Fantasy Football Week 4 Wide Receiver rankings: Buying Keenan Allen’s hot start? Sell Calvin Ridley?

Before we get to the wide receiver rankings for Week 4 of the Fantasy Football season, here are my thoughts on some of the biggest questions facing the wide receiver position for Fantasy Football, beginning with a veteran who is off to the best start of his career: 

Are we buying Keenan Allen’s breakout? 

Generally speaking, wide receivers don’t break out at 31. They’re usually on the downside of their careers by that point, and more likely to hit the age-related cliff and fall off than enjoy the best seasons of their careers. For that reason alone, you should probably view Allen as a sell-high candidate in Fantasy Football coming off maybe the best game of his career. 

But this is definitely not one of those situations where I’m pounding the table telling you to sell. The concerns with Allen are real – he’s 31 and he missed time with recurring hamstring injuries last season, so there’s a significant risk of him suffering an injury-related decline. But from a pure performance perspective, I don’t think things have ever been set up as well for Allen as they currently do. 

He’s tied to a young QB playing at an incredibly high level – Justin Herbert leads the NFL in NextGenStats’ completion percentage above expected, which perfectly matches the eye test so far because Herbert has been outstanding. And Kellen Moore’s new offense has the Chargers ninth in total plays and 10th in pass rate through three games, and Herbert has that high completion percentage despite the highest average intended air yards of his career. This is what we hoped to see from the Chargers, Allen is still showing the ability to get open nearly at will, while also seeing a few more downfield targets than we’re used to.

Will Allen slow down? Probably, yeah – it’s unlikely he’ll keep up a 181-catch, 2,278-yard pace for a full season. But I really do think the combination of Herbert’s play and the new offense could put him in line for a career-best season. We don’t normally expect that from 31-year-olds, but this might be an exception.

What’s gone wrong for Calvin Ridley?

He’s just playing really poorly. We don’t really need to overcomplicate this. Ridley opened the season like a bat out of hell, catching seven passes for 92 yards and a touchdown in the first half of Week 1; in 2.5 games since he’s caught six of 18 targets for 81 yards. And he was especially bad in Week 3, with two drops, including one that should have been a touchdown: 

He also had two false starts in Sunday’s game and generally looked like a guy who hasn’t played football in two years. The question is whether we think this is likely to remain an issue moving forward. My assumption is no; that’s why he’s knocking the rust off and will remain Trevor Lawrence’s top target and a WR1 for Fantasy moving forward. But it’s also true that the Jaguars have a lot of very talented pass-catchers, and they may not necessarily need to continue funneling targets Ridley’s way, a trend we’ve already seen over the past two games. 

Nearly 20% of the way through the season, Ridley remains a pretty substantial wild card for Fantasy. He could still be a top-12 WR; he might just be a boom-or-bust WR2/3. I’d bet on the former, but it’s a bet I feel significantly less strongly about than I did at halftime of Week 1. 

Can you trust Courtland Sutton?

Trust? No, goodness no, you cannot trust Sutton just because he’s had three pretty good games in a row. But it’s worth at least considering the possibility that his struggles last year were more about the overall offensive struggles than anything else. Sutton has historically really struggled to earn targets when Jerry Jeudy has been active alongside him, but that hasn’t been an issue for him this season – he has 18 targets in two games with Jeudy active, while Jeudy has 12 despite more or less running a full-time route tree in his return from an injury. Maybe Jeudy just hasn’t been 100%, and once he is he will relegate Sutton to a supporting role again; that’s what history suggests should happen.

But we also don’t have a huge sample size to draw sweeping conclusions about what to expect from them; they’ve played 25 games together, 15 of which have come since the start of last season. If Sutton wasn’t 100% last season, we could very well be seeing a better representation of what Sutton is capable of now.

I’m skeptical of that, to be clear, and still have Sutton as just a WR3 for Week 4 against the Bears. But I’ve also eliminated the gap between Sutton and Jeudy that existed in my rankings before this week. I think Sutton is a sell-high candidate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean Jeudy is a buy-low. 

Is Davante Adams a sell-high candidate? 

No. We have to stop doubting this guy. Many doubted him when he left Aaron Rodgers for Derek Carr, under the assumption that Carr wouldn’t lock in on Adams the way Rodgers did. Many further doubted Adams after Carr left Las Vegas this offseason, under the assumption that the overly cautious Jimmy Garoppolo wouldn’t look Adams’ way as often down the field. Well, we’re through three games with Garoppolo, and Adams is on pace for 209 targets. It just doesn’t matter who the quarterback is, Adams gets open at will, and when he isn’t open, he’s still worth throwing to because he’s a contested-catch machine. It’s possible that, say, Zach Wilson would be enough to finally slow Adams down; on the other hand, just last year saw Adams catch 12 passes for 226 yards and two touchdowns in what may very well go down as the only two starts of Jarrett Stidham’s career. Adams is a top-12 WR whether Jimmy Garoppolo or Brian Hoyer or Aiden O’Connell is the QB. 

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Here are my full rankings for Week 4 at wide receiver for PPR leagues: