r/Fantasy_Football • u/NFLEdgeLine • 10h ago
Discussion Mythbusters #7: Should You Burn Waiver Priority on a Week 1 Breakout?
Every year, someone comes out of nowhere in Week 1, puts up 20+ fantasy points, and immediately becomes the guy everyone wants on waivers.
Sometimes it's Puka Nacua or Kyren Williams.
Usually... it isn't.
So I went through 10 seasons of weekly fantasy data (2016–2025) to see what actually happens to these players after Week 1.
Methodology
I used historical 12-team PPR ADP and defined a "late-drafted breakout" as:
- ADP 120+
- QB: Top-12 Week 1 finish
- RB: Top-20
- WR: Top-20
- TE: Top-12
That produced 201 Week 1 breakouts: 45 QB, 39 RB, 62 WR and 55 TE.
Then I tracked Week 2, Weeks 2–8, Weeks 9–17 and the player's full rest-of-season positional finish.
First finding: the regression is immediate
The average breakout player scored:
Week 1: 19.51 PPR points
Week 2: 12.03
Only 32.8% immediately repeated their breakout-level positional finish in Week 2.
But here's where it gets interesting:
84.6% eventually had at least one more breakout-level week.
52.2% had at least three more.
So Week 1 actually is telling us something.
The problem is that it seems much better at identifying players capable of producing more big weeks than identifying season-long fantasy starters.
QB — 45 breakouts
Of the 45 late-drafted QBs who finished Week 1 Top 12:
15.6% → ROS QB1–6
11.1% → QB7–12
26.7% → QB13–24
46.7% → QB25+
So 26.7% became Top-12 QBs for the rest of the season.
And more than 91% eventually had another Top-12 week, while 62.2% had at least three more.
Some pretty good names came out of this group:
Patrick Mahomes (2018) — ADP 122 → QB1
Matt Ryan (2016) — ADP 150 → QB2
Baker Mayfield (2024) — ADP 139 → QB5
Alex Smith (2017) — ADP 181 → QB5
Carson Wentz (2017) — ADP 132 → QB6
The problem is replacement value. In a one-QB league, even a legitimate breakout QB isn't necessarily worth burning your #1 waiver priority.
RB — 39 breakouts
This was much uglier.
Only 9 of 39 (23.1%) became an RB2 or better for the rest of the season:
5.1% → RB1
18.0% → RB2
15.4% → RB3
61.5% → RB37+
So nearly 2 out of every 3 late-drafted Week 1 RB breakouts didn't even finish inside the Top 36 afterward.
But here's why we keep chasing them:
Kyren Williams (2023) — ADP 179 → RB6
James Conner (2018) — ADP 169 → RB8
Phillip Lindsay (2018) — ADP 231 → RB13
Those are potentially season-changing waiver claims.
I also split the RBs by Week 1 usage.
The higher-usage half averaged 9.50 PPG ROS versus 8.93 for the lower-usage half, and 95% of the high-usage group eventually produced another breakout week.
So my RB takeaway became:
Don't chase the touchdown. Chase the workload change.
WR — 62 breakouts
This was probably the biggest surprise.
Of 62 late-drafted WRs who finished Week 1 Top 20:
1.6% → WR1
9.7% → WR2
14.5% → WR3
74.2% → WR37+
Only 7 of 62 — 11.3% — became Top-24 WRs for the rest of the season.
And out of the entire 10-year sample...
Only ONE became a rest-of-season WR1.
Puka Nacua.
2023 ADP: 152
Week 1: 21.9 PPR
Week 2: 30.1
Weeks 2–17: 17.5 PPG
ROS finish: WR7
Puka wasn't evidence that every Week 1 WR breakout should be chased.
He was the exception that makes us want to chase every Week 1 WR breakout.
TE — 55 breakouts
And then TE went the opposite direction.
Of 55 late-drafted TEs who finished Week 1 Top 12:
20.0% → TE1–6
10.9% → TE7–12
30.9% → TE13–24
38.2% → TE25+
So 30.9% became Top-12 TEs for the rest of the season.
Using PPG instead of total points produced almost exactly the same answer: 32.7% of qualifying TEs were Top 12 in ROS PPG.
And unlike WR, Week 1 opportunity actually mattered.
High-usage TE breakouts:
9.19 PPG ROS
Low-usage:
7.12 PPG
The successful group includes:
Sam LaPorta (2023) → TE2
George Kittle (2018) → TE3
Darren Waller (2019) → TE3
Eric Ebron (2018) → TE4
Mark Andrews (2019) → TE5
So TE might actually be the position where reacting quickly to Week 1 usage makes the most sense.
One last thing: preseason ADP still mattered
I reran the analysis at increasingly deeper ADP cutoffs:
ADP 100+: 10.58 ROS PPG / 55.0% had 3+ more breakout weeks
ADP 120+: 10.27 / 52.2%
ADP 144+: 9.43 / 44.7%
ADP 168+: 8.87 / 41.2%
That's a pretty clean trend.
Week 1 doesn't erase what we knew in August.
A guy drafted 125th who explodes in Week 1 probably shouldn't be evaluated exactly the same as somebody drafted 220th who does it.
My takeaway
Week 1 is pretty good at identifying players capable of producing more useful weeks. It's much worse at identifying season-long starters.
Full study, player tables, methodology and sensitivity checks:
https://nfledgeline.com/insights/week-1-breakouts-waiver-priority-myth
Curious how everyone handles this:
Are you willing to burn the #1 waiver priority / big FAAB after Week 1, or do you usually want another week of evidence?
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Credit to u/Sptsjunkie for a great question: does the age or experience of a Week 1 breakout impact the likelihood that they sustain production for the rest of the season?
Ran some quick numbers on the same 201 Week 1 breakouts from the study, and there does appear to be a signa but it isn't as simple as young automatically being good.
The standout group was Year 2 players. Of the 27 second-year players in the sample, 48.1% went on to produce at a fantasy-starter level for the rest of the season, compared with 22.2% of rookies, 9.4% of Year 3 players, 22.0% in Years 4–5, and 19.3% for Year 6+. Second-year players also averaged 12.95 PPR points/game ROS, the highest of any experience group.
Age showed something similar. Breakouts aged 24–25 had a 35.7% ROS starter hit rate, versus 26.3% for players 23 or younger, 12.5% for ages 26–27, and 17.4% for players 28+.
Interestingly, though, age and experience by themselves had almost no overall raw correlation with ROS PPG. The Pearson and Spearman scores showed almost no real correlation. It may be a product have having relatively small sample sizes in the age and experience buckets. That said, skill positions are well known for having a sophomore bump, so the Year 2 conclusion may be informative.