Here’s the breakdown by position.

A more detailed explanation of this will be found @Footballguys soon.

There’s a lot of nuanced discussion that could be had around why this happened.

Was it a fluke?

Are teams using more committees?

Etc etc. but traditionally drafting WR early has been a safer route as they have a 36% chance to play 17 games vs. RBs 27%

We also didn’t feel it as much because using last season’s ADP of RBs that went rounds 1-2, 7/ 12 RBs played a full season

10/12 played at least 14 games with only Christian McCaffrey Isiah Pacheco missing this benchmark

Drilling down to just 2024, it’s a smaller sample of 52 qualifying RB but that number drastically shot up. If we just used 2024 data RBs would have a 40% playing a full season

Four-Zero.

Massive jump

Average games played 14.7

Sounds like Texans are downplaying this and saying they will re-evaluate the injury prior to Week 1 but based on this information, if I’m drafting today, I would only select him with one of my last picks.
@footballguys.com

Diggs? I like his price. Feels appropriate per @Footballguys projections.

💡 Bottom line: I think there’s opportunity with Aiyuk, especially at his Underdog ADP (8-9 turn). Even if he starts on PUP, he could provide late-season value. Risk seems baked in — and Best Ball is about ceiling swings.

I even ran a small-sample regression model. Take it with a grain of salt — but it predicted well for possession-style WRs, struggled on field stretchers.

This brings me to Aiyuk + Diggs. No direct comps, but their style/usage resembles those successful post-ACLR WRs. I generally fade field stretchers (high aDOT, low Tgt%).

WRs who excelled in those areas + did well post-ACLR:
Chris Godwin
Cooper Kupp
Julian Edelman
Keenan Allen.

Correlations with post-injury fantasy PPG? Targets per game, Target Share, pre-injury fantasy PPG, YPPR — all had solid relationships (no shocker). Same as non-injured WRs, and a good base for projections.

Common assumptions like “he’s young/athletic, so I like his chances” didn’t show up in the data. Maybe it factors into return-to-play timeline, but otherwise weak.

⚠️ Small sample: 30 WRs total, 26 met my criteria. I focused on WRs dealing with ACL injury and studied the numbers.

On average, efficiency metrics decline the year after ACLR — no surprise, players tend to struggle. But not every WR post-ACLR stunk. Jordy Nelson nearly hit 20 PPG. Cooper Kupp finished top-10 among WRs in 2019 after his ACL tear. So what do the numbers say?

www.footballguys.com/article/2025...

Using more recent sample (WRs since 2021) timeline moves to 297 days

Week 1 for Aiyuk is ~293 days

For more in depth analysis on Aiyuk and others head to @footballguys.com