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 standard Yahoo scoring, unless otherwise noted.
3 More Touchdowns
Todd Gurley continues to set the league on fire, scoring another three touchdowns in San Francisco on Sunday. This time around, Gurley had a season low 19 touches en route to a paltry 26.6 points. Gurley's touchdown pace, now 14 in just 7 games, would put him at a league record 32 for the season, if he can keep it up. Realistically, LaDanian Tomlinson's single season record of 31 touchdowns is probably safe. Gurley is unlikely to play all 16 games if his team keeps winning - they currently have a 1.5 game lead for the #1 seed, and an incredible 4 game lead in their division already. To break Tomlinson's record, Gurley would likely need to increase his TD production. As someone who drafted Gurley #1 overall, I'm all for it. I just hope that Gurley doesn't sit out for week 16, as well as 17. That would truly be a fantasy football tragedy.
222 Consecutive Extra Points
Justin Tucker, the most accurate kicker in NFL history, finally missed an extra point. Tucker had converted his previous 222 attempts, over 102 games going back to the start of the 2012 season. Tucker's miss kept his team from tying the game at the end of the 4th quarter and the Saints beat the Ravens 24-23. The Ravens, Bengals and Browns losses combined to grant the Steelers first place in the AFC North, all during their bye week. Over in England, Marcus Mariota broke a career long streak of his own. Mariota threw his first interception in the red zone in his career. A career that has spanned 4 years now in 48 games, the streak was preceded by 41 passing TDs on 161 passing attempts with a 104.1 QB rating in the red zone. Like Tucker, Mariota also contributed to his team losing the game at the end of regulation. He's not the root cause, however - I put the blame on Coach Vrabel and the lack of Derrick Henry, as well as the ill-advised decision to desperately go for 2 when your team is winning on both sides of the ball.
35 Points per Game
Mitchell Trubisky leads the league in points per game over the last 4 games with 27.96 PPG. That's better than Gurley, Mahomes... everyone. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Bringing down that average is his performance in week 3 where he put up only 6.60 points. In the last 3 weeks, Trubisky is averaging 35 points per game. He's still only on a roster in 53% of Yahoo leagues, but will likely be a big pickup this week. Even if the Bears are losing (especially, really), they will be throwing the ball a lot. Trubisky has fewer than 31 pass attempts just once this season and he scored 43.46 points on the strength of 6 passing TDs in that outing. My point is that he's on hell of a tear and he's the perfect option for bye weeks coming up, because the Bears already were off during week 5.
7 games of 100 yards in a row
I do love keeping track of big streaks in the NFL. Earlier, we looked at some career long streaks that have ended, so let's go positive here. Adam Thielen now has 100 yards in each of the first 7 games this season and he's now one game short of tying Calvin Johnson's all time record of 8 games. Thielen is leading the league in receptions with 67, currently a 10 catch lead over 2nd place. He also leads in receiving yards with 822, though Julio Jones will go into tonight's game with 708 yards and I really could use a good performance, Julio. But I digress, The other streak is of course, Patrick Mahomes, who notched his 6th straight 300 yard game. He's up over 2200 passing yards on the season and on pace to break the 5000 yard mark. Mahomes is not technically a rookie, but that would smash Andrew Luck's rookie record of 4374 yards.
4 OT Games in 7 Weeks
Humor me for a moment while I examine the fantasy football relevance of the Cleveland Browns, who have now basically played a league leading 7.5 games on the season. This hasn't quite helped out the 2-4-1 Browns, but at least there's some bright spots on the team, unlike last year. Baker Mayfield has made the Browns look like a team again, but he's not very productive in fantasy football yet, averaging just over 17 points per game when he starts. A bright spot has been TE David Njoku, who is one of Mayfield's preferred targets. He has at least 50 receiving yards in the last 4 games, and a TD in each of the last two. He's now the TE9 on the season and can be started on a weekly basis. Finally, Nick Chubb seems like he'll settle into Carlos Hyde's empty spot just fine. Chubb had 80 yards and a TD on Sunday and had all but 5 of the team's rushing attempts. Chubb should be a decent RB2/Flex start for most of the season, with a lot of upside.
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