three WR sets. A great example would be Tyler Lockett. He was top 10 in routes run from the slot last year with 396. That’s more than Cooper Kupp, Curtis Samuel, Chris Godwin, Jarvis Landry, Hunter Renfrow etc. - all guys we consider to be “slot guys”. But Lockett also played 256 snaps at flanker opposite DK Metcalf - and that’s how we view him. As a flanker that moves into the slot for three wide sets. And that’s what you actually want to be targeting in fantasy football.

Here were the “pure” slot guys in 2020 in fantasy football. For this exercise, let’s say they play at least 85% of their snaps from the slot with at least 20 targets. 

Obviously there were some guys who played just slot but weren’t targeted much that don’t matter for a fantasy football discussion but these are the guys above who purely played slot and were actually involved. And, as we can see on this list, none of them were “great” in fantasy football last year as the best one on the list was WR24 - just barely a backend WR2. Now, obviously when we see a name like Ceedee Lamb we know they have the potential to be great in fantasy football but they weren’t great last year. They were just okay. And, if you look at the “overall snaps” column, you can pretty easily recognize why that is. They were coming out of the game for two WR sets. And it wasn’t just last year. Before Lamb, the last WR to finish top 24 in PPR while playing 80% of his snaps from the slot was Randall Cobb on the Packers in 2015. You need to be more than “a slot guy”.

Now, we’d like to think that team use three WRs so they have an equal chance to be good but that’s really not the case in reality. Any time you want to use a second tight end, a fullback, another running back etc. that means a wide receiver comes out of the game. Some teams, like the Buffalo Bills or Cincinnati Bengals, might use 3+ wide receivers on 80-90% of plays at times but even then that means there are 10-20% of the snaps that only two WRs or less will play. And that’s not even factoring rotations - the Bills actually used 3+ WRs on nearly 90% of their snaps overall in 2020 but 72% of those were strict three WR sets and Beasley was rotating with guys like Gabriel Davis and Isaiah McKenzie so he only played 62.5% of the overall snaps. If you are limited to playing a portion of a portion of the snaps, it’s hard to be great. It’s also hard to social distance from the slot so, if Beasley doesn’t get the vaccine soon, who knows what his snaps will look like this year.

Sorry, I had to

So, the secret to this equation is simple - if you are a “slot guy” you need to play the slot in three wide receiver sets but then transition to flanker for two wide receiver sets to stay on the field. Just think about those “slot guys” you might have thought of earlier when I first said there were no great ones for fantasy football. Maybe you thought of Chris Godwin, Juju Smith-Schuster, Cooper Kupp. Sure, they play a ton of slot - in 2019 when he was the WR2 overall in fantasy, Chris Godwin played 518 snaps in the slot. But he also didn’t come off the field for two WR sets so he played 349 snaps at flanker as well - only 63.4% of his snaps came at the slot. That’s why he wasn’t truly unlocked for fantasy football until DeSean Jackson was gone. He needed those extra snaps to have elite upside. Same goes for a guy like Cooper Kupp. He played 501 slot snaps but played 396 snaps out wide. Anthony Miller played more slot snaps at 547 but he came out of the game for 2 wide so he only played 57 snaps out wide. That’s the difference. Where it really blows your mind is when you realize Tyreek Hill played more slot snaps than both of them with 602. Yes, Tyreek Hill played more slot than Cooper Kupp. Are we changing the way we think about the position yet?

Know Your Bet

In fantasy football when you draft a player you are essentially making a bet. You’re betting that they will do well. Sometimes what you are betting on gets even more specific than that. For instance, if you draft Tyrod Taylor, you are betting that Deshaun Watson doesn’t play. When it comes to slot guys taking the leap forward into the elite wide receiver range you are making one of two bets. You are betting that A. the player essentially switches from slot to flanker. Or B. that the team uses such a high percentage of multi-WR sets with a high pass volume and a highly consolidated snap and target share that he can still be peppered with targets. Just remember that, with bet B, there are going to be two other guys out there. It’s a lot easier to say that Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen or DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett both get massive snap and target shares than it is to ensure that Tyler Boyd gets a big share with Tee Higgins and Ja’Mar Chase or Juju with Diontae Johnson and Chase Claypool. You have to decide how risky or risk averse you want to be.

Articles like these are concept articles that are meant to help you become a better fantasy gamer without necessarily making predictions on what’s going to happen. But I feel we should at least wrap the discussion up by touching on the “elephant in the room” when it comes to slot situations, which is the Dallas Cowboys. Last year it was quite obvious that Amari Cooper (87.2% snap share) and Michael Gallup (91.4%) were the guys in two wide receiver sets while Ceedee Lamb (63.73%) was clearly a pure slot guy who came out of the game for two WR sets. This year they will have a healthy Blake Jarwin along with Dalton Schultz so you have to imagine some two tight end sets are on the menu - meaning two WR sets. There are reports this offseason that Michael Gallup has been learning some slot which could mean they plan to move everyone around or it could mean that Gallup will be the slot guy who comes out of the game while Ceede Lamb now plays a 90% snap share along with Amari Cooper. We don’t know the future or how it will pan out so all we can do is keep an eye on the camp news and make our best guess. But I can tell you this - based on Lamb’s current ADP in fantasy, you better hope he transitions from “just a slot guy” if he’s going to be worth that high of a pick.