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USATSI

With the Fantasy Football playoffs looming, I'm taking the opportunity to do a quick inventory of where each position stands. The goal here is to help make some start/sit calls, hopefully, but also to help you prioritize your roster building for these all-important weeks. 

Here are my playoff-focused tiers for wide receiver, assuming health: 

That is far from an exhaustive list, of course. It's 40 names long, and it's missing the likes of Michael Gallup, Nico Collins, George Pickens, and a number of other players I'd be willing to throw in my lineup. And the line between guys like Johnson, Meyers, Thielen, and the rest of the bottom of that tier and some of the others tends to be a pretty slim one; if you wanted to take 10 names off this list or add another 10, I wouldn't argue.

Because wide receiver isn't like running back, where value is tied a lot more strongly to simply being present. Nobody really thinks Samaje Perine is a special talent, but he replaced Joe Mixon for the past couple of weeks and the Bengals didn't miss a beat, and neither did your Fantasy team if you started him. Things don't work quite the same way; you couldn't just sub in Mack Hollins if Davante Adams missed time. 

Which makes it harder to delineate the difference between the haves and have-nots at wide receiver. Opportunity plays a part in production, but so does talent and situation and hundreds of other factors. Hopefully at this point in the season, I have three WRs from the first two buckets and I can stack my bench with the more predictable upside of RB handcuffs. That's how you should be building your roster at this point, if you can.

Here are my Week 14 rankings for WR: 

  1. Justin Jefferson @DET
  2. Tyreek Hill @LAC
  3. Stefon Diggs vs. NYJ
  4. Ja'Marr Chase vs. CLE
  5. A.J. Brown @NYG
  6. DeAndre Hopkins vs. NE
  7. Amon-Ra St. Brown vs. MIN
  8. CeeDee Lamb vs. HOU
  9. Chris Godwin @SF
  10. Keenan Allen vs. MIA
  11. Tee Higgins vs. CLE
  12. Tyler Lockett vs. CAR
  13. DK Metcalf vs. CAR
  14. DeVonta Smith @NYG
  15. Christian Kirk @TEN
  16. Garrett Wilson @BUF
  17. Deebo Samuel vs. TB
  18. Amari Cooper @CIN
  19. Jaylen Waddle @LAC
  20. Mike Evans @SF
  21. Marquise Brown vs. NE
  22. Mike Williams vs. MIA
  23. Zay Jones @TEN
  24. D.J. Moore @SEA
  25. Donovan Peoples-Jones @CIN
  26. JuJu Smith-Schuster @DEN
  27. Jerry Jeudy vs. KC
  28. Gabe Davis vs. NYJ
  29. Brandon Aiyuk vs. TB
  30. Diontae Johnson vs. BAL
  31. Josh Palmer vs. MIA
  32. Darius Slayton vs. PHI
  33. Greg Dortch vs. NE
  34. Michael Gallup vs. HOU
  35. Corey Davis @BUF
  36. D.J. Chark vs. MIN
  37. George Pickens vs. BAL
  38. Adam Thielen @DET
  39. Tyler Boyd vs. CLE
  40. DeMarcus Robinson @PIT
  41. Devin Duvernay @PIT
  42. Noah Brown vs. HOU
  43. Isaiah McKenzie vs. NYJ
  44. Marquez Valdes-Scantling @DEN
  45. Skyy Moore @DEN
  46. Marvin Jones @TEN
  47. Terrace Marshall @SEA
  48. DeAndre Carter vs. MIA
  49. Chris Moore @DAL
  50. K.J. Osborn @DET