WR Market Struggling

[CJD]

(03-17-2021, 12:45 PM)fredtoast Wrote: Over the last 10 years there have been 48 WRs taken in the second round.  Only 10 of them had 800 yards as a rookie.  So you have about a one-in-five of finding one.

In fact, there have only been 13 taken in the FIRST round who had 800 yards as a rookie.

At a glance, it appears as though 5 of those 10 were in the last two years though:
Chase Claypool, 2nd round, 62 rec, 873 yards, 9 TD
Tee Higgins, 2nd round, 67 rec, 908 yards, 6 TD
DK Metcalf, 2nd round, 58 rec, 900 yards, 7 TD
AJ Brown, 2nd round, 52 rec, 1051 yards, 8 TD
Deebo Samuel, 2nd round, 57 rec, 802 yards, 3 TD

And then, if you don't want to go by the strict numbers I listed (which I thought were obviously a bit of an exaggeration, but it's hard to portray these things online), there was also:
Laviska Shenault, 2nd round, 58 rec, 600 yards, 5 TD
Diontae Johnson, 3rd round, 59 rec, 680 yards, 5 TD
Mecole Hardman, 3rd round, 26 rec, 538 yards, 6 TD
Terry McLaurin, 3rd round, 58 rec, 919 yards, 7 TD

And that doesn't include the first round receivers who also had early success in the last few years like Jefferson, Aiyuk, Lamb, Brown and Jeudy.

The point is why overspend in free agency when, in recent years, high round WRs are producing a lot early in their careers right now, as opposed to defensive players and offensive linemen who typically have a steeper learning curve and thus are more valuable in free agency.

Especially since this draft is also purported to be an extremely deep WR class. This WR free agency being slow makes perfect sense, from my perspective.