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.
16 Point Lead
It seems that in Atlanta, no lead is safe. Most recently infamous for blowing a 28-3 lead in Super Bowl LI (which still fuels memes around the internet), the Falcons have now blown back-to-back games where they led by at least 16 points. Dan Quinn has achieved the impossible – he’s become less popular in Atlanta than Covid-19. In two consecutive possessions late in the 4th quarter, the Falcons ran the ball just once and netted -4 yards total in those drives. The second drive of that sequence featured 3 straight incompletions with less than 5 minutes remaining in the game, burning off a whole 11 seconds. Perhaps it’s too early in the season to fire a coach, but I cannot imagine a seat that is hotter than Dan Quinn’s right now, especially considering his offense is playing well for 3.5 quarters of football every Sunday.
75 TDs
This offseason was all about letting Russ cook, and that’s exactly what he’s done. Russell Wilson is now the first NFL QB to throw for at least 4 TDs in each of his first three games of the season. If there was an MVP for September, he would be the unanimous choice. On the season, he already has 14 passing TDs, on pace for a Peyton Manning crushing 75 on the season (the current record sits at 55). Of course, Patrick Mahomes was on pace to break this record back in 2018, but only managed (“only”) 50 TDs. Wilson is slightly ahead of Mahomes’ pace – he was at 13 after 3 games, and only managed one over the next two weeks. I think it’s certainly plausible that Wilson can keep up a record-breaking pace for quite a while. To go along with this, he’s also the #1 player in fantasy football, already cracking 100 points on the season. #LetRussCook
12 Total TDs
Right on the heel of Wilson’s great start is Josh Allen taking the Bills to 3-0. On the season, Allen has 10 passing TDs, 2 rushing TDs, 1,038 passing yards and has totaled 94.92 fantasy points, good for 2nd overall. If it was not for Wilson, then Allen might be at the top of the MVP discussion, alongside Aaron Rodgers – the last of the top QBs without a turnover on the season. Allen has shown some vast improvement this season. His first two years, his best completion rate was only 58.8%, but he currently sits at 71.1% on the season and has only thrown one interception so far. He’s already matched his TD total from his rookie season, and he’s halfway to matching 2019 through 3 games. Allen is perhaps the most improved player and is the kind of fantasy pick that will help people win leagues – Allen’s ADP put him at QB8 and was being drafted sometime in the 8th round in most drafts.
260 Kicking Yards
One of my new favorite changes in 2020 for fantasy football is the ability to directly award kickers for their exact yardage, instead of truncating the number and just giving 3, 4, 5, etc. This allowed Stephen Gostkowski to really max out his score on Sunday, where he kicked 6 field goals for a total of 260 yards, and threw an extra point in there for good measure. Under the old scoring system, he would have had 25 points, but yesterday, he put up 27 points, which is good for 1st place among kickers by nearly 10 points. His 27 points Sunday are more points than 8 of the top 20 kickers have scored all season long. I don’t often devote an entry in this column for a kicker, but perhaps more performances like this one will change that. Mason Crosby deserves an honorable mention. His 41.6 points on the season put him just behind Gostkowski, but his perfect 7 for 7 FGs and 13 for 13 XPs certainly deserve praise. Until next week, have fun picking a kicker – 8 of the top 13 kickers this week are owned in only 26% or less of Fleaflicker leagues.
-3.33 Points per Week
Usually, you want to stream your D/ST against a team that struggles, and more on that in a minute, but let’s first marvel at the team you do not want your D/ST to go against. In 3 weeks, the D/ST going up against the Green Bay Packers have scored -4, -3 and -3 points. The Packers have scored 36 points or more in every game so far, and have only given up one sack each of the last two weeks. Perhaps this information isn’t that helpful to you to win at fantasy football, but it’s certainly something to marvel at, and that’s the real point of this column. If you want points, start whoever is playing the Jets, like the Colts in Week 3, who put up 26 points from 3 turnovers and 2 TDs. Or stream whoever is going against the Eagles, who have seen Wentz give up 2 INTs in every game so far this season, to go along with 11 total sacks. It won’t get any better for the Eagles, who now face the 49ers, Steelers and Ravens in their next 3 games.
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