Volume is usually the last thing worth arguing with. Michael Wilson has 51 targets in five games, as many as CeeDee Lamb and one more than Jaxon Smith-Njigba. The consensus has him WR18 this week.
The targets have not turned into much: 29 catches, 288 yards and one touchdown, 5.6 yards a target. He finished WR4 and WR16 on 17 and 13 targets in Weeks 3 and 4, and WR31, WR81 and WR50 on seven targets in each of his other three games.
This week Arizona plays at the Rams as a 12.5-point underdog, expected to score 19.5. For most of this season we have said that nothing predicts a receiver Sit better than where he ranks. With Week 5 added, one thing helps within the same rank: the team total. Receivers ranked 16th to 20th by projection on teams expected to score 20 or fewer finished outside the top 30 69% of the time, against 49% for the same ranks on teams expected to score more. For receivers ranked 11th to 15th the gap was about the same, 50% to 34%. The low-total groups are small, 13 and 18 cases, so treat this as a lean, not a law. Wilson is 18th in Sleeper’s projection.
The argument against: a team down two scores keeps throwing, and his 17-target game in Week 3 shows what that can look like. But the Cardinals’ passing game also runs through Trey McBride, who has drawn at least ten targets in every game, and last week Kendrick Bourne and Jalen Brooks drew 15 between them. Wilson is the Sit. McBride stays a Must Start.