Identifying the best skill sets might be paramount to fantasy football success, but a player can't get there without opportunity. Spend the majority of your time evaluating the former, but don't do so at the complete expense of the latter.
At the receiving positions, fortunately, there's a quick-and-easy method to identify players who stand to gain or lose opportunity in the coming season: The vacated-targets method, which compares a team's past year total to the total accumulated by the players on its roster for the upcoming season. It stands to reason that if a team lost personnel during the offseason, that means more opportunities should open up for the players who remain, and if a team added personnel without removing any, it means more mouths to feed and therefore diminished opportunity.
It's an inexact science, as injuries do impact these numbers, as you'll see with the first team on the list below (though in their example, the absent player's departure actual signals even more targets that might've been vacated had he stayed healthy). Regression to the mean, or progression to the player's expected average, also impacts vacated-target numbers, as in the example of the Baltimore Ravens, who threw a league-low (and lowest single-year total by any team in eight years) 406 passes in 2020 and will probably see an increase (even if slight) this season.
The types of targets also have influence on opportunity, as not every target is equally valuable. It's for that reason that, this season, I've also split out red-zone and end-zone targets, as well as targets by position, in order to identify specific changes in opportunity for each team.
The following four teams stand out as those who should provide great, expanded opportunity for current receivers on their rosters, due to the departure of key players from 2020. These teams rank among the leaders in vacated targets:
Detroit Lions: Since the conclusion of last season, they've lost their No. 1-on-the-depth-chart wide receiver, Kenny Golladay, who led the team in targets in both 2018 (119) and 2019 (117) and had 32 in his five games played in 2020, as well as their top two target-getters from 2020, Marvin Jones Jr. (116) and Danny Amendola (68), to free agency. All in all, this team has a league-high 180 vacated targets, all of them by wide receivers, and their 22 vacated red-zone and 13 end-zone targets are fourth- and third-most. There's a lot of chatter surrounding tight end T.J. Hockenson, who had 102 overall, 15 red-zone and eight end-zone targets in 2020 and will be entering his third NFL season, and will be playing under a tight end-friendly coach in Dan Campbell with a new quarterback in Jared Goff who targeted the position 22.8% of the time in 2019-20 combined. While it's difficult to envision Hockenson absorbing the majority of those vacated targets, considering he had the fifth-most at his position already and the top tight ends annually usually total in the 140s, there's still enough opportunity to potentially vault him into the positional top three. It's also a golden opportunity for wide receivers Tyrell Williams, Breshad Perriman and fourth-round draft pick Amon-Ra St. Brown, as someone is going to grab a sizable chunk of Goff's passes. St. Brown is one of my preferred rookie wide receiver sleepers for this reason.
New Orleans Saints: Their 143 vacated targets rank fourth-most in the league, but they're more of an offseason story than the two teams ahead of them, following quarterback Drew Brees' retirement. That'll probably change the team's offensive makeup, considering the Saints averaged 10.5 pass attempts per game fewer during Brees' Week 10-13 absence than the remainder of the year, but it's still a significant enough number to enhance some of their receivers' opportunities. Most notably, 19 of those were end-zone targets, the NFL's largest vacated number in that department, 10 of which belonged to tight end Jared Cook. That's a lot of the reason for Adam Trautman's sleeper case, as the second-year player stands to benefit most from coach Sean Payton's historically tight end-friendly offense.
Cincinnati Bengals: Before Joe Burrow's season-ending injury, theirs was one of the most pass-heavy offenses in the league, their 371 attempts through Week 10 ranking fourth-most. While Burrow's recovery from reconstructive knee surgery might keep the team from leaning excessively heavily upon him, the Bengals' makeup suggests this should again be one of the most pass-oriented teams around. That's what makes their 175 vacated targets, the second-most in the league, so significant, as theirs is an up-and-coming passing game where opportunity could fuel a breakthrough for any of three different wide receivers: Tee Higgins, rookie Ja'Marr Chase or Tyler Boyd. In other words, departed wide receiver A.J. Green's 107 targets will go to one of -- or more likely divided up amongst -- the three, with Higgins and Chase particularly attractive candidates as second- and first-year receivers who line up on the perimeter. The team also lost Giovani Bernard's 58 targets and didn't really bring in a viable candidate to absorb them, so there's a good chance that Joe Mixon could breeze past his career high of 55 targets (2018), giving him bona fide RB1 appeal.
San Francisco 49ers: What stands out most in their numbers is their league-high 26 vacated red-zone targets, as while they might be a less pass-heavy offense should rookie Trey Lance quickly overtake Jimmy Garoppolo as the team's starting quarterback, someone stands to benefit with those looks in scoring position. Brandon Aiyuk (14) was the team's categorical leader in 2020 and Deebo Samuel (17) and George Kittle (16) were easily one-two in 2021, and all three might stand to benefit with Kendrick Bourne (10), Jordan Reed (8) and Trent Taylor (8) no longer on the team. From a total-targets angle, the 49ers' 123 vacated ranks fifth-most.
Other teams high on the vacated-targets list: Los Angeles Rams 146, Carolina Panthers 108, Seattle Seahawks 83, Indianapolis Colts 75.
Conversely, these two teams are in a bit of a numbers crunch, having added personnel to an already crowded roster. Incumbent receivers on each might take a hit in 2021 in terms of opportunity:
New England Patriots: They spent a combined $136 million on wide receivers Nelson Agholor and Bourne and tight ends Hunter Henry and Jonnu Smith during the offseason, and after doing the math, they'll need to squeeze 221 more targets from 2020 into their stat sheet in 2021, by far the most in the league. It's the reason that fantasy analysts and early drafters are so unwilling to take a stand on either Henry or Smith, with each threatening to cut into the other's opportunities, and it's perhaps a reason why wide receiver N'Keal Harry is requesting a trade. Keep this in mind, too: The Patriots, at least for so long as Cam Newton is the quarterback, are certain to be one of the most run-oriented offenses in the league, so it's not like coach Bill Belichick is going to significantly shift directions and send 200-plus targets the receivers' way. Someone is going to lose out here, and early signals that Jakobi Meyers should retain his No. 1 receiver status hints that all of the free-agent additions might be it, so all that tight-end hedging probably does make sense.
Washington Football Team: For as much as I like the Curtis Samuel fit, adding his 97 targets to the ledger does present opportunity-driven issues, as Washington's 118 added targets rank second-most in the league. This team barely shed any receivers during the offseason, and it's not like it was an exceedingly run-oriented team in 2020, ranking ninth with 601 pass attempts. Terry McLaurin (131 targets), J.D. McKissic (111) and Logan Thomas (108) remain, and all of them seem likely to remain big parts of the passing game. Someone stands to lose some of that opportunity, and it's possible it'll be spread across the quartet.
Other teams high on the added-targets list: New York Jets 84, Buffalo Bills 67, Tampa Bay Buccaneers 52, Miami Dolphins 50.