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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. All fantasy stats are half PPR scoring unless otherwise noted.

47.6 Fantasy Points

For the second week in a row, we have a new season-high fantasy point scorer. Dalvin Cook defeated the Green Bay Packers, and he did not require a whole lot of help from the rest of his team. Cook touched the ball a whopping 32 times, had 226 yards from scrimmage, and scored 4 TDs. He led his team in both rushing and receiving on Sunday, which is impressive when you have two top WRs on your team. Of course, that’s likely to happen when you have 70% of your team’s total offense. Cook had an absurd 1.5 points per touch during the game. He was so efficient that Kirk Cousins only needed to attempt 14 passes – his second-fewest attempts in a start in his career. On the season, Dalvin Cook, the RB2, is averaging an impressive 1.14 points per touch, second only to Alvin Kamara who is the RB1 and averaging 1.16 per touch. They’re the only RBs in the top 10 who are averaging over 1 point per touch on the season.

5 of the Top 10 RBs

Using our drinkfive.com fantasy league as a metric, we see that this week, 5 of the top 10 RBs are not even rostered. It’s been an interesting week, setting aside the fact that Dalvin Cook outscored the 2^nd and 3^rd highest scoring RBs by 5.5 points. The probably-soon-to-be-rostered list contains DeeJay Dallas, Zack Moss, Jordan Wilkins, Nyheim Hines (awesome TD celebrations buddy!), and Damien Harris. On average, they are only owned in 40% of Fleaflicker leagues but definitely helped you win the week if you were bold enough to insert any of them in your lineup. It was a low scoring week, where the RB2, Giovani Bernard, only topped out at 21.3 points. In fact, our guy Dalvin Cook was only 1.5 points shy of scoring as many as the 8^th-10^th ranked RBs on the week. The waiver wire will be active with RBs this week but remember that Dallas will be replaced by returning starters, Moss is in a split backfield, and Harris is on a team that is notoriously bad at sticking with one RB. Finally, I have no clue what to make of the Indy backfield. Clearly Jonathan Taylor has angered the gods (or just Chuck Pagano) in some hideous manner.

3^rd Time as QB1 in 2020

Patrick Mahomes absolutely lit up the Jets, a minor league football team that plays its games out of New Jersey. For some reason, this game counts as an actual game in all historical statistics and for the official NFL record. Perhaps the most fun item from the game is that Le’Veon Bell, Chiefs running back, was the highest-paid Jets player on the field. He would have finished 2^nd on the team in yards from scrimmage with a whopping 37 too. But I digress - two years ago, I gushed about Mahomes in nearly every weekly column, but he’s been mostly absent this year, so let me make up for that now. On Sunday, he had his best passing performance of the year, completing 31 of 42 passes for 416 yards and 5 TDs, good for a 144.4 passing rating. The latter number, of course, making little sense since his performance was basically perfect, but his rating was not. This is the third time this season that Mahomes finishes as the QB1 for the week. What’s amazing is that Russell Wilson, who has played 1 fewer game, is still the QB1 on the season, leaving Mahomes as the QB2 in fantasy football, but the QB1 in our hearts.

7-0 Steelers

There’s not a ton of fantasy numbers to crunch out of the Pittsburgh Steelers this week. This tends to be the case when your D/ST outscores all of your position players. As a team though, they are very impressive. Their 7-0 start is tied for the best in franchise history with the 1978 team, which won the Super Bowl. This team also has recorded at least 1 sack in 64 straight games (that’s 4 seasons) and is closing in on the all-time record of 69 games which was set by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the early 2000s. The lack of fantasy dominance in a dominant team is frustrating for casual fans, but not for Steelers fans, which the drinkfive staff is lousy with. On Sunday they got the best of Lamar Jackson, forcing his first-ever pick-six very early in the game and sacking him 4 times. The Ravens now fall to 2 games behind the Steelers, who should have a very easy time next week against the Cowboys, where, I can only assume, Ben DiNucci will be musing about what horses want when they are hungry.

7 TDs by Two Players

A few fun random stats that didn’t fit elsewhere. The Vikings-Packers game saw 7 touchdowns scored…by only 2 players. In addition to the aforementioned Dalvin Cook’s 4 TDs, Davante Adams was responsible for all three TDs for the Green Bay Packers. The Chargers lost after giving up a 17-point lead for the third time this season, an NFL record for consecutive losses. Tua Tagovailoa started and won, but it was about as ugly as it could be with just 5.72 fantasy points and none of his receivers reaching 20 yards. Drew Brees again holds the NFL record with 560 passing TDs, but perhaps only for a day. Tom Brady is at 559 and plays tonight against the hapless Giants. Finally, Tuesday is a very important day. The NFL trade deadline is at 4 pm ET. Oh yeah, there’s also a bit of an election going on. GO VOTE!

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.

252 Yards from Scrimmage

For the second week in a row, Dalvin Cook reached 200 yards from scrimmage in another dominating performance. This time around, he only needed 22 carries to hit 206 rushing yards, but he still added 2 catches for 46 yards for good measure. He did “only” find the end zone twice, but it was enough to be the top scorer for the second week in a row with 38.2 points. Most weeks I wonder if someone will turn in a performance on Monday night that makes one of my entries a moot point. This week is not one of those times. Cook is now the RB1 on the season with a 10-point lead over Alvin Kamara, who turned in a mere 49 yards from scrimmage in a game where his team put up 38 points. Cook has 13 touchdowns in just 7 games and is basically single-handedly dragging his team out of the basement of the NFC North. An honorable mention goes to Christian McCaffrey, who did not skip a beat and put up 32.1 points in his return, continuing his average of scoring 2 TDs per game. Unfortunately, it sounds like McCaffrey is headed to the bench with another injury.

2% Ownership in Fleaflicker Leagues

There were a number of familiar names on the top WR list of the week, but the one above all the others was definitely new to me. Richie James, who is owned in just 2% of Fleaflicker leagues, and was started in zero leagues that you or I are in, had 3 receptions over 40 yards, including his 41-yard touchdown in what can only be described as garbage time while the 49ers were down 34-10 late in the 4^th quarter. Fantasy football, however, does not care what the score is on the field, so James gets credit for all the 28.9 points that he earned last Thursday night. James just barely edged out Tyreek Hill, who put up his first 100 receiving yard game of the season and caught the 100^th (and 101^st) touchdown pass of Patrick Mahomes’ career. Hill has been around for all of them – he also caught Mahomes’ first TD pass back in 2018. Mahomes is the fastest QB to 100 passing TDs, beating Dan Marino’s mark by 4 games.

3^rd Week as the Top TE

Travis Kelce has been the top TE on a weekly basis for 1/3^rd of the season so far. Not too bad when you consider just how volatile the position is in fantasy football. Kelce is basically a lock for the top spot when he reaches the 20-point mark. This week, and last’s, 20.9-point performances were good for the lead, and it wasn’t even close. He also put up 20.8 in Week 5 and led the league. On the season, Kelce is just dominating the position and is in tier 1 all by himself and it’s not even close. You might say that tier 2 is his as well, considering he has 139.9 points on the season and the next closest player is over 50 points behind him. Darren Waller has quietly been the TE2 on the season without ever finishing in the top 2 of any given week. Waller leads his team in both receptions and receiving yards, though being 8 games into the season and not having a single receiving leader over 400 yards is nothing to write home about.

8^th Most Rushing Yards in the League

Kyler Murray did all he could on Sunday to win but lost to a very surprising Miami team that is playing way beyond any level that people expected this season. Murray added another 106 rushing yards to his already gaudy numbers this season. For the year, he has the 8^th most rushing yards of any player in the league. He’s averaging 7.14 yards per carry. If he never threw a pass, he would be the RB13– 102.3 points come from his rushing yards and 8 rushing TDs. As it stands, Murray is the QB1 on the season with 240.5 points in 8 games. He leads a tier 1 of QBs that include 3 other players, all of whom deserve MVP votes so far this year. Patrick Mahomes got a shout out earlier, but really the major props go to Josh Allen who shut up his critics for a week with his 44-34 win over the Seahawks. Russell Wilson was the only one of the group to struggle, turning the ball over 4 times and scoring his second-lowest total of the season, 24.1 points.

8 Rushing Yards

Tom Brady suffered the worst defeat of his career (35 points) last night and everybody was invited to watch it on Sunday Night Football. The Buccaneers combined for just 8 total rushing yards in a game where none of their players reached double-digit fantasy points. Brady had just 209 passing yards and 3 INTs as he could only muster a late field goal for his team to keep them from being shut out. On the other side, Drew Brees was the only one with a good fantasy game, despite his team putting up 38 points. Brees found the end zone 4 times reaching 22.68 fantasy points, nearly 10 more than the next highest player on his team. Of note in this game was the fact that it contained the two all-time passing touchdown leaders in the NFL. Brees and Brady keep trading the top spot, but this week it was all Brees. He’s now in the lead 564-561.

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.

0 Targets in Week 11

The WR3 this week, (or TE1, depending on your hosting site) had exactly zero targets in the passing game this week but put up 24.42 points. In surely the most controversial issue of the fantasy season, Taysom Hill started at QB this week for the Saints, while retaining WR or TE eligibility on most fantasy platforms. This was surely a triumph of the well prepared because Hill found the end zone twice on the ground and also threw for 223 yards, more than doubling his career passing yards total. He still sits at zero passing TDs, but has 13 career rushing & receiving TDs, already halfway to Drew Brees’s career total. The fantasy football story from this game that has been buried is that Michael Thomas finally had a good game. He broke out for 9 receptions and 104 yards, more than he had combined in his previous three starts in 2020. Going into next week’s much tougher matchup against Denver, it’s anyone’s guess how Taysom Hill will perform, or even what positions he will be eligible to start in. One thing I think we might be able to speculate with some confidence is that Michael Thomas has resumed duties as the WR1 on the New Orleans Saints.

25 Fantasy Points Per Game

With 9 starts now under his belt, Chargers rookie QB Justin Herbert is averaging 25 points per game, which is good for 5^th among all QBs in the league. This week he put up his second-highest total of the year, 27.74 points, on the strength of his highest passing yards total of 366 and 3 touchdowns in an easy victory of the Jets. Herbert is now 7^th in overall points at the QB position and 5^th in points per game, which is a remarkable feat considering he was only inserted as an emergency starter in Week 2, with no apparent plans to make him a starter that early in the season. Now that Joe Burrow is done for the year and we saw Tua Tagovailoa benched against Denver in the 4^th quarter, I think it’s safe that say that Justin Herbert has the Offensive Rookie of the Year award all but wrapped up with 6 games still remaining in the season.

16 Receptions

Keenan Allen caught 16 passes on Sunday, a franchise record for the Chargers, in a game that they had to have to avoid supreme embarrassment. Let’s face it, anyone who loses to the Jets this year will be the laughing stock of the week, so the Chargers did dodge that bullet in a game where they were up 24-6 at one point. That’s very on point for the Chargers this year. But I digress, let’s go back to Keenan Allen. He’s now leading the league with 81 receptions after 10 games. A bit off of Michael Thomas’s record-setting pace last year, but still on pace for 130 on the season and by far the most he’s had in a single season of his career, which was 104 last year. Allen has been a huge part of bringing Justin Herbert along as a rookie, and I don’t think that either player would be in the excellent fantasy position they are in without the other one.

3 Out of the Last 4 Weeks

Dalvin Cook has now led all running backs in fantasy points in 3 of the last 4 weeks. In Weeks 8 and 9, it was from gaudy totals of 47 and 38 points, but last week he led a rather low scoring group with 22.50 points. Cook has 14 total touchdowns on the season and has scored in all but one game this season. He also exceeded 100 yards from scrimmage for the 6^th time this season – his 4^th week in a row. Cook is now sitting all alone as the RB1 on the season, having edged out Alvin Kamara by 5 points, though Cook does have one fewer game played on the season, putting his average points per game well ahead of everyone other than Christian McCaffrey. While it’s certainly possible that Cook is passed in points by a player tonight, let’s just suppose that doesn’t happen. That means that while Cook has been on this hot 4 game tear, his team is 3-1, sweeping through the NFC North while dropping a game to the Dallas Cowboys of the embarrassing NFC East. Of course, the Cowboys did get Andy Dalton back who threw 3 touchdowns and saw Ezekiel Elliott crack 100 yards for the first time all season.

22.86 Fantasy Points

Travis Kelce continued his utterly dominant season this week, catching a wide-open touchdown to seal the victory for the Chiefs late in the 4^th quarter last night. Kelce now has 162.76 points on the season, which would make him the WR3 on the season if he played that position. Of course, instead, he’s the TE1, but since the numbers line up so well with Taysom Hill, why not just play with positional eligibly a little bit. Kelce has now finished as the top TE of the week 4 times on the season, and 3 of the last 4 weeks, just like Dalvin Cook. Kelce has the 3^rd most receiving yards in the league and leads all tight ends in every statistical category. Kelce is on a pace to have the second-most fantasy points in a season by a TE in NFL history, right on pace with Jimmy Graham’s 2013 season. He’s still got some work to do if he wants to match Rob Gronkowski’s 2011 season, however.

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.

37+ Fantasy Points

A trio of quarterbacks leads the NFL in fantasy points for week 15. At the top of the group is Eagles rookie Jalen Hurts, who had his first start last week after seeing a handful of snaps in almost every game this season. Hurts’ debut was not bad, he had over 100 yards passing and the Eagles upset the Saints, but this week showed that he’s a legit QB. Hurts threw for 338 yards with 3 TDs, adding 63 yards and another TD on the ground for a total of 37.82 fantasy points. Zero turnovers, despite the loss, is probably the most important stat to the coach, and it’s clear that this job is about to be his to lose, and Wentz might be looking for a new home next year. Meanwhile, Josh Allen and Ryan Tannehill both eclipsed 37 fantasy points while leading their teams to 48 and 46 points respectively. Between them, they threw for 632 yards, 5 TDs, and ran for 4 touchdowns – two apiece. Both Tannehill and Allen are probably on lots of teams that are going to the finals, but if you managed to start Hurts and are going to the finals, well, just exactly how do you get around with those giant brass balls of yours?

1106 Days

There were three wide receivers of note that scored their first touchdown in a year or more on Sunday, but none of them had a gap like Dez Bryant, who scored for the Ravens. It was his first touchdown in 1,106 days, more than 3 years ago on December 10^th, 2017 – which was a 50-yard strike from Dak Prescott. Bryant was joined by fellow veteran WRs Antonio Brown (462 days) and Larry Fitzgerald (364 days – ok ok not technically a year). Both of whom caught touchdowns last year and today from the same QB, though Brown (and Brady) have the distinction of both moving to a new team. Honorable mentions go to Jake Kumerow (426 days) and Marcus Mariota – 445 days since his last passing TD and 772 days since his last rushing score. While we’re at it, might as well congratulate those who have never scored before - Lil’Jordan Humphrey (NO), Quez Watkins (PHI), Darrynton Evans (TEN), and Jalen Hurts (PHI) getting his first rushing TD, the only way the bookies count a real TD scored.

1,679 Rushing Yards

Derrick Henry, or El Tractorcito if you’ll help me propagate his fantastic nickname a little bit, is absolutely crushing everyone in rushing yards this year. He’s averaging 120 yards per game (ok, 119.9, but this is about gushing here…) and only needs to average a bit over 160 yards the last 2 games in order to reach the fabled 2,000-yard season. Through 14 games this year, he’s already passed his total from last year where he led the league with 1,540 yards in 15 games. Henry has nearly doubled up the 10^th highest rushing total on the year, Jonathan Taylor’s 842 yards. Henry’s only real competition at this point is Dalvin Cook, with 1,484 rushing yards. Cook actually leads the league in yards from scrimmage with 1,833, on pace for 2,256 total yards on the season. Cook has now cracked 300 points on the season, Henry is third with 278 and there’s a huge gap between him and 4^th place. Both Cook and Henry have gone over 300 touches for two years in a row, so be careful drafting next year

27 Passing Touchdowns

Justin Herbert tied the rookie passing touchdowns record this past Thursday, adding two more to his season total and tying Baker Mayfield’s record of 27 he set in 2018, and hasn’t yet matched in his career. Herbert still has two games left in the season in order to assume the mantle all on his own, though it should be noted that Mayfield started only 13 games in 2018, matching Herbert’s total so far this year. Herbert’s OT win over the Raiders probably put him back firmly in the lead for offensive rookie of the year, especially with the one-yard rushing touchdown to seal the game at the end of overtime, and despite Anthony Lynn’s apparent attempts to get his quarterback killed. Herbert is truly putting together an impressive rookie year, especially when one takes into account that the plan was not for him to start much, if at all this year. He has a 27:10 TD to INT ratio, something that QBs like Kyler Murray, Jared Goff, and Matt Ryan cannot boast. His 4 rushing TDs is also something that Mayfield could not match in his rookie year – he did not find the end zone on his own until his second season.

88 Total Rushing Yards

Who says you need a running game to be balanced or have success in this league? On Sunday, the Buccaneers and Falcons combined for a whopping 88 rushing yards between the two teams. Leonard Fournette led the way with a blistering 49 yards (and 2 scores, giving him a new fantasy day in the end), and 3 players wound up with negative rushing totals on the game, keeping us below 90. Brian Hill really helped that along, with 5 attempts for -2 yards. He added 2 catches for 9 yards, meaning he averaged exactly 1 yard per touch on the day. So, what did this lack of a rushing attack mean for the game as a whole? Well, the game blew the Vegas total out of the water, with 58 total points – under bettors were counting their winnings after a whopping 17 points in the first half. 22 teams passed the 88-yard mark and 5 players did it all on their own. In fact, those 5 all went over 120 rushing yards, leaving this game in the dust.