2024 WR ADP Battles: Houston Texans (Fantasy Football)

Welcome to the third and final entry in this series of articles analyzing some of the more thought-provoking wide receiver rooms around the league heading into the 2024 season. As we have done throughout draft season, we’ll shine the spotlight on the players being taken first from their teams and determine if they truly are the best options at the position on their respective rosters, or if one of the other guys in the locker room offers better value when factoring in their current ADP.

Last time out we focused on the Green Bay Packers, who despite having last year’s overall QB5 on their books, don’t have a single wideout being drafted in the first six rounds heading into 2024. This week, we’re turning our attention to a wide receiver room with players who are all routinely off the board by the middle of the fifth. Houston, we have a problem…and that problem is trying to decide which of these talented pass-catchers to draft this year in fantasy. 

*All ADP data courtesy of Sleeper using a single-QB, 0.5-PPR scoring format.

View the full ADP Battles series if you’re interested in reading more about teams with high concentrations of fantasy-relevant players!

Tank Dell (WR26 – ADP 5.05) > Nico Collins (WR14 – ADP 3.04) & Stefon Diggs (WR18 – ADP 3.10)

There are three certainties in this life…death, taxes, and rookie quarterbacks not producing a WR1 in fantasy football. Justin Herbert came close in his debut season with the Chargers back in 2020, one that saw Keenan Allen ending the year as the WR14 – but Josh Allen, Kyler Murray, Joe Burrow, and even three-time Super Bowl winner Patrick Mahomes all failed to support a solitary top-12 fantasy wideout in their first years out of college – and the Texans’ C.J. Stroud was no different…he supported two.

The 2023 season could hardly have gone any better in Houston – coming off a dismal 3-13-1 performance in 2022, and with a win total set at 5.5, the Texans blew away teams in the same manner as their doubters – finishing the season as AFC South Champions with a 10-7 record, eventually losing out to Baltimore in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. The preseason skepticism of the Houston offense was however reflected in the ADPs of their major weapons:

In most re-draft formats, only Dameon Pierce, Nico Collins, and “The Doctor” Dalton Schultz were rostered when Week 1 kicked off, with rookies Tank Dell and the second overall pick of that year’s NFL draft, C.J. Stroud, consigned to the waiver wire…fantasy football is a funny old game sometimes isn’t it? Through a combination of injury and being generally awful, Pierce lost his starting job to Devin Singletary, finishing the year as the RB52, and although Schultz did outperform his ADP by ending the season as the overall TE10, the real story in Southeast Texas came from those drafted late or not at all.

Not to be hyperbolic, but C.J. Stroud’s rookie season was nothing short of phenomenal. His 4,108 passing yards were the third most by a rookie quarterback of all time, with his 23 touchdowns ranking sixth in NFL history. He had the lowest attempt-to-interception ratio in the league at 1%, throwing just five picks on his 499 passes – only Kenny Pickett, who threw 175 fewer times on the year came anywhere close to Stroud at 1.2%. In the Texans’ Week 9 victory at home to Tampa Bay, Stroud threw for 470 yards – a rookie single-game record – and became only the third rookie QB to pass for five touchdowns in a single game after Matthew Stafford in 2008 and Voldemort in 2017. Stroud’s performance in that 39-37 win over the Buccaneers saw him score 41.8 fantasy points…the greatest fantasy performance by a rookie quarterback…ever. C.J. connected with no fewer than 16 different pass-catchers in his debut season, but 49% of his total passing yards were hauled in by just two players – Nico Collins and Nathanial Tank Dell.

What a difference a year can make! In fantasy drafts last August, Dameon Pierce was the only Texan off the board by the time Dalton Schultz was being taken late in the tenth round. Fast-forward 12 months, and although The Doctor’s ADP has only changed by two spots, there are now five of Houston’s offensive players being taken before him…all in the first five rounds. Stroud’s draft capital has skyrocketed to the overall QB5, as has that of his wide receivers. Whereas in 2023, Houston didn’t have a single wideout being drafted in the top 55 (!) at the position, they now have three…all in the top 30: Nico Collins (WR14), Tank Dell (WR26), and fresh in from Buffalo, Stefon Diggs (WR18). Can Stroud repeat the heroics of his rookie season and support multiple top-tier receivers? Sure…but who will return the best value to fantasy managers on their draft-day investment? Let’s take a look.

Collins vs. Dell – The Tale of the Tape

I noted that C.J. Stroud supported not just one WR1 for fantasy, but two, and that’s 100% true…on a fantasy points per-game basis. While Nico Collins was a bonafide top-12 receiver, finishing as the WR9 on the year, Tank Dell ended his rookie campaign as the WR38 after a fractured fibula in Week 13 ruled him out for the rest of the season. Heading into that week, however, Dell was actually outpacing Collins in FPPG 14.2 to 13.5, with the pair sitting at WR11 and WR17 respectively. In his teammates’ absence, Collins ascended to the clear primary target in the offense, elevating his FPPG to 14.7 for the year. That figure was good enough to see Collins rank as the overall WR6 on a per-game basis, with Dell slotting in alongside Deebo Samuel, tied at WR9.

Despite only taking the field for 10 games, Dell finished tied for third in total team targets with Robert Woods…despite being significantly more productive than him. Dell’s 75 targets were only behind Collins and Schultz, both of whom saw the field on five more occasions than the rookie. It is important to remember that it wasn’t just Dell who missed time, Nico Collins spent two games on the sideline with calf issues. If we were to adjust each of Houston’s lead wideouts to a 17-game pace, Collins would still come out on top, but only by one spot – finishing the year as the overall WR3, with Dell right behind him at WR4.

Reflecting on the above, both men could be considered excellent draft-day values given their current ADPs, but while Collins sitting just outside WR1 territory can almost be justified, Tank Dell being drafted over two full rounds later as a WR3 just doesn’t add up for me. In his rookie outing, Dell finished as a WR1 in four of the 10 weeks he saw the field, with a further two finishes inside the top 24, making him a WR2 or better in 60% of games. Don’t hear what I’m not saying – this is not an anti-Nico Collins take, Collins himself had six weeks inside the top 12 at the position…however, every game he didn’t finish as a WR1, Nico found himself as a WR3 or worse. It’s also worth noting that two of Collins’ stints as a WR1 were after Dell’s season-ending injury, in Weeks 13 and 18.

Nico Collins was a beast with the ball in his hands, ranking fourth among wide receivers in YAC per reception (40+ receptions). While not being as prolific as his teammate after the grab, Tank Dell more than made up for this with his production through the air. The rookie saw an aDOT of 14.27 from C.J. Stroud and a monstrous 1,070 air yards…on just 47 receptions. With the introduction of Stefon Diggs (more on him in a moment), who at 30 years old will most likely play primarily out of the slot, Dell’s role in this passing game should be even more conducive to deeper targets than his rookie season – setting him up for some HUGE plays in his sophomore year.

Rookie to rookie. @CJ7STROUD hits Tank Dell for a 68-yard TD!

: #HOUvsJAX on FOX
: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/UQdQ05hqXN pic.twitter.com/NszwLZjorq

— NFL (@NFL) September 24, 2023

The Diggs Factor

We’ve come this far without mentioning the elephant in the wide receiver room – the offseason acquisition of Stefon Diggs from the Bills. Houston sent a future second-round draft pick to Buffalo in return for a 2024 sixth-rounder, 2025 fifth-rounder, and the veteran wideout…as well as his mammoth contract extension. With some creative negotiations, the Texans have transformed the remainder of Diggs’ agreement with the Bills into a one-year $22.5 million rental – but will this prove to be a shrewd investment, or have they made Diggs the fourth-highest paid player on the roster to serve as their WR3?

*Spoiler Alert – it ain’t the first part*

Diggs finished 2023 as the overall WR10, his fifth top-12 finish in the last six years. Logic dictates this should set alarm bells ringing for Nico Collins and Tank Dell truthers – after all, this is a career WR1 who is infamously one of the squeakiest of squeaky wheels, and is surely coming into town to take the lion’s share of targets from C.J Stroud, right? Wrong!

Undoubtedly, Stefon Diggs is one of the elite wide receivers in the National Football League for fantasy football, or at least he was. Through Week 9 of last season, Diggs was everything we’d come to expect from Josh Allen’s favorite weapon, and at the overall WR3 in that spell, was performing above his ADP of the fourth wideout off the board…but then almost overnight, everything changed for Diggs and the Bills. After starting their season 5-5, OC Ken Dorsey was shown the exit door and replaced with QB Coach Joe Brady. Perhaps surprisingly, Brady took the offense away from the passing game, choosing instead to utilize the skill set of running back James Cook and focus on the ground game. It worked. The Bills won six of their last seven and with it the AFC East. Everyone was happy, right? Well, almost everyone.

In the last eight games of the season under Brady, Buffalo’s undisputed WR1 had only one solitary game as a WR2 for fantasy purposes. Diggs’ 55 (!) total fantasy points in that stretch placed him as the WR46, with his 16.5 FPPG from the opening half of the season plummeting to a meager 7.9 FPPG after the bye…a drop of over 52%. Diggs now finds himself on an offense where he will no longer be the de facto alpha receiver, but just one of three big-name wideouts battling it out for looks and yards from C.J. Stroud. Expect the four-time Pro Bowler to make plenty of noise in Houston (whether that’s good or bad you can judge for yourself)…just don’t expect him to be an elite wide receiver for your fantasy team. 

This clip sums up what we’ve seen from Stefon Diggs all training camp.

Always communicating and always talking with his guys on the sideline. pic.twitter.com/wYrVCJrJbA

— Chancellor Johnson (@ChancellorTV) August 9, 2024

Fully recovered from the broken fibula that cut short his rookie season, Tank Dell has a real shot of being not only the leading receiver on this offense but a legitimate WR1 for fantasy football…and he’s being drafted in the fifth round. Entering his sophomore year, Dell is currently being drafted behind the likes of Zay Flowers, Michael Pittman Jr., and New York Giants rookie Malik Nabers, along with his teammates Collins and Diggs. Of those five names, only Nico has the true upside of Dell, but he’s going to cost you a mid-third rounder. Take Tank as your WR2 in the fourth before kicking back, relaxing, and watching him lead your team to a #FootClanTitle. 

Every Tank Dell target from his rookie season. He might be breakable, but he sure isn’t guardable. Count me in. pic.twitter.com/WdpjXVi1MU

— Jason Moore (@jasonffl) July 9, 2024