Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

Week 10, already? Listen up, that only leaves us with 4 weeks to get your team into tip-top shape for the fantasy playoffs in most leagues. Pay special attention to the rankings and news this week as you may be picking up guys that will help you on the road to the championship trophy. Listen to or watch the Fantasy Finish Line podcast to stay on top of the latest news and analysis - we broadcast live on YouTube weekly on Wednesdays at 9pm CT.

Guys that jump out to me this week to overperform expectations: Drew Brees, David Johnson (if he can get cleared in time), D.J. Chark, Jonnu Smith, and Miami Dolphins DST.

Pay attention to these rankings throughout the season, as they will continue to evolve based on the latest injury updates, news, and player analysis. Have any specific lineup questions? Feel free to tweet us @drinkfive with any of your questions or comments!

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.

18 QB ADP

If you combine the top 5 QBs so far this week – Lamar Jackson, Dak Prescott, Matthew Stafford, Patrick Mahomes and Case Keenum – you have an average ADP of QB 18. So much for expert draft advice, right? All 5 players scored at least 28 points, 3 TDs and 300 passing yards. All of them, except for Mahomes, were not expected to be fantasy studs, and were not drafted to be a main starter. Lamar Jackson is the highest of the remaining 4 at QB14, and he had the best game out of all of them. Jackson managed to log the very first perfect QB rating game in franchise history. Even more impressive, Red Zone channel took a break from a competitive game just to show us his first incompletion. I suppose this all goes to show that drafting QBs early in a single QB league is mostly pointless. Case in point – Andy Dalton had over 400 yards passing. This is why I like superflex leagues!

6 of the top 25 Fantasy Players

Waiver wires will be hopping this week, with people racing to pick up all of the forgotten, unknown and surprise players who had big games in Week 1. 6 of the top 25 fantasy performers so far in Week 1 are owned in 10% of leagues or less. Everyone in the top 25 scored over 20 points this week, and you’re sure to see names like DJ Chark (2% owned), Phillip Dorsett (4% owned) and John Ross (9% owned) pop up on waiver articles, not to mention Marquise Brown, who’s only owned in 31% of Yahoo leagues. A few QBs wind up in this niche as well, like Case Keenum, Andy Dalton and Marcus Mariota. They are a bit less relevant, however you may want to consider picking up one of them if you relied on Cam Newton, Jared Goff or Baker Mayfield in Week 1, all of whom scored 12.4 points and under.

10 WRs owned in 100% of Leagues

It was a rough Sunday for the top end of the fantasy world. In Yahoo, there are 10 wide receivers who are owned in 100% of leagues (2 more play on Monday night), and their average points scored was a meager 8.1. Keenan Allen and Amari Cooper were the only ones with a respectable game of 100 yards and 1 TD.  6 of the 10 players were under 8 points. In fact, if you expand this field to the top 25 by ownership percentage, only one player, TY Hilton, broke the 20-point barrier. The average total of the top 25 was still only 8.9, so it’s not like there was a lot of help among all the players who were drafted to actually help you win games. Who was helping win games? 6 of the top 10 point scorers at WR are owned in 50% of leagues or less, with 4 of those players in just the single digits.

4 Rookies Over 100 Receiving Yards

There were 4 rookies who managed to break the 100-yard mark on Sunday. Marquise Brown did it early after just two TD catches of 47 and 83 yards in the first quarter of his game. Titans Rookie A.J. Brown had 3 catches, but one was for 47 and the another was for 51 yards. OK, so he managed to just match the 100-yard mark and not pass it, but hey, it’s nice to finally see a deep threat in Tennessee, something that Marcus Mariota probably has never had. Terry McLaurin of the Redskins led his team in receiving with 125 yards. You may remember him from me telling you to draft him as a sleeper, just before I picked the Redskins to have fewer victories than the Giants. Rounding out the rookie group is T.J. Hockenson, who had 6 for 131 and a TD, leading his team in receiving and leading all tight ends (so far) this week in fantasy with 19.1 points. An honorable mention goes to Devin Singletary, who had 98 yards from scrimmage and averaged nearly 11 yards per touch. If he had gotten more than a measly 9 touches, he certainly would have broken the century mark.

17 Players at 100 Rec Yards

So far in Week 1, 17 players have matched or eclipsed the 100 receiving yards mark. Only 5 of those players are owned in 90% or more of Yahoo leagues. All these players average out for an ownership of just 55%. Does this mean anything? Not really, but it illustrates that the NFL is usually chaos, and Week 1 doubly so. Early season waivers are as important as ever this year, but it’s also important to remember to be patient with the players that you drafted high. Many of these performances are flukes, some of them are the start of trends, and some of them are introductions to future superstars. If I could tell you exactly which is which, I’d be in Vegas getting banned from various sports books. I’ll just leave you with this last nugget – Kyler Murray bringing his team back to get a tie with the Lions is the best result that a rookie QB has had in Week 1 since David Carr got a win in 2002. Let’s hope for all our sakes that Murray can be better than Carr’s career 29% win rate.

Week 4 was not kind to many across the league. Only one undefeated team remains, Tom Brady barely escaped Foxboro with a victory, Matt Nagy has saved his job for another week, Urban Meyer might have lost his job (certainly his locker room), and we learned that even domes can have weather delays. Not sure who to thank for that last one, probably El Niño. Regardless, let's get updated on what you need to know going in to Week 5.

• Jimmy Garoppolo was initially thought to have a multi-week calf injury and exited Sunday’s game after a lackluster performance. Garoppolo has not been very good this year, not topping 20 fantasy points in any game. NBC Sports Edge even went as far as to speculate that Garoppolo had played his last snap with the 49ers immediately after the game. Trey Lance threw a pair of TDs, threw for 157 yards and rushed for an additional 41. The news on Tuesday was that the injury to Garoppolo is not as bad as they thought, and that he might play Week 5 against the Cardinals. Frankly, I can’t understand why they would rush him back to play in that situation when the 49ers are on bye the following week. Trey Lance is probably their best chance in a shootout and in my opinion SHOULD be the starter.

• Josh Gordon is back!!! He was probably already picked up in your league by that one guy who is still living in 2013. Tuesday, he was promoted to the 53-man roster on the Chiefs and is worth a stash spot on your bench since he’s on the 2nd highest scoring offense in the league. 

• David Montgomery is going to be out 4-5 weeks which should land him on the IR, providing a little bit of roster relief for those leagues that are taking advantage of the new rules. Montgomery had a huge share of the Bears rushing attempts, and also had his best game on Sunday, running up over 100 yards and 2 TDs. This loss is definitely going to hurt and I don’t expect there to be a direct replacement for him. Damien Williams and Khalil Herbert will fill in for him while he’s gone, with Williams likely to get the majority of the work.

• Teddy Bridgewater left the game at halftime on Sunday and entered concussion protocol. Going into week 4, he was averaging 17.6 points per game, which put him right at the end of superflex startability. Now Drew Lock is going to start if Teddy can’t go and that feels like a downgrade for all fantasy players on the Broncos.

• Joe Mixon has an ankle injury. Initially, it was thought that he would be week-to-week, but now it appears that he’ll be day-to-day, so keep an eye on his practice status throughout the week. Of course, last year he was week-to-week in Week 5 and didn’t play again that season, so take all of this with a grain of salt. Mixon was playing over 75% of his team’s snaps, and now Samaje Perine will have to fill that role.

• Will Fuller has a broken finger and is considered week-to-week. This has been a frustrating start to his first season in Miami. For now, cut him loose and look for your fantasy points somewhere other than the Dolphins passing game.

• Logan Thomas is week-to-week with a hamstring injury. Thomas was a popular draft pick this year who actually showed up and played well. His loss is tough, especially the zero points he got for you in Week 4. You’re better off streaming a TE from another team than trying to replace him with Ricky Seals-Jones.

• DJ Chark is going to the IR after breaking his ankle last Thursday night. Chark was off to a good start, playing on over 80% of snaps in the first 3 games, scoring 2 TDs and averaging 22 yards per reception. Now his absence should bump up the production numbers for Marvin Jones and Laviska Shenault as the Jaguars get their passing offense going. 

That's it for this week! Make sure to join us live on the Fantasy Finish Line Podcast, Wednesday at 9pm CST. Bring us your lineup questions, trade evaluations, and things you generally need advice on in your life. We're guaranteed not to make it any worse than it already is.