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.

0 Punts

On Thursday night’s game, the Minnesota Vikings managed to not have to punt the ball for the first time in 15 years. Despite that amazing offensive feat, they put up a meager 19 points on offense. The Vikings had two 70+ yard drives that resulted in short field goals in a thoroughly underwhelming performance against perhaps the biggest dumpster fire of a team in the league (though the Bengals may have something to say about that). The Washington Redskins were led in fantasy by Adrian Peterson (10.3 whole points) in his, uh, revenge game? There were lots of “revenge” storylines in this game, with Kirk Cousins and probably Case Keenum too. None of them really lived to up to the pregame hype, considering it was maybe the worst Thursday night game all year. Heck, at least the Titans and Jaguars annual Thursday night suckfest featured Gardner Minshew.

45% Average Ownership

This may be the most chaotic week at the tight end position so far this year, and on “National Tight End Day”, of course. On average, the top 10 TEs were owned in only 45% of Yahoo leagues. For a snapshot example, only 4 of the top 10 TEs were owned in the drinkfive fantasy league. From week to week, we wind up seeing random players like Ryan Griffin (0% owned) leading the week in points. He had 20.6, courtesy of 2 TDs, 66 yards and a 2-pointer to top it off. Behind him were Darren Fells (18%) and Jonnu Smith (19%) which rounded out the top 3 TEs on the week. It’s surprising to me that Darren Fells is still in this group, as he’s now the TE6 on the season with 54.4 points, outscoring both George Kittle and Zach Ertz, who were early-to-mid round draft picks. Perhaps most surprising to me is that Travis Kelce, the TE2 overall on the season, put up just his second double-digit performance on Sunday night, scoring his 2^nd TD of the season and putting up the 5^th best performance by a TE this week. This position is all messed up from a fantasy aspect, so don’t expect any worthwhile insights from anyone, anywhere. Other than starting Austin Hooper, of course.

21 (more) Fantasy Points

The New England Patriots D/ST continued their amazing pace this week, scoring another 21 points against the turnover prone Cleveland Browns. How prone are they? Well, the Browns turned the ball over on 3 straight offensive snaps in the first quarter.  This is the 5^th time this season that the Pats D/ST has scored 21+ points out of 8 games. Their low mark was 10 points in Week 1. They have a total of 173 points on the year, which is blowing the 2^nd place 49ers out of the water by 71 points and more than double that of the D/ST3 Panthers, who sit at 75 points total on the year. Among all fantasy players, the Patriots D/ST would now be the 4^th highest scoring “player” in all of fantasy football. Can we nominate an entire unit for MVP? They’re definitely the fantasy MVP this season. Through half a season, the Pats now have more points on D/ST than all teams last season except for the Bears, who finished 2018 with a paltry 187 points. And we thought that they were impressive.

3 of the Top 10 WRs

Unknown tight ends were not the only group having fun on Sunday. We also saw 3 WRs make it into the top 10 of WR points who are owned in very few leagues. Darius Slayton (4% owned) caught a pair of TDs from fellow rookie Daniel Jones to put up a 17-point performance and clocked in as the WR5 on the week. Right behind him was Chris Conley (3%) who caught 5 passes on 7 targets for 103 yards and a score. Conley now has 15 targets in the last 2 games and double-digits in each performance. Check him out this week for waiver wire adds, as he’s definitely available in your league. Rounding out the top 10 WRs was Hunter Renfrow (1%) who scored his first TD on a 65-yard catch and run early in the game in Houston. Honorable mentions go to Josh Reynolds, WR13 and Marvin Hall, WR17, who are both owned in 0% of Yahoo leagues. These rounding errors both found the end zone and put up double-digit points while helping their teams to victory in Week 8.

28.18 Fantasy Points

This week’s leading QB was not a guy named Watson, Rodgers, Brees or even Wilson. No sir, it was the plain and boring QB for big blue, Daniel Jones. Jones had an impressive day - 322 passing yards with 4 TDs and no interceptions. This performance was just enough to land him on the top of the QB list for Week 8, and I don’t think it’s a reach to say that nobody in the Monday night game will pass him. If it wasn’t for the fumble he gave up that was returned for a TD, he might have even been able to win his third game of the season. At this point, it’s pretty clear that the Giants have found their successor to Eli Manning. Elsewhere, we see that many of the top 10 QBs this week are still a bit random. We saw a favorite of this column, Gardner Minshew, put up his second straight 20+ point performance, showing he’s back on track after a tough Week 6 against New Orleans. Derek Carr had a great game on the road, his best of the season in fact. Honorable mentions go to Matt Schaub and Matt Moore, both impressing in relief of their starters. This was only statistically impressive, however, as both guys lost.

Watching trends in fantasy football is a key way to measure how a player is doing and to try and predict future success - or lack thereof. This week I present to you a pair of players trending up and a pair of players trending down and attempt to extrapolate which direction to expect them to go in the future. For our purposes, a trend is a player that has gone up or down three consecutive weeks. 

Trending Up

Kenyan Drake (RB-ARI) – Wk 4 @ CAR, 3.5; Wk 5 @ NYJ, 12.7; Wk 6 @ DAL, 28.4. Drake currently finds himself in a classic trending up situation where nearly all of his stats are trending in the correct direction. His carries, yardage, touchdowns, and fantasy points are all trending up. He put on a show on Monday night, running all over the busted Dallas defense, capping it off with a 69-yard rushing TD at the end of the game. Drake did what he is supposed to do against bad teams in the last two weeks and wound up as the RB2 just last week. He’s averaging 5.9 yards per carry in the last 2 games and has 3 total touchdowns as his team has put up at least 30 each week. Now Drake has some more nice matchups coming up. He’ll play 2 of his next 4 games against Seattle, who give up double digits to anyone with a respectable running game. He also has a game against Miami coming off a bye which should be a fine matchup as well. With the Cardinals offense past their early season jitters and back to their winning ways, I expect Drake to be a large part of the offense going forward and think his upward trend is a good indicator of what’s to come.

Darren Fells (TE-HOU) – Wk 4 vs MIN, 3.1; Wk 5 vs JAX, 12.7; Wk 6 @ TEN, 17.5. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I’m not looking for TE magic here, just a one-eyed man…if you’ll let me stretch this metaphor. Fells is the TE5 when measuring across the last 3 games of all TEs. If you are not currently in possession of George Kittle or Travis Kelce, then it’s likely that you’re a blind resident of the TE wasteland. Fells is only owned in 32% of Fleaflicker leagues, so he’s been trending in the right direction if you’re streaming TEs. In the two games since Bill O’Brien was fired, the Texans have scored 66 points. They only had 80 points in the previous 4 games, so clearly they have identified at least part of what was broken on their offense. Fells has increased his yardage total 3 weeks in a row, and scored each of the last two weeks. He had 7 targets last week, good for third on the team. Fells has a mixed bag of matchups coming up, which means he will continue to just be a good streaming option and probably not a permanent fixture on your team. Regardless, it’s hard to find your way around the TE wasteland, best to at least go with someone who has an eye for the end zone.

Trending Down

Antonio Gibson (RB-WAS) – Wk 4 vs BAL, 20.8; Wk 5 vs LAR, 7.6; Wk 6 @ NYG, 7.5. Gibson was trending up and peaked in Week 4 with a rather good performance of 128 yards from scrimmage and 1 TD. Since then, however, his yards per carry has dropped to below 3.3 in each game. He’s seeing fewer carries and is also less effective in the passing game. Credit for his reduced workload goes to J.D. McKissic, the #2 RB in Washington. He has technically started half the games this season, and is definitely receiving a lot more attention in the passing game when compared to Gibson. The Washington offense is in QB limbo and there’s barely enough production on that team to support one fantasy WR, let alone a RB on a committee. The nature of this split has actually led to McKissic getting a larger percentage of the snaps than Gibson over the last couple of weeks. It was a nice idea, but the rookie is just not producing enough to warrant starting every week. Another week or two of this, and I expect to find him on Dave’s cutlist.

Juju Smith-Schuster (WR-PIT) – Wk 3 vs HOU, 14.3; Wk 5 vs PHI, 4.8; Wk 6 vs CLE, 1.6. On the season, Juju has not broken 70 yards and since the Steelers impromptu bye week, he is averaging a dismal 5.7 yards per reception. With the emergence of Chase Claypool and Diontae Johnson back to full health, it looks like Smith-Schuster is relegated to 3^rd or 4^th on the target list. The Steelers are playing well, a 5-0 start is the best they’ve had since the steel curtain of the late 70’s. There’s no need to fix what isn’t broken, so I don’t see a bounce back in store for Juju any time soon. He is still rosterable because he will have a role on this high powered offense if there are any injuries ahead of him.

(dis)Honorable Mention - Joshua Kelley (RB-LAC) – While not officially trending down by our standards, Kelley has been just utterly useless when it comes to fantasy. Justin Jackson has assumed the role of the injured Austin Ekeler, who will be back “later than sooner” according to coach Lynn.