2023 Free Agent Wide Receiver Rankings

Projecting NFL Plus/Minus value added for the 2023 wide receiver free agent class

The 2023 offseason has begun, with free agency moves already happening. Officially, the window for signing unrestricted free agents begins on March 15th with the start of the new league year. But already teams have an opportunity to extend their own free agents, and released players also are available. The franchise tag window - another important tool for retaining elite players - goes from February 21st to March 7th.

In this analysis, I’l detail my methodology for projecting 2023 value for free agents, starting with wide receivers. Obviously you care about more than simply the next year’s value for players signed to multi-year contracts, but it’s increasing difficult to project performance beyond the next season for players switching teams, and subsequent performance is highly correlated. In reality, most free agent signing provide most of their value to their new teams in the first season, which is why even longer term contracts are primarily structured as glorified one-year deals with a little extra guaranteed money.

This analysis using ensemble modeling, or combining multiple model types to reduce noise while gaining incremental benefits in prediction accuracy. Specifically, the projections use linear and tree-based models, in roughly equal proportion. The key metric of determining value is my NFL Plus/Minus figure, which uses advanced stats, clustering and historical on-off splits to estimate player value in a universal, points-based figure.

For wide receivers, the model features (or independent variables) are, in order of importance:

• Previous year route running points added

• Two years prior route running points added

• Age

• Previous year games played

• Previous year run blocking points added

• Previous year rushing points added

There are two additional features (“new team” and “trade”) to differentiate free agent projections on a new team versus players who are in the middle of contracts with the same team or acquired via trade. As we saw with my macro analysis of free agency by offensive position, players who switch teams via free agency generally perform worse than the equivalent player who remains with the same team, and also underperform players acquired via trade. In addition, wide receivers do not appear to be relative values in free agency versus interior offensive linemen and tight ends.

TIER 1 WIDE RECEIVER FREE AGENTS

This wide receiver free agent class has been labeled as weaker by a wide swath of analysts, and my projections back up that assumption. There are only eight 2023 free agents who I’m projecting to add value by their NFL Plus/Minus estimates.

The table below lists those eight receivers, with their 2023 points-added projection (“Proj +/-), actual numbers for the last two seasons (Odell Beckham moved back a season), games played the last two seasons, snap percentage last year, age Week 1 of 2023, and draft position.

Draft position doesn’t add much signal for projecting veteran performance, but it still could be relevant when teams determine who to sign and for how much. Highly drafted players typically make more money in free agency than undrafted free agents, even if they performed at the same level during their rookie contracts.