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.

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.

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.

29.24 Fantasy Points

Once again, Derrick Henry led all RBs in fantasy points - this time it was a much more reasonable point total. Henry has a whopping 408 yards and 6 TDs over the last two weeks. If you started him these last two weeks, then you're probably looking at a championship matchup next week. Those numbers also account for basically half of his entire production in the 2018 season, so it's no surprise if he was riding your bench last week and you didn't want to chase points this week. Either way, it's been an impressive two weeks for Henry, and perhaps he's starting to live up to the potential he was touted to have coming out of college. This week, el "Tractorcito" will be taking on the Redskins, whom have fallen to the middle of the pack in rush defense after starting strong. Might as well fire up Henry and ride this hot streak while you still can.

142 Rush Yards

Steelers backup RB Jaylen Samuels put up a total of 172 yards from scrimmage in a tough win against the Patriots, a team that the Steelers haven't beaten since 2011. His 142 rush yards were the first time that the Steelers had a player cross the 100 rushing yard threshold since week 9 in Baltimore. Samuels' performance once again shows that it's the offensive line of the Steelers that is the real MVP here. It was the difference in a game that featured two perennial giants that have seen better days. Adding to the fun was Samuels' eligibility as a TE in Yahoo leagues. He was by far the highest scoring TE of the week, and only one of two players to hit double digits. The other player was Garrett Celek, owned in 0% of leagues. Now, the Patriots are in line to have to play during the wild-card weekend for the first time since 2009. Finally, someone else is getting a bye in the AFC.

4 of the top 8 TEs Owned in 0% of Leagues

OK, it's getting ridiculous at the TE position this year. Not only is it hard to get any kind of consistency at the TE position (the TE10 scored just 5.4 points), there are guys every week doing all the scoring instead of the ones in starting fantasy lineups. Week 15 saw Garrett Celek, Jeremy Sprinkle, Darren Waller and Lee Smith all wind up in the top 8 scoring TEs this week. All of those guys are basically rounding errors to us, as they're all owned in 0% of leagues. To look at this from another angle, all 6 TEs owned in 90% of leagues or more (we're throwing Jaylen Samuels out of this) scored a combined 18.6 points, good for a 3.1 point average. Might as well throw out the TE slot and just make it another flex position in order to take a bit of the sadness out of fantasy football.

4 of the top 10 WRs Owned in 51% of Leagues or Less

OK, it's not quite as ridiculous at the WR position, but it's not exactly full of guys you expected to be putting up big games. Starting off, you've got Mike Williams (51% owned) who scored 3 TDs and a 2 pointer for the win, led the week with 29.5 fantasy points. Then you've got Robert Foster (14%), Robby Anderson (27%) and Chris Hogan (28%) all scoring a touchdown and finishing in the top 10 WRs. Whatever happened to standards? You also had Adam Thielen, Tyreek Hill and Keenan Allen combine for a whopping 6 points - all of those guys are owned in 100% of Yahoo leagues. We've said it for a while now at drinkfive, but WR performances really get inconsistent when you near the end of the season, so here's hoping you turned some of those early stars into RBs at some point this season.

8 of the top 8 RBs Owned and Started Everywhere!

Now here's a position with some consistency, and let me elaborate. These top 8 guys are all owned in at least 88% of leagues, with the exception of Damien Williams (67%), who is being used in leagues that are paying attention, at least. Weather is a factor somewhere almost every weekend in the NFL, and bad or cold weather definitely favors the run game over the passing game, but there's something else to this trend of RBs being better than WRs this time of year. Later in the season, you wind up with teams that are able to improve their offensive line, since the only true way to practice a run game is to play real games. This is how you wind up with 8 players scoring at least 20 points at one position, and it being at least mildly predictable. Rounding out the top 10, honorable mentions go to Kalen Ballage (nice 75-yard TD) and Wendell Smallwood, both owned in 14% or fewer Yahoo leagues.

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.

2 TDs in 21 Seconds

Derrick Henry sure loves to play against the Jaguars. In 8 career games against them, his team is 6-2, and he has 857 yards from scrimmage and 10 total touchdowns. He especially loves to play against them at home – he has 397 rush yards and 6 TDs in the last 2 Jaguars/Titans games in Nashville. On Sunday, he even was able to score 2 TDs in just a 21 second span, accounting for 100% of the Titans offense on two consecutive drives. With 10:51 left in the 3^rd quarter, the Titans started a drive from their own 26 and Henry promptly took the first snap 74 yards for a score. On the ensuing kickoff, the Jaguars fumbled and the Titans recovered on the 7-yard line. The next snap, Henry took it right in to the end zone, to give him 20.1 fantasy points over the course of 21 seconds of game time – not bad! Hell, the rest of the team got involved in the fun on their very next possession just a couple of minutes later. Ryan Tannehill connected with A.J. Brown on a short pass and Brown did the rest of the work, scoring a 65-yard TD, completing a run by the Titans that saw them score 28 points in just over 6 minutes of game time.

2 of the Top 8 QBs

In our drinkfive.com league, only 2 of the top 8 QBs so far in Week 12 are owned by teams. This is a 10-team league, so admittedly Baker Mayfield should be owned, but I dropped him over a month ago and he’s been a FA ever since. But I digress – I was amazed to find the average ownership of the top 8 QBs to be only 47.5%. This is the kind of stat that you find early in the season while everyone is getting used to a new year, not in Week 12 when we’re all fighting for playoff spots. Leading the way was Ryan Tannehill, the only QB to break 30 points (so far) this week. He had 2 touchdowns through the air and added 2 more on the ground. Following him was Sam Darnold who also had 2 through the air and found the end zone via his feet as well. Raise your hand if you thought Tannehill and Darnold would be the QB1 and QB2 of this week. If your hand is up, you’re a damn liar, or you can see the future.

3 Games Over 150 Yards Receiving

Chris Godwin was the highest scoring positional player (non-QB) of the bunch on Sunday, putting up 184 yards and 2 scores via some of the most impressive catches of the week. Godwin is the only player other than Tannehill to break the 30-point mark in standard scoring, and he’s now got 3 games with at least 150 receiving yards this season. If you combine this with Mike Evans’ 3 games of at least 180 yards this year, you have the first pair of Bucs teammates to break 1000 yards in a season, as well as the first teammates anywhere to each have 3 games of 150+ yards in a season. In a down year at the position, these two have absolutely dominated, constantly remaining in the top 3 – they’re currently WR1 (Godwin) and WR3 (Evans).

104 Receptions in 11 Games

One wide receiver who is not experiencing a down year is Michael Thomas, who already has a stat line that anyone would be proud of for an entire season. He’s currently sitting at 104 receptions, 1,242 yards and 6 TDs, and he still has 5 games to go! The receptions and yards are both leading the NFL, and it’s not really close. He has 23 receptions more than the 2^nd highest total (DeAndre Hopkins) and 171 receiving yards more than Chris Godwin, who comes in 2^nd there. Thomas is still on pace to hit 150 receptions on the season, which is probably a record that can stand for quite some time. He is averaging over 100 catches per year now in his first 4 seasons, and has topped 1130+ yards in each of those seasons as well. We’re watching the very beginning of what can certainly be a hall-of-fame career, and damn is it exciting. I suspect he will be the first WR off the board for years to come in fantasy drafts.

21 Fantasy Points for the D/ST

Congrats to the Washington Redskins for managing to score 19 points and win a game without an offensive or defensive TD. They did manage one score on a kickoff return in a play that looked like it could have been a disaster but turned into a touchdown, all credit to Steven Sims for that run. The Redskins now have 2 wins, all but ensuring the Bengals the first pick in the 2020 draft, up 2 games with just 5 left to play. Meanwhile, the Detroit Lions are trying to figure out how to win. The team is 3-7-1 this year and they have had a lead in every single game this season. It’s hard to find things to be encouraged by on both teams. The Lions are trotting out Jeff Driskel and Bo Scarbrough, who had an OK day but his fantasy numbers were marred by a fumble. Meanwhile, the Dwayne Haskins finally got a win, but he was too busy celebrating with fans to realize the game hadn’t actually ended and was nowhere to be found to take a knee to actually end it. The reactions at the end of the game to this were basically what I’d expect from a 2-9 team that had to fire their coach this year.

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.

4 Games with 100+ Rushing Yards

Last week Lamar Jackson played on Monday night, so I didn’t have my usual opportunity to gush about his absurd statistical season he’s having this year. Allow me to quickly remedy that by pointing out that Jackson now has 4 games with at least 100 rushing yards, a feat that has not been done by any QBs in the history of the league. Jackson’s season total is now up to 977 rushing yards and he could pass Mike Vick’s single season record of 1,039 yards next week. Jackson’s opponent next week, the Buffalo Bills, have given up 109 rushing yards to opposing QBs all season, though Jackson has the ability to go ahead and double up their total on the season by the end of the game. Now 50 fantasy points ahead of the field, Jackson has wrapped up the unofficial Fantasy MVP award for this year, and is the front runner for the actual MVP award, and it’s not even really close.

2 TDs and a Blocked Kick

Taysom Hill had a hell of a game on Thursday night. This may be the first instance I’ve seen of a third string QB outscoring a starting QB (who played the entire game) in fantasy scoring. Hill had 16.50 points thanks to a rushing and a receiving TD, while Drew Brees put up only 11.26 points, his lowest effort of the season. Hill even blocked a punt early in the game, which probably gave him even more points in leagues that feature IDPs. Maybe we could make a special flex position for guys like Hill who are only QB eligible, but never actually play QB. Meanwhile, Hill’s teammate Michael Thomas finally dropped a pass. He had a streak of 198 receptions over 22 games without dropping a pass, just an incredible stretch for him. Thomas had only 6 receptions on Thursday, but he’s still on pace to break the single season receptions record – as long as he doesn’t drop any more passes.

27.90 Fantasy Points

If you had DeVante Parker as the WR1 for the week, then congratulations, you ought to go play the lottery. The 2015 pick has been a bust for years before actually emerging as a solid WR this season. He has at least 91 yards and 6 receptions in each of the last 3 games and is on pace for a really respectable season of 70 receptions and 1100+ yards. Parker finished with the 3^rd most points overall for Week 13 and has the 3^rd most points at WR over the last 4 weeks. Props also go to his teammates Jason Sanders and Matt Haack for executing a very strange play on 4^th down for a touchdown. It was apparently a fake FG, though it did not look like any fakes I’ve ever seen. It did, however, remind me of that awful 4^th down trick play that the Colts tried back in 2015.

25 Fantasy Points in the Last 4 Weeks

The New England Patriots D/ST have not put up points lately, only 25 points in the last 4 weeks, but are still 45 points ahead of 2^nd place. The pace at which they were scoring early in the season obviously could not be sustained, though they are still doubling up the 10^th highest scoring D/ST. That’s a hell of a head start. The Patriots have yet another tough matchup next week when they host the Kansas City Chiefs, but their prospects of being the top D/ST returns in Week 15 and 16 against the Bills and Dolphins. Hopefully the team is healthier, not in an IR sense, but mostly healthy enough so they can all travel in the same enclosed space without worrying about disease spreading rampantly. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a team taking two planes because so many of its players are ill.

25.28 Fantasy Points per Game in the Last 4 Weeks

Derrick Henry is crushing it at RB lately, averaging 25.28 points per game over his last 4 games. This makes him the top RB during that time period and second to only Lamar Jackson. It would be easier to count the games this year that Henry does NOT have a touchdown; that would be 3. He’s scored 11 TDs total, just one off his career high he set last year. He’s already set new career highs for rushing and receiving yards. Over the last 3 weeks, Henry has 496 yards rushing and 5 TDs. He’s great at putting up tons of points in bunches, and he’s currently in the midst of one of his best streaks of his career. Meanwhile, the Titans have won 5 of their last 6 games and are in the wild card hunt, thanks to Ryan Tannehill. He’s a top 10 QB over the last 4 weeks and leads the league in yards per pass attempt at 9.2y/a since Week 5. The Titans still have 2 games against the Texans which will go a long way to deciding the division winner.