Fantasy Football Week 1 Wide Receiver Preview: Waiver adds, starts, sits, stashes, and more

The 2024 wide receiver class has a chance to alter the Fantasy Football landscape, and it could start as early as Week 1. In our consensus PPR rankings for this week, Marvin Harrison sits at WR9, Malik Nabers is at WR22, and four more rookies crack our consensus top 48. Two more, Rome Odunze and Adonai Mitchell, are in one analyst’s top 48, but not the consensus. This is not normal.

There doesn’t appear to be much intrigue with Harrison, everyone expects him to be great immediately. Dave is there with Nabers as well, ranking him 13th this week, ahead of Deebo Samuel, Davante Adams, and many others. With the rest of the rookies, we have a lot to learn, and it’s one of the things we’ll be watching closely.

The show starts on Thursday night with Xavier Worthy facing the Ravens. I expected a slow start for Worthy, but with Marquise Brown sidelined there’s suddenly plenty of opportunity behind Rashee Rice and Travis Kelce. Worthy showed the ability to get behind the defense in the preseason and could produce a good Fantasy day in just one play. Brian Thomas Jr. could do the same thing on Sunday against the Dolphins. 

Both Keon Coleman and Ladd McConkey have a chance to be their team’s number one wide receiver this season, and if either does that they’ll quickly jump into the conversation for WR3 in this class in 2024. The guy who was actually WR3 on Draft Day, Rome Odunze, has to overcome D.J. Moore and Keenan Allen standing in his way for targets. 

One thing we would like for you to do with all of these rookies is be patient. Time and time again we have seen rookies struggle early in the season only to be league winners in the second half. It happened last year with Rashee Rice, it happened two years ago with Christian Watson, and it happened three years ago with Amon-Ra St. Brown. You do not want to be the guy who dropped a Round 1 rookie after a slow month. 

You always find all of my projections over at Sportsline. 

Here is the rest of the Week 1 WR Preview:

Week 1 WR Preview

The following players are not being projected to play Week 1 at this time. Here’s what it means:

• 8.5 — Rashee Rice averaged 8.5 targets per game after the Chiefs bye last year. Expect him to pick up where he left off.
• 7 — Aaron Rodgers will be the seventh QB to attempt a pass to Garrett Wilson. The first six were: Joe Flacco, Zach Wilson, Mike White, Chris Streveler, Tim Boyle, and Trevor Siemian.
• 6.5 — Davante Adams’ 6.5 yards per target in 2023 was his lowest mark since 2015.
• 8.9 — Keenan Allen has averaged at least 8.9 targets per game in each of his last seven seasons. The Bears’ target share will be a fascinating watch.
• 5 — The Jets only allowed five receiving touchdowns to wide receivers all season last year.
• .277 — Michael Pittman’s .277 TPRR trailed only Tyreek Hill, Adams, CeeDee Lamb, Allen, Amon-Ra St. Brown, and Puka Nacua last year.
• 7.2 — Khalil Shakir was the only wide receiver besides Deebo Samuel and Rashee Rice to average more than seven yards after catch per reception in 2023.
• 3.11 — Nico Collins was the only wide receiver besides Tyreek Hill to average more than 3.1 yards per route run.

My full set of Week 1 Fantasy football projections for every position are now available on SportsLine. Find out which of my favorite plays are projected to score higher than consensus rankings and which don’t live up to their draft hype, at least in Week 1. Projected stats for all starting wide receivers are available, so be sure to check out the full set of projections at SportsLine.