Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

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.

14.6 Yards per Carry

Isaiah Crowell (CAW!!!) turned in the best rushing yards total for anyone on the season with a whopping 219 yards. What's more impressive is that he reached that total on just 15 carries, good for a 14.6 yards each time he was handed the ball. As stated by our very own Mike Mocerino just two weeks ago on our podcast, Crowell is an odd-week player. It's now...a trend? In weeks 1, 3 and 5, Crowell has 68.4 points thanks to 355 rushing yards and 5 TDs. In weeks 2 and 4, he's got a whopping 4.20 points. For now, Mike's Nostradamus-like prediction of Crowell's season has held true and is a trend that I'll be considering when setting my lineup on at least one team. Crowell finds himself as the 8th best RB on the season in total fantasy points. If you take the average of just his odd week games, he's 3rd, behind only Alvin Kamara and Todd Gurley.

2 Turnovers, 28.68 Fantasy Points

Aaron Rodgers had one of the most unique games of his career in Detroit on Sunday. In the first half, all the Packers drives either ended on an Aaron Rodgers fumble, or a Mason Crosby missed field goal. Rodgers would finish the game with his best stat line of the season, throwing for 442 yards and 3 TDs and was the QB2 this week (so far) just behind Tom Brady. Unfortunately for Rodgers, the Packers just can't quit Mason Crosby, who missed 4 field goal attempts and his lone extra point try. That's 13 points in a game that the Packers lost by 8, if anyone's counting. Crosby did kick a 41 yard FG as the game ended, so I guess he's warmed up for next week. Given the state of kicking in the NFL this year, Crosby's job is assured through at least next week, but I have to at least wonder if the Packers might go for it on 4th and medium a bit more now, considering that no-man's land seems to be expanding for their kicker.

5 Straight 100-yard Games

Adam Thielen has set a league record by starting the season with 5 straight games with at least 100 receiving yards. This amazing consistency (with a brand new QB) has him as the #1 WR in standard scoring, just above Cooper Kupp. That's right, Cooper Kupp is the #2 overall WR through 5 weeks of the NFL. They say that the white WRs are gritty, maybe they have the emergence of Gritty to thank for this success. Thielen's 13 targets per game is tied with Antonio Brown for the most on the season. I expect his production to continue considering the Vikings running game is non-existent so far this season. At 2, Kupp is maintaining his strong fantasy performances by finding the end zone 5 times this year. In fact, he only has one game where he has not scored a TD. The Rams continue to roll, the Vikings are finding an offensive groove, and both of these WRs will have the opportunity to turn in career years if they can keep this up.

9 TDs on the Season

Todd Gurley is steamrolling through all the teams he has played this season, finding the end zone 9 times in just 5 games. He's averaging almost 25 points per game and has amazing consistency. His low total was in week 3 where he had 19.6 points. It feels nice when a consensus #1 overall pick can play like it. Right behind him at the top is Alvin Kamara, who hasn't even played this week, but is still the #2 overall RB. These two guys are in a class of their own and are on offenses that are total juggernauts. If Gurley can keep up this pace, he will have over 2000 yards from scrimmage and 28 TDs on the year. That's a bit of a stretch to extrapolate that over just 5 games, but what else is this column for? While we're at it, Jared Goff is going to throw for 5500 yards and 38 TDs. This is fun!

22 Points for the D/ST

A pair of teams reached 22 points for the defense and special teams in week 5. The Cincinnati Bengals scored twice on defense in their impressive comeback against the Dolphins. The Kansas City Chiefs defense finally found their way to the field on the same day as their offense. The picked off Blake Bortles 4 times, sacked him 5 times and scored a TD en route to putting up 22 fantasy points. An honorable mention goes to the Arizona Cardinals, putting up 21 fantasy points in their first victory of the season. I don't know what conclusions to draw from all of this, as I find D/STs (and kickers) to be very chaotic and unpredictable. Backing up my claim is the fact that the top 5 D/STs this week are all owned by less than 50% of Yahoo teams. The Rams, Jags and Eagles all combined for 10 points this week. Streamers rejoice!  

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.

47.80 Fantasy Points

Derrick Henry has set a new high-water mark for the 2018 fantasy football season, taking 17 carries and converting them into 238 yards and 4 TDs. That's 14 yards per carry for those of you counting at home. His touchdowns went for 3, 99, 16 and 54 yards and his 99-yarder tied a record held by Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, which hadn't been matched since it was first set in 1982. The rest of the Titans combined for 15 carries for just 26 yards and Marcus Mariota barely needed to do more than just hand it to Henry. He was a one-man wrecking crew, accounting for all of the Titans TDs. Henry's 47.8 points were the most in fantasy football since way back in week 4, when Mitch Trubisky threw for 6 TDs. There were 4-40 point performances in the first 4 weeks of the season, and then not another until 10 weeks later. Heck, even Amari Cooper's incredible (and personally heartbreaking) 39.70 point performance is the most points in the last 10 weeks, aside from Henry's game Thursday night.

368 Passes without an INT

Aaron Rodgers has just 1 INT on the season, which isn't really a good look for those people blaming Rodgers for the decline of the Packers. Rodgers is just fine, thank you - throwing an INT on just 0.2% of his pass attempts. This was highlighted Sunday when Rodgers threw a TD to Randall Cobb in the 3rd quarter and broke Tom Brady's streak of consecutive passes without an interception. Rodgers went on to finish the game cleanly, and now the streak sits at 368 consecutive passes since his last INT. Rodgers' last pick came in week 4 when the Packers shut out the Bills. I'd like to think he threw a sympathy pick for Josh Allen, just to help the rookie feel like he belongs. Most importantly, the Packers got a win with their new interim coach, Joe Philbin - who to me is the boring version of Hue Jackson. The Packers ran the ball a whole 25 times on Sunday, which were the most since they beat Miami. What a coincidence, that's the last time they won a game too.

210 Receiving Yards

George Kittle had 210 receiving yards and a TD on Sunday, and completed a fantasy football trifecta on Sunday. The highest scoring WR, RB and TE all beat out the highest scoring QB. Kittle's day could have been much better, considering he was only targeted once in the second half. The 49ers were leading, and did win, but not without sweating a little. Kittle was also only 5 yards away from breaking the record for TE receiving yards in a game - a record held by Shannon Sharpe of the Broncos - Kittle's opponent that very day! It would have been a great time, but still, Kittle probably led a lot of fantasy teams to victory with the third highest point total of the week, a cool 27.00. Also in this game, rookie Bradley Chubb got his 12th sack of the year, which breaks his teammate Von Miller's team record of 11.5, set back in 2011. Of course, Miller is probably fine with it - he still has more than Chubb this year with 13.5.

101 Rush Yards

Since returning from injury, Josh Allen has been unleashed as a rushing QB, and the results are amazing. In the last 3 weeks, Josh Allen has 335 rushing yards, and he would have 3 consecutive 100-yard games if he didn't take a knee at the end of the game week 12, when he finished with 99 yards. This is just one yard less than Lamar Jackson's total across four games since he took over as starter. Allen is averaging 10.8 yards per carry during this stretch and is has 25.8 fantasy points per game over the last three weeks. Both Jackson and Allen are showing tremendous production as soon as they get dropped into their offenses' starting role. Being a rushing QB just provides a great instant advantage and jolt to your team. It's a shame that there's no great rushing QBs out there that a team once in the playoff hunt could have turned to once they had not one, but two QBs break their leg. Total shame. One with a much better TD:INT ratio than Mark Sanchez would be real nice.

582 Total Passing TDs

I would be remiss if I didn't give props to Tom Brady, who broke Peyton Manning's combined regular season & playoff passing TD mark on Sunday. Brady now has 582 total TDs, 511 regular season, 71 playoffs. By comparison, Manning has 539 & 40 - I'm sure that Tom is fine with having made up the difference during the playoffs. Brady did have to break the record on a bittersweet day, one where the end of both the first and second half went quite wrong for the Patriots. At the end of the first half, Brady took a sack with no timeouts left, thus blowing his team's chance for a FG as time expired. That's an uncharacteristic mistake, but at least Brady doesn't get blame for the second half. Kenyan Drake wound up scoring on a 69 yard double lateral play. That's the longest play to end an NFL game in the Super Bowl era and definitely swung some fantasy games and wrecked some parlays. Brady now has 10 losses in Miami, and it's probably the only place where he actually has a losing record.

If you read my last player highlight, I covered Tight End Dawson Knox. He continues to be a hot add, but the tight end landscape is more barren then ever and makes me yawn just thinking about covering another deep speculative add. This week I am going to cover the 4^th quarter darling from the Monday night game, Allen Lazard. What caught my eye with Lazar was Aarons confidence going to him on back to back plays with the game on the line. In a game where it looked like every receiver on the packers had stone hands, it was a breath of fresh air.

What we know:

6’ 5” 227 lbs

23 years old

4.55 40 time

38” vertical jump

Was recruited to Notre Dame, Stanford, and others but ultimately chose Iowa State where his father and brother both player. Athletic genes.

Started for the Cyclones as a true Freshmen.

Finished his college career 7 receptions and 678 yards away from breaking school records in both categories

Rodgers lobbied for him to get into the game in the 4^th quarter

What I think:

With Allison and Adams likely out this week for the packers, it will be the same group of stone handed receivers on the field for the packers this week against the Raiders. This could be the time that Lazard needs to prove himself on the field and earn a larger role with the offense moving forward. Allison and MVS have not been very sharp this year. When Allison returns I feel there might be opportunities for fresh young legs to work more in the mix IF he proves himself this week.

What I am looking forward to is if Rodgers continues to look his way this week. In Rodgers post game interview, he said that Lazard has been doing this all year in practice and dropped that touchdown right where it needed to be. They seem to have the chemistry and anyone that develops trust with Rodgers is worth a roster spot. Worth noting that Rodgers sits next to Lazard at meetings. Can’t be too many seats next to Rodgers in those team meetings…

Overall, this is a complete dart throw. But one that could pay off if he turns into the third option for Rodgers in that offense.

Happy Hunting and good luck this week!

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.

158.3 Passer Rating

The NFL’s all-time leader in passer rating, Aaron Rodgers (with 103.2 for his career) finally posted his very first game with a perfect passer rating on Sunday. Rodgers went 25/31 for 429 yards and 5 TDs, adding another TD on the ground in perhaps the best game of his career. This was good for 43.76 fantasy points, which is 10 more than the next closest player this week. Perhaps Rodgers has finally figured out the new system that has been implemented in Green Bay this year. While they have done fantastic in the win-loss column, they definitely have not looked like the juggernaut offense that we all expected from a team led by Aaron Rodgers, until this week. This game was domination from start to finish, with Rodgers throwing for a TD in every quarter, and also spreading the love. All 5 TDs went to 5 different players. Honorable mention goes to Marquez Valdes-Scanting, who averaged 66.5 yards per reception (2 catches for 133 yards and 1 TD).

576 Rushing Yards

Lamar Jackson, after fooling us all with only 6 rushing yards in Week 1, just posted his third game out of the last 6 where we went over 100 rushing yards. This is a historic pace and projects to 1,316 yards over 16 games. If Jackson can keep this up, he will crush the single-season record by Mike Vick, which is 1,039 yards back in 2006. Jackson also continued his fantasy dominance, leading the league with 180.6 total fantasy points in 7 games. When you consider that he has not thrown for a TD in the last two games, this is just amazing. Not bad for a guy who was drafted 106^th overall on average (QB14). He’s the kind of player that allows for league dominance when you can find that kind of value. To further put Jackson’s rushing dominance in perspective, he’s on pace to break Vick’s career total of 6,109 rushing yards in only 111 games, versus Vick’s career 143 games. That’s two full seasons worth of games.

9% of Yahoo Leagues

This week’s leading RB scorer was Chase Edmonds, who was started in only 9% of Yahoo leagues on Sunday. Currently, he’s owned in 48% of leagues, which includes a 14% jump from yesterday. To me, this means that 14% of Yahoo leagues probably do not operate with a waiver system, which is bizarre to me, but I digress. Edmonds was able to dominate the Giants non-existent rushing defense, scoring 3 TDs all from at least 20 yards or more. Edmonds will definitely be the #1 waiver wire pickup this week, and deservedly so. It looks like David Johnson might wind up sitting a week or two, considering he spent almost all of Week 7 on the sideline and the Cardinals were able to win with only 104 passing yards. Edmonds’ 33 points basically doubled up the rest of his entire team combined, which was led by Kyler Murray’s whopping 6.96 points. On a side note, Murray joined Patrick Mahomes and Matt Ryan in the formerly high-floor group falling back to earth. At least Murray doesn’t have an injury he’s nursing.

1 of the Top 10 Fantasy Performers

Only one of the top 10 fantasy performances turned in this week was by a player owned in 100% of Yahoo leagues. To give some context, there are 23 players owned in 100% of leagues and another 15 owned in 99% of leagues. This is usually a stat that I like to track early in the season to find out who’s performing that we weren’t expecting. To see this kind of disparity halfway in the fantasy season means that we’re probably flat out ignoring some players. And I think we are – guys like Matt Stafford (58% owned) who is the QB8 in points per game, Jacoby Brissett (48% owned) who is QB10 in the same category and Kirk Cousins (64% owned), who is averaging 26 points per game the last 3 weeks. Throw in big performances by Latavius Murray and Marvin Jones and you have an average ownership of just 75% across the top 10 fantasy performers in Week 7. This is probably just a fluky week, but I think it’s time to take notice of a few of the QBs that fantasy players seem to insist on not rolling out there.

104 Rush Yards Per Game

The NFL’s rushing yards leader is currently Dalvin Cook, with 725 yards across 7 games. There’s only been one 200+ yard performance this season (Leonard Fournette, 225 yards, Week 4), so we’re lacking the gaudy totals that we have seen in previous years. But, none of that really matters to fantasy players as long as your guys are finding the end zone as well, which is what Cook is doing. Cook has scored 8 TDs on the season, which is tied with Aaron Jones for the league lead. Cook has also managed to have an amazing points floor, never scoring below 11.4 points on the season. Only Ezekiel Elliott can claim such a double-digit elite status. Even super fantasy RB Christian McCaffrey (who still leads Cook in points despite having his bye week already) cannot claim such a floor. Cook and McCaffrey sit alone in tier 1, about 30 points above the tier two guys, who all have 107-111 points. Cook’s ADP of RB10 this season makes him one of the few second round “steals” that are pretty rare any year.