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Last week went down just like it's supposed to. The Colts scored a touchdown in the first quarter, which would have been enough to beat the Texans. But, they decided to put up a bunch more on their way to a 31-3 shellacking. If you went with me, and the majority, you were sipping champagne by halftime!

Gonna keep it short and sweet this week. The Arizona Cardinals are the pick against our familiar opponent, the Houston Texans. Starting to notice a theme in my picks the last 3 weeks. Not much to explain here. The Cardinals are yet to lose and are favored by more than 2 touchdowns in this game at home. This also is the best spot for the Cardinals as I look through the remainder of their schedule, but I guess you could say that about most teams on their Texans week. So this week just sit back and relax, tougher weeks are down the road.

Cheers! Drink Five!

Welcome to Statistically (in)Significant, the place to find great stats that probably only matter at the water cooler (or bar). Each week I'll dig through the stats of the week gone by and deliver you some choice conversation starters. All fantasy stats are half PPR scoring unless otherwise noted.

162.1 Total Fantasy Points

Derrick Henry didn’t score another 3 TDs this week, but he didn’t need to in order to finish the week as the highest scoring player in all of fantasy football for the 2021 season. Henry, who scored just 15.4 points this week, actually brought his average down to 27 points per game, in part because he failed to find the end zone. He did manage to throw a touchdown, however, salvaging his worst fantasy performance since Week 1 of this season. Speaking of bad fantasy performances, Patrick Mahomes put up his second worst fantasy game ever (Week 7 of 2019 was the only game worse). This poor performance left just enough of a window for Henry to pass Mahomes for the season-long lead. The last time a non-QB finished with the most fantasy points at the end of a season was Todd Gurley in 2017, who manage to do that in only 15 games.

201 Receiving Yards

This week, Ja’Marr Chase announced his presence as not only an Offensive Rookie of the Year candidate (he was already in the lead for that) but as one of the best wide receivers in the game right now. Chase is now the WR2 through 7 games on the season, finished just behind Cooper Kupp for both the season and Week 7-point totals. Chase had a career high 201 receiving yards, helped along by an 82-yard touchdown reception – a short pass where he got the ball over the middle and did the rest of the work himself. This was Chase’s second game with 10 targets. He leads the league with 21.5 yards per reception and is second only to Kupp in season long yardage. Chase is doing the most with what he’s given. He has only 35 receptions on the whole season (on pace for 85 for the year, though I would bet on the over for that). By contrast, Kupp has more receptions (56) than Chase even has targets (51). Chase’s 3.6 points per touch is an amazing number, one that is unmatched by anyone in the league so far.

28.54 Fantasy Points

The best free agent of the week, at least in the drinkfive.com “experts” league, is Tua Tagovailoa, owned in 71% of Fleaflicker leagues, but not this one. Tua is not only the best free agent of the week, he’s the best QB of the week, out of all players. Tua just edges out his 2020 draft mate, Joe Burrow, who led his team to a very impressive 41-17 victory over the Ravens. Tue finishes as the 4^th highest scoring player on the week, before the two WRs mentioned above and the man who gave away Tom Brady’s 600^th touchdown catch. Thankfully for Mike Evans, the fan gave it back, so he doesn’t have to get the cold shoulder from Brady for the rest of the season. Tua had a rough start to this season, but after a few weeks off for injury, he has returned and played very well at QB. In 2 games he has 6 touchdowns (and 3 picks, yuck). He has also run for over 20 yards in each game, and is averaging 25.45 points per game during this stretch. With games against Houston, New York Jets, and Carolina coming up, he’s a great streaming option to keep around for a while.

89.47% Catch Rate

The highest catch rate in the NFL belongs to Bengals TE C.J. Uzomah, who has caught 17 of his 19 targets so far this season (Pat Freiermuth leads the league at 90%). Uzomah has had quite the up-and-down season. He’s currently the TE10 on the year with 64.1 total fantasy points, however, 46.6 of those points (almost 73% of his total points) came in weeks 4 and 7. He finished as the TE1 in week 4 and currently leads the field in week 7 with no looming threats to overtake him on Monday night. Despite his fantasy high points, he’s a very tough player to start. He has only one week with more than 3 targets, and that was just 6 in week 4. Despite this, he’s managed to find the end zone 5 times in the last 4 games, so perhaps it’s time to find a way to insert him into your lineup, and maybe more than just a streaming option. Oh yea, and if you’re wondering, Rondale Moore has the highest catch percentage among wide receivers at 83.87%. Jaylen Waddle has the highest catch percentage among WRs with more than 50 targets with 77.19%.

602 Career Touchdowns

There was one thing happening this week that I just had to mention, and no, it’s not National Tight Ends Day. Raise your hand if you’re sick of hearing about that. No, this week Tom Brady threw his 600^th touchdown in the regular season. And his 599^th, and numbers 601 and 602 if we’re counting them all. Of course, we are. This season, Brady is leading the league with 21 passing touchdowns. Matthew Stafford is in 2^nd with 19. Brady also has a rushing touchdown, for good measure. He has 26 of those in his career. In addition, the ageless one is leading the league in completions, passing attempts, passing yards, and yards per game. Pretty good for anyone, unprecedented for a 44-year-old in the NFL. The yards per game mark is his second highest in his entire career, and he’s ahead of his career averages in completion percentage, interception percentage, and QB rating. I suppose if you’re going to play so many years in the NFL, you might as well make them count instead of just playing out the streak. In a league with so much great young QB talent, Brady might still be the best one each and every Sunday that he steps on the field. And I don’t mean that as an overall picture, I mean that right freaking now, he’s the best QB in football.

Trades…vaccination issues…felony car crashes…MVP’s lost for the season…teams telling stars to just go home…don’t you just hate how boring the week can be before we get to the next Sunday?

Well let’s try to get some for excitement back and get going with these picks!

Week 9 – HERE WE GO!!!!

(HOME TEAM IN CAPS)

14 – DALLAS over Denver – Much to the dismay of, well, basically everyone outside of Dallas, it seem like this Cowboys team is legit.

13 – Buffalo over JACKSONVILLE – An obvious candidate for our top line this week, but its hard to 100% trust a road team.

12 – NEW ORLEANS over Atlanta – Sure there are QB questions in New Orleans now, but there are way more issues in Atlanta right now.

11 – KANSAS CITY over Green Bay – Obviously there is one big factor to think of when picking this game…game time temp…right?

10 – LOS ANGELES RAMS over Tennessee – A prime time game against one of the best looking teams in the league is not the best time to lose your MVP running back.

9 – PITTSBURGH over Chicago – The Steelers showed that they won’t just be rolling over and dying this season last week – not good news for a struggling Bears team.

8 – INDIANAPOLIS over New York Jets – It’s really hard to think that the Jets can run on Mike White’s magic again.

7 – CINCINNATI over Cleveland – The Browns just seem to have too much locker room drama to win in Cincy.

6 – BALTIMORE over Minnesota –  I’ve been on the Viking bandwagon most of the season…losing to Cooper Rush is a quick way for me to jump off.

5 – MIAMI over Houston – With all the trade rumors behind him, I see a big day for the current Miami quarterback. My BOLD PREDICTION for this week is that TUA WILL FINISH WITH OVER 400 PASSIG YARDS.

4 – Las Vegas over NEW YORK GIANTS – Welp, the Raiders won their last “after a rough week” game following the Gruden following, playing the Giants is a reason to think they can do it again.

3 – New England over CAROLINA – If Christian McCaffrey ends up playing, feel free to flip this one to a Carolina win.

2 – PHILADELPHIA over Los Angeles Chargers – Last week gave me reason to pump some breaks on the Chargers being an elite team.

1 – SAN FRANCISCO over Arizona – It sounds like injuries are catching up to the Cardinals.