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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.

1 Pass Completion

A trio of position players completed passes this week. Perhaps, I should be more specific that they each completed one pass to their own team, but more on that in a moment. On Thursday, we saw Logan Thomas, a TE on a Football Team, hit Terry McLaurin on a 28-yard completion in the first quarter, the longest pass play of the day for Washington. Washington only really needed Antonio Gibson on Thursday, but we’ll get to him in a little bit. Cole Beasley joined in the fun on Sunday, throwing a 20-yard pass to Gabriel Davis in the Bills’ victory over the Chargers. Which brings us to the more infamous player who completed only one pass on Sunday. This, of course, needs a qualifier, because Kendall Hinton did complete two passes to the wrong team, and only one to his own team. A stat line of 1 for 9 with 2 INTs is not something I thought I would see in the NFL in a game that didn’t include some sort of blizzard or hurricane. Here we are, in 2020, where a practice squad player gets to start at QB because he was a backup QB in college.

51.4 Fantasy Points

We’re not here for tiny numbers, generally speaking, though sometimes they can be fun. Let’s break down the top fantasy performance of the season. Tyreek Hill did most of his damage in the first quarter, coming just a few yards shy of the all-time record for receiving yards in a single quarter. Hill started off with a 34-yard completion on the very first play of the game. He added another 23 yards on the same drive and had 57 yards total before 2 minutes had elapsed in the game. Two drives later, Hill got loose behind the defense and caught a 75-yard touchdown, his 6^th receiving TD from Patrick Mahomes of 50 yards or more. A good quarter, you say? There was still 7 minutes left to go! On the next Chiefs drive, Hill caught 3 more passes, capping it off with a 44-yard TD reception. Hill ended the quarter with 7 receptions on 7 targets for 203 yards and 2 touchdowns. In comparison, Hill slacked off the rest of the game and finished with “only” 13 receptions for 269 yards and 3 touchdowns.

3 Touchdowns on the Ground

Tyreek Hill wasn’t the only player to find the end zone three times in Week 12. A pair of running backs managed that feat. First, on Thursday, Antonio Gibson was all the offense that Washington needed to defeat the Cowboys in their annual “why do the same teams always play on Thanksgiving?” afternoon naptime entertainment. Gibson started the game just fine, scoring early to put fantasy owners at ease. It was his finish that was truly impressive. He had fourth-quarter touchdown runs of 23 and 37 yards to turn his average day into the best game of his rookie season. A pick-six by Washington on the play following Gibson’s last touchdown put away the game for the Football Team and also buried the Cowboys' last playoff hopes for this year. Gibson was outdone on Sunday by Derrick Henry, who did almost all of his damage in the first half against the Colts. Henry finished with 178 yards and 3 more touchdowns. This brings his season totals to a league-leading 1,257 rush yards and 12 touchdowns, just one behind Dalvin Cook.

1 WR Over 1,000 Yards

We’re 12 weeks into the season, so while almost every team has played 11 games, we have just one wide receiver averaging 100 yards per game, Davante Adams at 100.9 yds/gamee – a definite departure from the high-flying passing numbers that we’ve seen in recent years. Tyreek Hill is the only WR who has cracked the 1,000-yard mark (1,081) and it took a monster game from him on Sunday to do so. His teammate, Travis Kelce, who is the TE1, 2, and 3 is second in the league in receiving yards with 978. On the rushing side, we have two players averaging 100 yards per game – the aforementioned Derrick Henry with 114 yds/game and Dalvin Cook just behind him at 113 yds/game. The lack of a truly dominant top end in fantasy football has probably prevented teams from running away with it and made waiver wire moves and starting the right guys in the right matchups even more important in this chaotic football season.

23 Fantasy Kicker Fantasy Points

In a surprise to no one, kicker ownership is completely off track. This week’s top kicker was Younghoe Koo of Atlanta who went 5/5 on field goals and 4/4 on extra points for a whopping 23 points, second on his team to only the D/ST, who put up 28 fantasy points on their own. Of course, the Raiders turning the ball over 5 times helped, but I digress, this is about the ridiculous ownership numbers of kickers. Going by our drinkfive writer’s league, Koo is the only kicked owned (by yours truly) of the top 12 kickers this week. In fact, only 5 of the top 20 are on a team at all. The average ownership in Fleaflicker of the top 12 kickers is only 34.5%. So have fun picking a kicker for next week, I suggest that whatever you do, just swap out the kicker you have for someone at random!

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.

0 Targets in Week 11

The WR3 this week, (or TE1, depending on your hosting site) had exactly zero targets in the passing game this week but put up 24.42 points. In surely the most controversial issue of the fantasy season, Taysom Hill started at QB this week for the Saints, while retaining WR or TE eligibility on most fantasy platforms. This was surely a triumph of the well prepared because Hill found the end zone twice on the ground and also threw for 223 yards, more than doubling his career passing yards total. He still sits at zero passing TDs, but has 13 career rushing & receiving TDs, already halfway to Drew Brees’s career total. The fantasy football story from this game that has been buried is that Michael Thomas finally had a good game. He broke out for 9 receptions and 104 yards, more than he had combined in his previous three starts in 2020. Going into next week’s much tougher matchup against Denver, it’s anyone’s guess how Taysom Hill will perform, or even what positions he will be eligible to start in. One thing I think we might be able to speculate with some confidence is that Michael Thomas has resumed duties as the WR1 on the New Orleans Saints.

25 Fantasy Points Per Game

With 9 starts now under his belt, Chargers rookie QB Justin Herbert is averaging 25 points per game, which is good for 5^th among all QBs in the league. This week he put up his second-highest total of the year, 27.74 points, on the strength of his highest passing yards total of 366 and 3 touchdowns in an easy victory of the Jets. Herbert is now 7^th in overall points at the QB position and 5^th in points per game, which is a remarkable feat considering he was only inserted as an emergency starter in Week 2, with no apparent plans to make him a starter that early in the season. Now that Joe Burrow is done for the year and we saw Tua Tagovailoa benched against Denver in the 4^th quarter, I think it’s safe that say that Justin Herbert has the Offensive Rookie of the Year award all but wrapped up with 6 games still remaining in the season.

16 Receptions

Keenan Allen caught 16 passes on Sunday, a franchise record for the Chargers, in a game that they had to have to avoid supreme embarrassment. Let’s face it, anyone who loses to the Jets this year will be the laughing stock of the week, so the Chargers did dodge that bullet in a game where they were up 24-6 at one point. That’s very on point for the Chargers this year. But I digress, let’s go back to Keenan Allen. He’s now leading the league with 81 receptions after 10 games. A bit off of Michael Thomas’s record-setting pace last year, but still on pace for 130 on the season and by far the most he’s had in a single season of his career, which was 104 last year. Allen has been a huge part of bringing Justin Herbert along as a rookie, and I don’t think that either player would be in the excellent fantasy position they are in without the other one.

3 Out of the Last 4 Weeks

Dalvin Cook has now led all running backs in fantasy points in 3 of the last 4 weeks. In Weeks 8 and 9, it was from gaudy totals of 47 and 38 points, but last week he led a rather low scoring group with 22.50 points. Cook has 14 total touchdowns on the season and has scored in all but one game this season. He also exceeded 100 yards from scrimmage for the 6^th time this season – his 4^th week in a row. Cook is now sitting all alone as the RB1 on the season, having edged out Alvin Kamara by 5 points, though Cook does have one fewer game played on the season, putting his average points per game well ahead of everyone other than Christian McCaffrey. While it’s certainly possible that Cook is passed in points by a player tonight, let’s just suppose that doesn’t happen. That means that while Cook has been on this hot 4 game tear, his team is 3-1, sweeping through the NFC North while dropping a game to the Dallas Cowboys of the embarrassing NFC East. Of course, the Cowboys did get Andy Dalton back who threw 3 touchdowns and saw Ezekiel Elliott crack 100 yards for the first time all season.

22.86 Fantasy Points

Travis Kelce continued his utterly dominant season this week, catching a wide-open touchdown to seal the victory for the Chiefs late in the 4^th quarter last night. Kelce now has 162.76 points on the season, which would make him the WR3 on the season if he played that position. Of course, instead, he’s the TE1, but since the numbers line up so well with Taysom Hill, why not just play with positional eligibly a little bit. Kelce has now finished as the top TE of the week 4 times on the season, and 3 of the last 4 weeks, just like Dalvin Cook. Kelce has the 3^rd most receiving yards in the league and leads all tight ends in every statistical category. Kelce is on a pace to have the second-most fantasy points in a season by a TE in NFL history, right on pace with Jimmy Graham’s 2013 season. He’s still got some work to do if he wants to match Rob Gronkowski’s 2011 season, however.

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.

8 Rushing Attempts

The best running back in fantasy football received as many carries as the third-string QB slash gadget player on his team. Don’t worry, Alvin Kamara is still the best RB in fantasy, but his 8 carries for 15 yards is kind of funny to look at. He did find the end zone twice on those carries, but his 1.9 yards per carry versus Taysom Hill’s 5.6 yards per carry. Kamara owners are most thankful for the passing game, where he led the team with 7 receptions for 83 yards and another touchdown. This puts Kamara 56.1 fantasy points ahead of all but Dalvin Cook, who plays tonight and is the only other RB with any distance between him and the rest of the league. Cook has his work cut out for him, trying to keep up with Kamara. Kamara put up his third 30+ point performance this week, despite being out-rushed by a gadget QB. Cook has to face a Bears defense that hasn’t allowed 100 rushing yards to an opponent’s entire RB group since week 3.

14.5 Fantasy Points

Sounds like an OK game, right? What if it was a season total? What if this total was from a player who was drafted in the first round? What if this player, though injured, did manage to play 3 games this season? Well, this would be one of the more epic busts of the year, I suppose. Michael Thomas has a grand total of 18 targets with 10 receptions for 95 yards and 0 touchdowns in 3 games this season. Last season Michael Thomas had 300.1 fantasy points, so he’s not even reached 5% of those points so far this year. Let’s compare, for a moment, another first round pick who has played only 3 games. Christian McCaffrey, also facing a terrible disappointment of a season after having missed a majority of the season, has managed to put up 81.9 fantasy points in just 3 appearances, good for the RB31 on the season. He’s at least looking at nearly 20% of his points from last season. Thomas’s outlook for the rest of the season just looks bleak, with Drew Brees looking at a possible multi-week injury. Perhaps the injection of last year’s passing yards leader, Jameis Winston, can get him going again.

163 Fantasy Points in 5 Games

Kyler Murray has taken over the NFL in the past few weeks. His team now sits atop the toughest division in the league (by tiebreaker), he’s in the MVP conversation now, and he’s far and away the QB1 on the season. Over the past 5 games, Murray has averaged 32.6 points per game and scored at least 1 rushing and 1 passing TD in each game, an NFL record. He’s only thrown 3 interceptions during that stretch, compared to 10 passing TDs and 6 rushing TDs. Murray is now 32 points ahead of the pack at the QB position and has already had his bye week. Checking in on the running back, Kyler Murray, he’s currently sitting at 604 rushing yards, good for 8^th in the league. He has an average of 6.9 yards per carry, which leads the league and his 10 TDs are 2^nd in the league on the ground. His 120.4 points on the ground would make him the RB11 on the season. We all get to watch Kyler on Thursday night in Seattle, so tune in to see what ridiculous shit he can come up with!

3-50+ Yard Field Goals

Tyler Bass (who?) had a hell of a day for the Bills. He finished the week as the top kicker, netting his owners a cool 19.7 points. Of course, the problem here is that he’s only owned in about 25% of fantasy leagues. Bass went 3 for 3 on Sunday, both in extra points and field goals, from 54, 55, and 58 yards. With this performance, Bass now finds himself on top of the kicker list, and hey, who doesn’t want to be K1? As the weather starts to really turn – we saw at least a couple of games really affected by the weather yesterday – nabbing kickers who will be indoors could be a very smart streaming move. We all also need to stop worrying about a name when we grab kickers. Of the kickers who have made 20 or more field goals this year, the highest ownership rate is Jason Sanders of Miami, only at 68%. Justin Tucker will not save you, or your fantasy team, especially since he’s outdoors in crummy weather cities for all but one game to close out the season.

728 Days

It’s been basically two full years since the #1 overall pick in the 2005 NFL draft, Alex Smith, started a game. To celebrate, he went ahead and put up career highs in pass attempts (55), pass completions (38), and passing yards (390). Unfortunately for his Football Team, he was unable to find the end zone, and ultimately, they fell to the Lions after some exciting back-and-forth in the 4^th quarter which saw 5 scores between the two teams. Smith looks like he’s set to start the rest of the season in Washington, and in an incredibly down NFC East, they could make the playoffs if they could just win a couple of games. The Eagles are currently in 1^st place with only 3 wins on the season. This is the latest into a season that a division winner has had only 3 wins. So, congrats to Alex Smith, for completing his return to the NFL. Now he’s got the first game out of his system, he can focus on the work of actually turning his team around, and with great young players like Terry McLaurin and Antonio Gibson in a division as historically bad as the NFC East, no Football Team can be counted out.

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.

252 Yards from Scrimmage

For the second week in a row, Dalvin Cook reached 200 yards from scrimmage in another dominating performance. This time around, he only needed 22 carries to hit 206 rushing yards, but he still added 2 catches for 46 yards for good measure. He did “only” find the end zone twice, but it was enough to be the top scorer for the second week in a row with 38.2 points. Most weeks I wonder if someone will turn in a performance on Monday night that makes one of my entries a moot point. This week is not one of those times. Cook is now the RB1 on the season with a 10-point lead over Alvin Kamara, who turned in a mere 49 yards from scrimmage in a game where his team put up 38 points. Cook has 13 touchdowns in just 7 games and is basically single-handedly dragging his team out of the basement of the NFC North. An honorable mention goes to Christian McCaffrey, who did not skip a beat and put up 32.1 points in his return, continuing his average of scoring 2 TDs per game. Unfortunately, it sounds like McCaffrey is headed to the bench with another injury.

2% Ownership in Fleaflicker Leagues

There were a number of familiar names on the top WR list of the week, but the one above all the others was definitely new to me. Richie James, who is owned in just 2% of Fleaflicker leagues, and was started in zero leagues that you or I are in, had 3 receptions over 40 yards, including his 41-yard touchdown in what can only be described as garbage time while the 49ers were down 34-10 late in the 4^th quarter. Fantasy football, however, does not care what the score is on the field, so James gets credit for all the 28.9 points that he earned last Thursday night. James just barely edged out Tyreek Hill, who put up his first 100 receiving yard game of the season and caught the 100^th (and 101^st) touchdown pass of Patrick Mahomes’ career. Hill has been around for all of them – he also caught Mahomes’ first TD pass back in 2018. Mahomes is the fastest QB to 100 passing TDs, beating Dan Marino’s mark by 4 games.

3^rd Week as the Top TE

Travis Kelce has been the top TE on a weekly basis for 1/3^rd of the season so far. Not too bad when you consider just how volatile the position is in fantasy football. Kelce is basically a lock for the top spot when he reaches the 20-point mark. This week, and last’s, 20.9-point performances were good for the lead, and it wasn’t even close. He also put up 20.8 in Week 5 and led the league. On the season, Kelce is just dominating the position and is in tier 1 all by himself and it’s not even close. You might say that tier 2 is his as well, considering he has 139.9 points on the season and the next closest player is over 50 points behind him. Darren Waller has quietly been the TE2 on the season without ever finishing in the top 2 of any given week. Waller leads his team in both receptions and receiving yards, though being 8 games into the season and not having a single receiving leader over 400 yards is nothing to write home about.

8^th Most Rushing Yards in the League

Kyler Murray did all he could on Sunday to win but lost to a very surprising Miami team that is playing way beyond any level that people expected this season. Murray added another 106 rushing yards to his already gaudy numbers this season. For the year, he has the 8^th most rushing yards of any player in the league. He’s averaging 7.14 yards per carry. If he never threw a pass, he would be the RB13– 102.3 points come from his rushing yards and 8 rushing TDs. As it stands, Murray is the QB1 on the season with 240.5 points in 8 games. He leads a tier 1 of QBs that include 3 other players, all of whom deserve MVP votes so far this year. Patrick Mahomes got a shout out earlier, but really the major props go to Josh Allen who shut up his critics for a week with his 44-34 win over the Seahawks. Russell Wilson was the only one of the group to struggle, turning the ball over 4 times and scoring his second-lowest total of the season, 24.1 points.

8 Rushing Yards

Tom Brady suffered the worst defeat of his career (35 points) last night and everybody was invited to watch it on Sunday Night Football. The Buccaneers combined for just 8 total rushing yards in a game where none of their players reached double-digit fantasy points. Brady had just 209 passing yards and 3 INTs as he could only muster a late field goal for his team to keep them from being shut out. On the other side, Drew Brees was the only one with a good fantasy game, despite his team putting up 38 points. Brees found the end zone 4 times reaching 22.68 fantasy points, nearly 10 more than the next highest player on his team. Of note in this game was the fact that it contained the two all-time passing touchdown leaders in the NFL. Brees and Brady keep trading the top spot, but this week it was all Brees. He’s now in the lead 564-561.