Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

We finally made it to Week 1! Football starts this week with the Texans @ Chiefs on Thursday night and I will be just one of millions waiting for the kickoff - beer in hand - that signals the start of the fantasy football season. This is going to be a tricky one, with flexible COVID-19 IR slots and constant testing at the forefront of the discussion, but that's all the more reason to be deep in research and statistics as we start the season. Best of luck to you all!

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.

3 Hot WR Pickups This Week

So far, week 6 has seen 4 WRs go over 20 points. We all watched Tyreek Hill go off for three scores on Sunday night, but there were three surprises Sunday afternoon that will be popular waiver pickups tomorrow. Albert Wilson, Tyrell Williams and Cole Beasley all put up at least 22 points while helping their teams to wins. All three players are currently owned in no more than 10% of Yahoo leagues. For Wilson, this is his third time in double digits on the season and is actually the WR16 so far this year. He was gaining more targets under Tannehill, and then had a season high of 9 with backup QB Brock Osweiler in on Sunday, so Wilson is definitely trending in the right direction. Williams and Beasley are a different story. Between them, their previous high was Beasley's 7.3 points in week 1. Williams seems to get 3-4 receptions per week, so he is a dart throw as a replacement. Beasley's usage is chaotic, and I still don't know what to make of the Cowboys offense. Hopefully you just have Tyreek Hill on your team and you're not so worried.

2 Games over 30 Points

Speaking of the best WR in fantasy football this year, Tyreek Hill now has two games north of the 30 point mark and he is now the #1 standard and #2 PPR scoring at his position. Hill as a wide receiver is what I imagine Devin Hester would have looked like, if he was any good at playing the position. Hill now has 27 TDs (both returning and receiving) in 37 games - 19 of those scores are 30 yards or longer. An exciting player, he is feast or famine for your fantasy team. Going into this week, he had turned in three straight performances of under 10 points. Despite this chaos (or maybe because he creates it), Hill is thriving and getting better as a WR. He's established himself as a red zone target for Patrick Mahomes, with a pair of 1-yard TDs on the season so far. He's also on pace for 90 receptions this year, 15 more than the career high he set last season.  If Hill and Mahomes stay  healthy, this is going to be a hell of a fantasy football combo for quite a while.

19.60 Fantasy Points

Hey, that's a pretty good performance from a running back. Should be good for top 10 any week, maybe top 5. The thing about that specific point total is that it represents the floor on the season for Todd Gurley. Gurley's season is so good that he's second only to Patrick Mahomes in total fantasy points.  Gurley is averaging 25.8 points per week, more than 3 points per game higher than the RB2, Melvin Gordon. In fact, Gordon has 3 games where he didn't even reach Gurley's floor - and Gordon's floor is 14.40 points this year, also incredible! What I'm getting at is that great running backs seem to be in abundance in Los Angeles this year. Gurley is now leading the league with 11 TDs on the season - 9 rushing and 2 in the air. His 9 on the ground are just 4 behind his league leading 13 last season. He's scored at least 1 TD every game this season.  This is just an incredible performance from the preseason #1 draft pick.

5 Consecutive 300+ Yard Games

Yeah, I've mentioned him several times already, but he deserves his own entry, doesn't he? Patrick Mahomes has now thrown for over 300 yards in his last 5 games. The game he didn't throw for that many, he just had 4 TDs. Mahomes is averaging 27 fantasy points per game and sports an 18:4 touchdown to interception ratio. Mahomes' streak of 5 games at 300+ yards is impressive, but he's got a long way to go to match Drew Brees' mark of 9 games, which he reached twice. Another impressive streak is Adam Thielen going for over 100 yards in 6 straight games to start the season. This is now just one game shy of matching the record for consecutive 100 yard games to start the season. He's just two games behind Calvin Johnson's all time mark of 8 straight games with 100 yards. Thielen is the WR2 on the season, and amazingly consistent as all his games are between 10.5 and 19 points.

27 Fantasy Points - From a Kicker!

Congrats to Jets kicker Jason Myers, for making 7/7 FGs and 3/3 XPs on his way to outscoring the Titans (0), Raiders (3), Jaguars (7) and Bills (13) combined! Two other kickers passed the 20 fantasy point mark on Sunday, Stephen Gostkowski and Cowboys kicker Brett Maher. Maher is leading all kickers with an average of 13 points per game over his last 4 games. The best part is that he's only owned in 6% of Yahoo leagues. There were some interesting D/ST performances as well. We saw the Bears finally stumble, and the Ravens score the cleanest 21 points I can think of. They had 11 sacks (ELEVEN!) and got 10 points for completing the shutout, something the Raiders had to take away from the Seahawks. At least the Raiders prevented the fine people of London from seeing yet another shutout.

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.

3 More Touchdowns

Todd Gurley continues to set the league on fire, scoring another three touchdowns in San Francisco on Sunday. This time around, Gurley had a season low 19 touches en route to a paltry 26.6 points. Gurley's touchdown pace, now 14 in just 7 games, would put him at a league record 32 for the season, if he can keep it up. Realistically, LaDanian Tomlinson's single season record of 31 touchdowns is probably safe. Gurley is unlikely to play all 16 games if his team keeps winning - they currently have a 1.5 game lead for the #1 seed, and an incredible 4 game lead in their division already. To break Tomlinson's record, Gurley would likely need to increase his TD production. As someone who drafted Gurley #1 overall, I'm all for it. I just hope that Gurley doesn't sit out for week 16, as well as 17. That would truly be a fantasy football tragedy.

222 Consecutive Extra Points

Justin Tucker, the most accurate kicker in NFL history, finally missed an extra point. Tucker had converted his previous 222 attempts, over 102 games going back to the start of the 2012 season. Tucker's miss kept his team from tying the game at the end of the 4th quarter and the Saints beat the Ravens 24-23. The Ravens, Bengals and Browns losses combined to grant the Steelers first place in the AFC North, all during their bye week. Over in England, Marcus Mariota broke a career long streak of his own. Mariota threw his first interception in the red zone in his career. A career that has spanned 4 years now in 48 games, the streak was preceded by 41 passing TDs on 161 passing attempts with a 104.1 QB rating in the red zone. Like Tucker, Mariota also contributed to his team losing the game at the end of regulation. He's not the root cause, however - I put the blame on Coach Vrabel and the lack of Derrick Henry, as well as the ill-advised decision to desperately go for 2 when your team is winning on both sides of the ball.

35 Points per Game

Mitchell Trubisky leads the league in points per game over the last 4 games with 27.96 PPG. That's better than Gurley, Mahomes... everyone. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Bringing down that average is his performance in week 3 where he put up only 6.60 points. In the last 3 weeks, Trubisky is averaging 35 points per game. He's still only on a roster in 53% of Yahoo leagues, but will likely be a big pickup this week. Even if the Bears are losing (especially, really), they will be throwing the ball a lot. Trubisky has fewer than 31 pass attempts just once this season and he scored 43.46 points on the strength of 6 passing TDs in that outing. My point is that he's on hell of a tear and he's the perfect option for bye weeks coming up, because the Bears already were off during week 5.

7 games of 100 yards in a row

I do love keeping track of big streaks in the NFL. Earlier, we looked at some career long streaks that have ended, so let's go positive here. Adam Thielen now has 100 yards in each of the first 7 games this season and he's now one game short of tying Calvin Johnson's all time record of 8 games. Thielen is leading the league in receptions with 67, currently a 10 catch lead over 2nd place. He also leads in receiving yards with 822, though Julio Jones will go into tonight's game with 708 yards and I really could use a good performance, Julio. But I digress, The other streak is of course, Patrick Mahomes, who notched his 6th straight 300 yard game. He's up over 2200 passing yards on the season and on pace to break the 5000 yard mark. Mahomes is not technically a rookie, but that would smash Andrew Luck's rookie record of 4374 yards.

4 OT Games in 7 Weeks

Humor me for a moment while I examine the fantasy football relevance of the Cleveland Browns, who have now basically played a league leading 7.5 games on the season. This hasn't quite helped out the 2-4-1 Browns, but at least there's some bright spots on the team, unlike last year. Baker Mayfield has made the Browns look like a team again, but he's not very productive in fantasy football yet, averaging just over 17 points per game when he starts. A bright spot has been TE David Njoku, who is one of Mayfield's preferred targets. He has at least 50 receiving yards in the last 4 games, and a TD in each of the last two. He's now the TE9 on the season and can be started on a weekly basis. Finally, Nick Chubb seems like he'll settle into Carlos Hyde's empty spot just fine. Chubb had 80 yards and a TD on Sunday and had all but 5 of the team's rushing attempts. Chubb should be a decent RB2/Flex start for most of the season, with a lot of upside.

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.

8 Straight Games of 100+ Receiving Yards

I've been keeping track of a couple of streaks here in the column lately, and both of them were extended on Sunday. First off, Adam Thielen matched Calvin Johnson's mark of 8 straight games with 100 receiving yards. It's also the new record for the start of a season. Thielen is the top scoring WR in fantasy this year (without ever hitting the 20 point mark), but his streak still comes up well short of Calvin Johnson's in one noticeable aspect. Megatron had 329 more yards during his streak, which is 35% more than Thielen. Also on Sunday, Patrick Mahomes continued his streak of 300 yard passing games, making it 7 in a row. He's still a couple games short of Drew Brees' record of 9 games, which he's done twice. Mahomes now leads the NFL with 2526 Passing Yards and 26 TDs. He's throwing a TD every 9.1% of his pass attempts and is leading all fantasy QBs by over 3 points per game.

3 Straight Games with 2 TDs

James Conner continues to be a marvel for the Steelers and now sits atop the crowded tier 2 RBs in fantasy points. Todd Gurley still has 41% more points than Conner, more on that in a moment. Conner's two TDs on Sunday made it three games in a row with two TDs, which is a first in franchise history. Quite a remarkable feat on a team like the Steelers, who have seen their share of hall of fame running backs. Conner is averaging 29.5 points per game over that stretch, which has prompted a lot of "Le'Veon who?" talk this year. Personally, I don't think the fighting is necessary or helpful. It may not be good from a fantasy perspective, but imagine the embarrassment of riches the Steelers will have at their disposal for the second half of the season when Bell finally reports.

15 TDs on the Season

Todd Gurley already has 15 combined rushing and receiving touchdowns in only 8 games. It could have been 16, and would have been nice for my fantasy team, but I applaud Gurley on his smart move. In the middle of a play, he was well aware that the only way to lose the game was to put the ball in the hands of Aaron Rodgers. Maybe Ty Montgomery can learn something from Gurley. Thus, the Rams are now 8-0, in part because their players are more aware of the game situation than their opponents. Maybe the Steelers and Browns can learn something too! Back to Gurley, he has more TDs than any other player had last season (Gurley had 19), and more than all but 8 players' season totals going back to 2012. He already has passed everyone's total from 2015. Gurley may have passed on a touchdown on Sunday, but he's still going to have a good shot at the single season record of 31.

2550 Career Points

I certainly wind up with a lot of entries about kickers for as much as I like to poke fun at them. This time though, it's definitely out of respect for a future hall of famer. Adam Vinatieri, who told his family not to travel to Oakland because he wasn't even sure if he'd play this week, now owns the career scoring record with 2550 total points. He's made 829 of his 846 extra point attempts, seen the extra point move back to no longer be a gimme, and still maintained a 94.4% conversion rate. He's made 573 field goals on 679 attempts and has been kicking since before South Park was a television show. Congrats to Adam Vinatieri, the most prolific kicker in a game that, by its name, you would think would have a lot more to do with kicking.

8 Top D/STs all Under 50% Owned

Through Sunday's games, the weekly leaders at D/ST once again prove that relying on one team every week is not likely to work, but then again, it's hard to tell what will. Of the top 8 D/STs, Washington & Carolina are the most owned at 45%. Only one of those teams is owned in our drinkfive league. It feels counter-intuitive when you have teams like the Rams, Texans and Bears that you don't want to let go, but streaming defenses is the way to go. The top 4 point scoring teams all matched up against teams that gave up the 12th most points, or more. Pay attention to matchups and the waiver wire and don't miss out on these points that wind up sitting on the waiver wire. Or, we could just get rid of the randomness of a kicker and defense from fantasy football altogether.