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.

22 Rush Yards, Team Leader

Alex Smith led the Washington Redskins with a whopping 22 yards rushing, all on one scramble in the 2nd quarter. The Redskins came into the game with the 8th best rushing attack in the league, fronted by a resurgent Adrian Peterson. The Falcons came into the game as one of the league's worst rush defenses (20th in Yards, 30th in TDs), so Peterson's whopping 1.9 yards per attempt were a big disappointment. Smith did manage to find Maurice Harris in a big way. Harris's 10 catches for 124 yards is better than he's ever gotten in an single year. Meanwhile, Matt Ryan, usually a very average QB outdoors, really stepped it up with 29 fantasy points, the third best QB total of the week. Even Julio Jones finally found the end zone, his first time this season. Jones is 2nd in yardage, while managing just 11th in fantasy points. Only he and Keenan Allen make the top 30 of fantasy WRs with 1 TD reception.

151.9 QB Rating

This week's QB rating leader isn't Mahomes or the aforementioned Ryan, who had an excellent day. It's not even Drew Brees, though his 137.0 rating was impressive. No, I'm talking about the one and only Nick Mullens, a guy that NONE of you (or us) had heard about before Thursday night. The undrafted free agent couldn't ask for a better or less caring opponent than the current iteration of the Oakland Raiders. Mullens averaged 14.6 yards per pass attempt, had a better than a 72% completion rate and threw for 3 TDs on only 22 attempts. Along the way, Mullens proved the George Kittle is a top TE, regardless of who is throwing him the ball. Kittle has the 2nd most points overall at his position, thanks to a few of his peers having a bye week. Regardless of that, it's an impressive spot for a guy whose ADP was 129, basically Mr. Irrelevant in a lot of drafts. Word is that Mullens will start again next week against the Giants, an easy matchup. The following week the 49ers play the Bucs, I could easily see Mullens earning the starting job for the rest of the season, if he can keep playing like he did on Thursday night.

996 Rushing Yards

Tom Brady seems obsessed with getting to 1000 rushing yards, and was within one yard on Sunday night, prompting everyone to assume he was going to sneak for a TD. Instead, the Packers got a surprising, but ultimately futile, fourth-down goal-line stand. In the end, Brady wasn't going to hold any milestones, due to his ultimate rushing nemesis: taking a knee at the end of games. Three kneel-downs have left him at 996 career rushing yards. In his career, with a lead and less than 2 minutes to go, Brady has 135 rushing attempts for a net of -115 yards. By comparison, famous non-runner Peyton Manning has -104 yards in 137 carries in the same game situation. Peyton even managed to leave Denver with a net of -55 yards. I'm getting off track, but maybe that's because the Patriots and Packers left me with nothing to talk about fantasy-wise. A matchup between two of the best QBs in history left us with a combined 3 passing TDs and 553 passing yards between them. No, I'm not counting Julian Edelman's 37 yard toss to James White.

8 Consecutive 300 Yard Passing Games

At the risk of becoming a Patrick Mahomes/Adam Thielen/Todd Gurley column, I'm going to squeeze in a quick update on all three players in one blurb. First off, the good - Patrick Mahomes threw for 375 yards and another 3 TDs, extending his league lead in both categories. His interceptions now stand at 7 in the last 5 games. He's thrown at least one in each of those games, and that's a streak I'm sure he's eager to end. He is now just one game from tying Drew Brees' all time record of 9 straight games with 300 passing yards. Next week he faces the Cardinals, who are 7th in the league giving up passing yards, so matching Brees on this record won't be easy. Next, the bad - Adam Thielen, who went into the day tied with Calvin Johnson for 8 straight 100 yard receiving games. Thielen managed just 22 yards on 4 catches, though he found the end zone for the 6th straight game, saving his day for fantasy owners, but ending his streak. Finally the ugly, and I mean the Rams who finally lost a game. OK, ugly is a bit of a stretch, but Todd Gurley did put up his worst game of the season - just 13.90 points (also a stretch to call ugly). The silver lining for Gurley owners is that he is now far more likely to be playing for real in week 16, since the Rams no longer have control of home field in the playoffs.

2 of the Top 5 WRs Owned in Less than 2% of Yahoo Leagues

OK, this title is a mouthful, but what I'm getting at is that Adam Humphries (2% owned) and Curtis Samuel (1% owned) both finished in the top 5 points at WR this week (and for once, I don't expect anyone on Monday night to ruin those numbers). Humphries led his team in receiving, catching all 8 of his targets and finding the end zone twice. Amazingly for the Bucs, Mike Evans caught just one of his 10 targets. Sometimes it's a little Fitzmagic, sometimes it's a bit Fitztragic. Your mileage may vary. What I'm getting at is that RBs are just astoundingly more reliable this year. To find a player who's similarly available in Yahoo leagues, you must go to the RB18 of the week, Kapri Bibbs, owned in 3% of leagues, who managed 9.5 points on 4 touches. A look at the top 18 WRs would also include Cordarrelle Patterson (5%), Maurice Harris (0%), and Josh Doctson (8%). I suppose the right move here is to trade your unreliable WRs for some solid RBs before your league's trade deadline.