Breakout Receiver Model: Week 18 and 2025 Predictions

Jan 02, 2025

Peter Casey-Imagn Images

Welcome back to the final breakout receiver model breakdown of the 2024 season. With all of us now past our season-long fantasy football championships, and many NFL teams resting starters as they look towards the playoffs, Week 18 is always a doozy from a projections standpoint. Many teams, especially those eliminated or with little to play for, get very wacky with their usage, with opportunity resembling a preseason game, which makes predictive models less accurate. But we still have a good amount of the league playing for something - even if it’s just playoff-seeding improvements. With that in mind, we can keep things (mostly) positive this week, and cast our eyes toward the future.

We’ll first offer up some overall regression candidates, focusing mostly on players who may be due for a fall-off in 2025. Many factors will change in the coming months, but it’s always good to make a few predictions with the current season’s results fresh in our minds. From there, we’ll include breakout candidates into three categories: 2024 playoffs, 2025 season, and (of course) the 2018 main slate. That way, no matter the reason you enjoy the model’s results, you can get something out of this week’s analysis.

About the Breakout Receiver Model

The 4for4 data science team, in conjunction with our award-winning projections expert John Paulsen, created the current iteration receiver "buy-low" model in order to use machine learning to identify under-performing wide receivers and tight ends on the verge of a breakout performance. The model utilizes historical data and recent player performance to help determine players who have received opportunity that are typically more valuable than recent production would indicate. This particular model's features include air yards and routes-run data as a means of determining opportunity. It also utilizes a proprietary efficiency metric that looks back at the past 10 weeks of individual player performance, all to better help predict the likelihood of a bounce-back in a player's future production. The model most heavily weights the last three weeks of data.

Last Week's Model-Predicted Hits

Last Week's Breakout Receiver Model Hits
Player	Pos	Team	Expected HPPR FPts	FPts	Prev. +/-	This Week +/-
Malik Nabers	WR	NYG	13.9	32.6	-0.6	18.7
Tyreek Hill	WR	MIA	13.7	15	-1.2	1.3
Jakobi Meyers	WR	LV	12	14.6	-4.1	2.6
Sam LaPorta	TE	DET	12	15.4	-0.4	3.4
Courtland Sutton	WR	DEN	11.4	14	-2.3	2.6
Travis Kelce	TE	KC	10.7	18.4	-5	7.7
Wan'Dale Robinson	WR	NYG	10.7	15.6	-3.6	4.9
Calvin Ridley	WR	TEN	10.5	11.6	-0.4	1.1
Brock Bowers	TE	LV	10.1	11.1	-1.2	1
Tre Tucker	WR	LV	9.9	9.9	-6.7	0
Tyler Conklin	TE	NYJ	9	17.7	-2.4	8.7
Amari Cooper	WR	BUF, CLE	8.9	13.1	-4.2	4.2
Parker Washington	WR	JAX	8.8	10.6	-2.9	1.8
T.J. Hockenson	TE	MIN	8.7	9.3	-2.8	0.6
Darius Slayton	WR	NYG	7.8	9.7	-5	1.9
Keon Coleman	WR	BUF	7.6	10.2	-3.1	2.6
Juwan Johnson	TE	NO	7.3	9.6	-1	2.3
Michael Pittman	WR	IND	6.8	21.4	-0.9	14.6
Kyle Pitts	TE	ATL	6.7	12.4	-4.1	5.7
Ricky Pearsall	WR	SF	6.5	24.7	-3.5	18.2

Note: players are considered a "hit" if they reach 95% of their expected production, which occasionally results in players who fell just short of expectations (with a negative 'This Week +/-' score) still considered a "hit" in this table.