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.

39.1 Fantasy Points

Rookie Chase Claypool exploded onto the fantasy radar yesterday with a huge game, scoring 4 TDs against the Eagles and leading the Steelers to a victory. Claypool touched the ball 10 times and found the end zone on 4 of them, putting up 116 yards from scrimmage. His 39.1 fantasy points were about 50% more than Travis Fulgham’s 26.2 points, the second-highest non-QB point scorer on the week. This also means that the top two skill players that aren’t a QB were almost certainly not started in your league, and probably weren’t even owned in your league. Claypool spread his scoring around, getting one TD in each quarter of the game. On the other side of that game, while Miles Sanders had an impressive 74-yard TD run early on, he managed only 6 more yards on his other 10 carries. The Steelers are still the best against opposing RBs in the league.

32 Points

The Browns have now put up over 30 points in each of the last 4 games, all of them wins. They are 4-1 and are playing well in perhaps the toughest division in the league. This week’s win was perhaps the best of the season because it came against the Colts, who had the best defense in the league going into the game. The Browns have continued to commit to running the ball, cumulating another 33 attempts with Kareem Hunt leading the way with 20. It looks like Hunt will be filling the role occupied by Nick Chubb with D’Ernest Johnson a distant second on the team, considering he has been targeted only once in the passing game all season. Odell Beckham Jr. for the second time in his career had a pass completion, rushing attempt, and reception in the same game. He’s 4 for 6 on his career with 144 yards and 2 TDs as a passer, not too shabby!

21.4 Fantasy Points Per Game

Mike Davis is filling in for Christian McCaffrey very nicely. Davis is averaging 21.4 points per game over his last 3 games, all of which he has started because of McCaffrey being out with injury. The Panthers have also won all 3 of those games after an 0-2 start. This just highlights that some teams are better equipped to utilize players than others. Davis already has 426 yards from scrimmage on the season, his second-highest season total in his career. So far this week (the ever points-y Alvin Kamara still plays tonight), Davis is the RB1 with 25.4 points. He has at least 90 yards from scrimmage AND a touchdown in each of the three games he started and is averaging 7.5 receptions per game over the last 4 weeks. When McCaffrey returns, he will probably be just as good as we expect him to be, but it’s clear that a lot of that performance has to do with the entire team that surrounds him.

22.5 Fantasy Points

Jason Sanders single-handedly delivered enough points to defeat the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday. He was responsible for 19 points in the game, while the 49ers put up only 17. He was perfect on the day, making 9 out of 9 kicks totaling 22.5 fantasy points. This was better than any two fantasy players on the 49ers. Helping Sanders along the way was a bit of the ole Fitzmagic – Ryan Fitzpatrick scored 27.6 points on the day to be the QB2 of the week so far. The 49ers are now 0-3 at home, and 2-0 in New Jersey. Jimmy Garoppolo started this game but was probably not ready to come back after going just 7/17 with 2 INTs in the first half before being benched. The 49ers have a lot to figure out and definitely do not look like the same team as last year. Fantasy value on this team seems to be random at best, non-existent at worst.

19 Passing TDs

Russell Wilson continued his stellar 2020 campaign on Sunday night with one of his more dramatic 4^th quarter comebacks. Wilson now has 23 career 4^th quarter comebacks. This one included going 94 yards and completing two 4^th down plays on this drive to DK Metcalf, the latter of which was for the game-winning touchdown. Wilson now has 19 TDs on the season, still on pace for 60 TDs on the year. The next closest QBs are Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes, tied with 13 on the season so far. This year is also showing the emergence of DK Metcalf, now the WR2 on the season. He’s averaging 17.7 points per game this year, hasn’t scored less than 12.6 points all season, and is clearly now Russell Wilson’s favorite target.

Wow! What an opening NFL weekend! Start the week with Tom Brady ripping out Dak's heart and close it with a wild Monday night where the Raiders almost blew a game in the biggest way I've seen since the famous Herm Edwards play that led to the invention of kneeling. Between all of that, we had two Super Bowl favorites in the Bills and Packers getting handled. The Bills alone knocked 111 from the pool and with all the other losers brought the survivors down to 1210 from the starting 1604 entrants. But Alas, I got both of mine through.

This week my top pick goes to a team that couldn't win last week, but who can blame them when you're up against Mahomes. In this case, being close is enough for me to think the Cleveland Browns can handle the Houston Texans at home. They are the biggest favorites of the week at -12.5 and should make for a safe pick. I can't pretend like I actually watched any of the Jags/Texans game but I did watch the whole Chiefs/Browns game and what I saw was that Cleveland will be a playoff team again. The Texans are in rebuild mode and will be finishing at or near the bottom of the worst division in football. 

For the second pick, I'm going with the other -12.5 favorite Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As good as Tom Brady looked in Week 1, this pick is all about Atlanta. I quickly remembered how bad they were last season after their performance against the Eagles and they won't be better this year. The Packers should be another popular pick this week, but I'm staying away until Rodgers proves he's not a mole trying to cost the team games.

My strategy early on in these pools is to keep it simple as long as you can and worry about making tough picks when the time comes. Saving teams always seems to bite you, just ask all the people that busted on the Jags in week 1 trying to be clever.

Cheers! Drink Five