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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.

0-4 vs the Chargers

Eli Manning is now 0-4 against the team that he shunned on draft day, way back in 2004. Sure, he probably made the right call, considering the Giants have two Super Bowl rings to the Charger's zero since that draft, but karma's a bitch. The Giants lost all 4 of their wide receivers on Sunday, with Odell Beckham Jr. and Dwayne Harris out for the season. We'll see what happens going forward with Brandon Marshall and Sterling Shepard, but the Giants are really hurting now and have an 0-5 record to show for all their struggles. For now, the Giants are a fantasy wasteland, best avoided until they can get some things figured out.

73 Seconds to Win the Game

When Aaron Rodgers has the ball in his hands at the end of a game, it just feels like a TD is inevitable. Perhaps the biggest mistake the Cowboys made in their own late fourth quarter touchdown drive was leaving too much time on the clock for Rodgers. This game delivered on its marquee matchup status, with 5 lead changes in the fourth quarter and a ridiculous end of game lateral play that worked a lot better than most - and resulted in the Packers D/ST gaining two fumble recoveries in the same play. Can we get an official scorekeeper explanation on this? As a commissioner, I sure can't explain it to people in my league. Sorry, @Shawn_Foss.

125.8 Passer Rating

Alex Smith has a 125.8 passer rating for the 2017 season, through 5 games. This leads the league, and it's not even very close. Brady is second with 112 - but Brady is closer to Deshaun Watson at 7 than he is to Alex Smith. Smith is also leads the league in completion percentage (76.6), yards per attempt (8.8), game winning drives (3) and has zero interceptions so far. In fact, he has zero turnovers at all and over 100 rushing yards already! All this maybe makes this last stat a little more impressive - he's only second overall in fantasy points this season, now just 0.32 points behind a guy who didn't even start in Week 1.

5 (more) Passing TD's

Deshaun Watson scored another 5 TD's last night, and has 10 in the last two games (9 passing, 1 rushing). He has now put up over 70 points in the last two weeks, with those games basically splitting that total. This has catapulted him into the top fantasy spot after 5 weeks, and with his 30.8 point average over the last three weeks, he's not just in the QB1 discussion, he's near the top of it. The Texans get Cleveland next week, followed by a bye week and a pretty easy looking schedule with a couple of tough road games sprinkled in. Watson has made a whole bunch of guys fantasy relevant in Houston, including Will Fuller and D'onta Foreman, not to mention the re-emergence of DeAndre Hopkins as a solid WR1.

5 Interceptions

Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger threw 5 INT's on Sunday, yes F-I-V-E. Two of those went as a pick-six and perhaps the better story here is that the Jaguars DST has 12 or more points in 4 of their 5 games this season. Yesterday's 28 points matches their Week 1 total, and a home game against the Rams and a road game in Indy means you fire them up for a couple more weeks before their bye. It also is likely to mean you find a way to keep them through your bye week. On the other side, you've got the Steelers juggernaut offense that is just....not. Roethlisberger knows it's basically on him to figure this out and improve so as to not squander the great talent they have surrounded him with. Matchups in KC and Detroit over the next three weeks do not give a good outlook that he gets it turned around quickly.

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.

1500 Yards from Scrimmage

Alvin Kamara and Mark Ingram continue to be the most prolific RB tandem that we've seen in a long time. Currently, they're both on pace to pass 1500 yards from scrimmage by the end of the season, a feat that has never occurred with teammates before. Ingram and Kamara are now sitting as the 2nd and 3rd highest scoring fantasy RBs on the season. They've combined for 20 touchdowns on the season. They've been the driving force behind the Saints leading the division and are now 9-3, just a game behind getting a bye in the first week of the playoffs. The Saints are once again an offensive juggernaut, ranking 3rd in the league in rushing. Interestingly enough, they are just 16th in pass attempts, but 3rd in passing yardage. I suppose it helps to have Drew Brees to go along with a pair of amazing RBs.

70+ Yard Plays

Alex Smith had a 70 yard run on Sunday to go along with a 79 yard passing TD to Tyreek Hill. This makes Smith the first player in the Super Bowl-era that has both a passing and rushing play of at least 70 yards in the same game. This was the rebound game that Smith was looking for, despite the outcome, fantasy owners are really happy with his performance. The Chiefs changing signal callers seems to have worked for them, at least for now (reminiscent of the Bengals in Week 3). Now for the Chiefs, they need to figure out how to fix their defense, because giving up 38 points to Josh McCown's Jets just isn't a good look for a team that's still leading a division. Want to know how frustrating it is to be a KC Chief this year? I leave you with Marcus Peters's mini tantrum.

3 Years & 85 Yards

It's been 3 years since we've been able to go nuts with real Josh Gordon hype, and though his return to the field wasn't Flash Gordon style, it was very promising. Gordon, you'll remember, led the league in receiving yards in 2013 with 1,646 on 87 receptions in only 14 games. That season he went over 100 yards 7 times and over 200 yards twice (in a row). He had 8 games with touchdowns and was a fantasy juggernaut. On Sunday, he had a very tough matchup against a Chargers passing defense that hasn't had a 100-yard receiver all season. In fact, the only player to get more yards than his 85 (4 rec out of 11 targets) was Odell Beckham Jr. way back in Week 5. The volume of his targets is very encouraging, now if only you could have any faith whatsoever in DeShone Kizer.

85.7% of His Team's Offense

Russell Wilson demands to be a part of the MVP discussion. Not that he would ever say that out loud. No, the leader of the Seahawks speaks exclusively in cliché's (I think I counted 7 in his extremely brief post-game interview on NBC). Going in to Sunday's game, he accounted for well over 80% of his team's total offense by yards. He got a little break with the help of the briefest glimmer of a run game and only had to handle about 78% of his team's offense last night as they took down the former top team in the NFC. Wilson's continued ability to just do whatever the hell he wants is incredible, considering the offensive line crumbles around him every play. He's certainly the fantasy football MVP, considering he was drafted at the end of the 5th round and is the highest scoring player in the league, by a decent margin.

27-3 Against Buffalo

Tom Brady owns the Bills. Even, arguably, more than Roethlisberger owns the Browns (he does own their stadium, however). No quarterback in the Super Bowl era has more victories against a single team. In that game, he also became the 4th QB to eclipse 65,000 passing yards for his career. That's about 37 miles of passing yards or 2600 fantasy points. Brady, now 40 years old, is currently leading the league in completions with 300 and passing yards with 3632 and has his 14th straight double digit win season as the Patriots starter (yes, they still won double digit games when he didn't play in 2008). The Patriots are, once again, the team to beat in the AFC had are on a collision course for a huge game in Pittsburg in Week 15. That game will likely determine home field advantage in the AFC playoffs, provided the Patriots can get by without Gronk in Week 14.

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.

22 Rush Yards, Team Leader

Alex Smith led the Washington Redskins with a whopping 22 yards rushing, all on one scramble in the 2nd quarter. The Redskins came into the game with the 8th best rushing attack in the league, fronted by a resurgent Adrian Peterson. The Falcons came into the game as one of the league's worst rush defenses (20th in Yards, 30th in TDs), so Peterson's whopping 1.9 yards per attempt were a big disappointment. Smith did manage to find Maurice Harris in a big way. Harris's 10 catches for 124 yards is better than he's ever gotten in an single year. Meanwhile, Matt Ryan, usually a very average QB outdoors, really stepped it up with 29 fantasy points, the third best QB total of the week. Even Julio Jones finally found the end zone, his first time this season. Jones is 2nd in yardage, while managing just 11th in fantasy points. Only he and Keenan Allen make the top 30 of fantasy WRs with 1 TD reception.

151.9 QB Rating

This week's QB rating leader isn't Mahomes or the aforementioned Ryan, who had an excellent day. It's not even Drew Brees, though his 137.0 rating was impressive. No, I'm talking about the one and only Nick Mullens, a guy that NONE of you (or us) had heard about before Thursday night. The undrafted free agent couldn't ask for a better or less caring opponent than the current iteration of the Oakland Raiders. Mullens averaged 14.6 yards per pass attempt, had a better than a 72% completion rate and threw for 3 TDs on only 22 attempts. Along the way, Mullens proved the George Kittle is a top TE, regardless of who is throwing him the ball. Kittle has the 2nd most points overall at his position, thanks to a few of his peers having a bye week. Regardless of that, it's an impressive spot for a guy whose ADP was 129, basically Mr. Irrelevant in a lot of drafts. Word is that Mullens will start again next week against the Giants, an easy matchup. The following week the 49ers play the Bucs, I could easily see Mullens earning the starting job for the rest of the season, if he can keep playing like he did on Thursday night.

996 Rushing Yards

Tom Brady seems obsessed with getting to 1000 rushing yards, and was within one yard on Sunday night, prompting everyone to assume he was going to sneak for a TD. Instead, the Packers got a surprising, but ultimately futile, fourth-down goal-line stand. In the end, Brady wasn't going to hold any milestones, due to his ultimate rushing nemesis: taking a knee at the end of games. Three kneel-downs have left him at 996 career rushing yards. In his career, with a lead and less than 2 minutes to go, Brady has 135 rushing attempts for a net of -115 yards. By comparison, famous non-runner Peyton Manning has -104 yards in 137 carries in the same game situation. Peyton even managed to leave Denver with a net of -55 yards. I'm getting off track, but maybe that's because the Patriots and Packers left me with nothing to talk about fantasy-wise. A matchup between two of the best QBs in history left us with a combined 3 passing TDs and 553 passing yards between them. No, I'm not counting Julian Edelman's 37 yard toss to James White.

8 Consecutive 300 Yard Passing Games

At the risk of becoming a Patrick Mahomes/Adam Thielen/Todd Gurley column, I'm going to squeeze in a quick update on all three players in one blurb. First off, the good - Patrick Mahomes threw for 375 yards and another 3 TDs, extending his league lead in both categories. His interceptions now stand at 7 in the last 5 games. He's thrown at least one in each of those games, and that's a streak I'm sure he's eager to end. He is now just one game from tying Drew Brees' all time record of 9 straight games with 300 passing yards. Next week he faces the Cardinals, who are 7th in the league giving up passing yards, so matching Brees on this record won't be easy. Next, the bad - Adam Thielen, who went into the day tied with Calvin Johnson for 8 straight 100 yard receiving games. Thielen managed just 22 yards on 4 catches, though he found the end zone for the 6th straight game, saving his day for fantasy owners, but ending his streak. Finally the ugly, and I mean the Rams who finally lost a game. OK, ugly is a bit of a stretch, but Todd Gurley did put up his worst game of the season - just 13.90 points (also a stretch to call ugly). The silver lining for Gurley owners is that he is now far more likely to be playing for real in week 16, since the Rams no longer have control of home field in the playoffs.

2 of the Top 5 WRs Owned in Less than 2% of Yahoo Leagues

OK, this title is a mouthful, but what I'm getting at is that Adam Humphries (2% owned) and Curtis Samuel (1% owned) both finished in the top 5 points at WR this week (and for once, I don't expect anyone on Monday night to ruin those numbers). Humphries led his team in receiving, catching all 8 of his targets and finding the end zone twice. Amazingly for the Bucs, Mike Evans caught just one of his 10 targets. Sometimes it's a little Fitzmagic, sometimes it's a bit Fitztragic. Your mileage may vary. What I'm getting at is that RBs are just astoundingly more reliable this year. To find a player who's similarly available in Yahoo leagues, you must go to the RB18 of the week, Kapri Bibbs, owned in 3% of leagues, who managed 9.5 points on 4 touches. A look at the top 18 WRs would also include Cordarrelle Patterson (5%), Maurice Harris (0%), and Josh Doctson (8%). I suppose the right move here is to trade your unreliable WRs for some solid RBs before your league's trade deadline.

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.