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.

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.