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 half PPR scoring unless otherwise noted.

5 Rushing TDs

Nearly a quarter into the 2021 season, the league’s leader in rushing touchdowns is certainly not someone anyone expected. Sam Darnold now has 5 total rushing TDs on the season after back-to-back 2 TD games. He’s also got 5 total passing TDs, but his two INTs yesterday cost his team their perfect record.  But hey, fantasy football isn’t all about wins and losses. Darnold was the QB1 on the week, just edging out Patrick Mahomes and his 5 passing TDs. Darnold is now the QB5 on the season, just a fraction of a point behind Tom Brady for 4^th. Darnold is a game manager who just happens to be scrambling into the end zone at the right moments. His 20 carries for 58 yards on the year do not inspire confidence in his rushing abilities. My advice to you is to package Darnold in some sort of trade where you can sell him at his highest value of the season, especially before Christian McCaffrey comes back and the ground game takes over the Panthers' offense once again.

32.1 Fantasy Points

Cordarrelle Patterson is continuing his spectacular season. The 2013 first-round pick has bounced around the league for 9 years, and now finally on his 5^th team, it seems like they have unlocked his offensive abilities. Patterson finished Week 4 as the RB1 on the week, and sits as the RB2 on the season, behind only Derrick Henry (who is on pace for nearly 2,700 yards from scrimmage). Patterson’s 5 TDs is the highest total he’s had since his rookie season (and tied with Sam Darnold for the league lead). His 45 touches and 354 yards from scrimmage are both more than halfway to career highs. It’s pretty rare that a player can blow away their season-best stats 9 years into their career. He’s still only owned in 70% of Fleaflicker leagues, so I imagine that the rest of the leagues will be frantically scrambling on the waiver wire to pick him up.

4 of the Top 6 Quarterbacks are Free Agents

In fantasy football, we’re used to positional volatility. We might expect a bunch of the top-scoring kickers, defenses, or tight ends to not be on any team in a given week. What we generally don’t expect is that to be true for the quarterback position. Using our drinkfive.com fantasy league for reference, we find that 4 of the top 6 QBs in week 4’s scoring were all free agents. This includes the week’s top scorer, the aforementioned Sam Darnold (56%), Matt Ryan (76%), Taylor Heinicke (34%), and Daniel Jones (60%). We also find the most owned QB, Tom Brady (98%) put up a whopping 11.06 points, despite 43 passing attempts. So, it’s sometimes a crapshoot, even at the most consistent position in the game. That’s what makes fantasy football so much fun (and aggravating), isn’t it?

10% League Ownership

Want some positional volatility? The tight end position has it in droves. This week’s top scorer, C.J. Uzomah (another candidate for a late-career break-out) is owned in only 10% of Fleaflicker leagues. His monster game on Thursday night helped propel the Bengals to victory. 5 receptions for 95 yards and 2 TDs gave him a total of 24 fantasy points, almost 6 points more than the next highest scorer. Among the top 5 scoring TEs so far this week, their ownership caps out at 58% for Dalton Shultz. The average ownership is only 29%. When we look at the TEs who are owned in at least 90% of leagues (we must exclude Gronk and Waller, who did not or have not played yet), we find that they only scored an average of 6.6 points. This is going to be the season that benefits QB and TE streamers the most.

8-100 Yard Rushing Performances

With all of this craziness, let’s check out a position that’s all chalk, shall we? This week, there were 8–100-yard rushing performances by running backs. Every single one of those players are owned in at least 92% of Fleaflicker leagues. In fact, if you expand that list to include all-purpose yards, there were 13 such games by running backs. All but one, Cordarrelle Patterson (who led in both AP yards – the guy Is still returning kicks, and points) are owned in at least 89% of leagues. This consistency at the running back position is probably the most predictable thing in all of fantasy football this year. Even the WR position has some wacky stuff going on, like Randall Cobb’s 21.4 points, good for WR6 on the week and helping exactly nobody since he’s only owned in 24% of leagues. This is certainly an important week to work the waiver wire!

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.

162.1 Total Fantasy Points

Derrick Henry didn’t score another 3 TDs this week, but he didn’t need to in order to finish the week as the highest scoring player in all of fantasy football for the 2021 season. Henry, who scored just 15.4 points this week, actually brought his average down to 27 points per game, in part because he failed to find the end zone. He did manage to throw a touchdown, however, salvaging his worst fantasy performance since Week 1 of this season. Speaking of bad fantasy performances, Patrick Mahomes put up his second worst fantasy game ever (Week 7 of 2019 was the only game worse). This poor performance left just enough of a window for Henry to pass Mahomes for the season-long lead. The last time a non-QB finished with the most fantasy points at the end of a season was Todd Gurley in 2017, who manage to do that in only 15 games.

201 Receiving Yards

This week, Ja’Marr Chase announced his presence as not only an Offensive Rookie of the Year candidate (he was already in the lead for that) but as one of the best wide receivers in the game right now. Chase is now the WR2 through 7 games on the season, finished just behind Cooper Kupp for both the season and Week 7-point totals. Chase had a career high 201 receiving yards, helped along by an 82-yard touchdown reception – a short pass where he got the ball over the middle and did the rest of the work himself. This was Chase’s second game with 10 targets. He leads the league with 21.5 yards per reception and is second only to Kupp in season long yardage. Chase is doing the most with what he’s given. He has only 35 receptions on the whole season (on pace for 85 for the year, though I would bet on the over for that). By contrast, Kupp has more receptions (56) than Chase even has targets (51). Chase’s 3.6 points per touch is an amazing number, one that is unmatched by anyone in the league so far.

28.54 Fantasy Points

The best free agent of the week, at least in the drinkfive.com “experts” league, is Tua Tagovailoa, owned in 71% of Fleaflicker leagues, but not this one. Tua is not only the best free agent of the week, he’s the best QB of the week, out of all players. Tua just edges out his 2020 draft mate, Joe Burrow, who led his team to a very impressive 41-17 victory over the Ravens. Tue finishes as the 4^th highest scoring player on the week, before the two WRs mentioned above and the man who gave away Tom Brady’s 600^th touchdown catch. Thankfully for Mike Evans, the fan gave it back, so he doesn’t have to get the cold shoulder from Brady for the rest of the season. Tua had a rough start to this season, but after a few weeks off for injury, he has returned and played very well at QB. In 2 games he has 6 touchdowns (and 3 picks, yuck). He has also run for over 20 yards in each game, and is averaging 25.45 points per game during this stretch. With games against Houston, New York Jets, and Carolina coming up, he’s a great streaming option to keep around for a while.

89.47% Catch Rate

The highest catch rate in the NFL belongs to Bengals TE C.J. Uzomah, who has caught 17 of his 19 targets so far this season (Pat Freiermuth leads the league at 90%). Uzomah has had quite the up-and-down season. He’s currently the TE10 on the year with 64.1 total fantasy points, however, 46.6 of those points (almost 73% of his total points) came in weeks 4 and 7. He finished as the TE1 in week 4 and currently leads the field in week 7 with no looming threats to overtake him on Monday night. Despite his fantasy high points, he’s a very tough player to start. He has only one week with more than 3 targets, and that was just 6 in week 4. Despite this, he’s managed to find the end zone 5 times in the last 4 games, so perhaps it’s time to find a way to insert him into your lineup, and maybe more than just a streaming option. Oh yea, and if you’re wondering, Rondale Moore has the highest catch percentage among wide receivers at 83.87%. Jaylen Waddle has the highest catch percentage among WRs with more than 50 targets with 77.19%.

602 Career Touchdowns

There was one thing happening this week that I just had to mention, and no, it’s not National Tight Ends Day. Raise your hand if you’re sick of hearing about that. No, this week Tom Brady threw his 600^th touchdown in the regular season. And his 599^th, and numbers 601 and 602 if we’re counting them all. Of course, we are. This season, Brady is leading the league with 21 passing touchdowns. Matthew Stafford is in 2^nd with 19. Brady also has a rushing touchdown, for good measure. He has 26 of those in his career. In addition, the ageless one is leading the league in completions, passing attempts, passing yards, and yards per game. Pretty good for anyone, unprecedented for a 44-year-old in the NFL. The yards per game mark is his second highest in his entire career, and he’s ahead of his career averages in completion percentage, interception percentage, and QB rating. I suppose if you’re going to play so many years in the NFL, you might as well make them count instead of just playing out the streak. In a league with so much great young QB talent, Brady might still be the best one each and every Sunday that he steps on the field. And I don’t mean that as an overall picture, I mean that right freaking now, he’s the best QB in football.