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.

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.

It's hard to believe that we're approaching the end of the first month of the NFL season already. We finally have enough games completed to start to pick up on player trends around the league. For now, I'm focused on Quarterbacks and Running Backs, but we will go over all the positions on tonight's podcast. Trending players will have a three-week fantasy performance that is either going up or going down, and we'll examine why that's the case and what we expect out of that player going forward.

Quarterbacks

Sam Darnold (Week 1: 19.06, Week 2: 20.50, Week 3: 25.26) - Darnold has the Panthers rolling with a 3-0 start. He’s only thrown 1 INT so far, and found the end zone three times on the ground, which is always something that you like to see from your fantasy QB. He’s also throwing the ball a decent amount, averaging just over 35 attempts per game with 24 completions per game. Darnold has not played the toughest competition so far, but has plenty of easy matchups coming up with games against PHI, NYG, and ATL all coming up well before his bye week. If you’re streaming QBs, you should love the floor that the QB12 on the season can give you. If you’re in a super flex league, then Darnold is easily an every week starter. Carolina’s strong rushing attack has helped him tremendously. His advanced passing stats are far better this year than they have been in his career.

Justin Herbert (Week 1: 14.38, Week 2: 16.72, Week 3: 30.84) - Herbert had a very slow start to the season after finishing last year as the ROY. He seemed unable to get the Chargers offense going in the first two weeks, scoring only 37 points on offense total. Last week he redeemed himself with 4 touchdowns through the air, one of which was on a game winning 4th quarter drive in their victory over the Chiefs. Herbert is owned in 90% of Fleaflicker leagues, meaning he’s not going to be on the streaming radar. If you drafted him, the urge to push the panic button should be subsiding. Herbert currently sits as the QB13 through three games, but you can safely expect him to finish well inside the top 10 by the end of the season with more performances like he turned in against the Chiefs.

Jared Goff (Week 1: 29.92, Week 2: 19.44, Week 3: 9.08) - Goff has displayed a classic downward trend for the first three weeks of the season. He started off very hot statistically in his first game, getting lots of garbage time points, finishing as the QB3 in Week 1 and providing some hope for Lions fans. But as all good Lions fans know, their hopes were dashed very quickly as the Lions lost the next two games as well. Goff has trended down in completions, attempts, and yardage in each subsequent game, even with plenty of garbage time opportunities in Week 2. While he hasn’t played particularly badly, it’s clear that there just isn’t much talent around him to support big games outside of some fluky garbage time stuff. Goff remains on the streaming radar, but only in great matchups. His floor is probably too low to rely on him and you certainly cannot rely on garbage time points.

Running Backs

Najee Harris (Week 1: 5.40, Week 2: 16.60, Week 3: 21.20) - This one’s for Dave. OK, not really, but I think he likes it when we talk about Steelers players. So, Harris is a rookie, so a slow start was probably to be expected. What I did not expect to see what a stat line like he had last week when he had 14 carries and 19 targets (14 receptions). Harris is lined up to be a PPR monster with action like that. He ramped up from 1 to 5 to 14 receptions, so while you can’t expect numbers like 14 receptions every week, you can assume that he is going to have a relatively high receiving floor. Harris is being used on every down, and with lots of injuries to the receiving corps, it looks like the offense will run through him. There are very few every-down backs in the NFL, and Harris was taken in fantasy drafts with the potential he could be one of those in mind. It looks like everything is going as planned for the Steelers rookie.

David Montgomery (Week 1: 18.30, Week 2: 9.40, Week 3: 6.50) - Montgomery started out the season strong, gaining 108 yards on just 16 carries against the Rams defense, but has really fallen off a cliff along with the rest of the Bears offense since then. On the season, Montgomery is now averaging just 2.0 receptions per game, down from 3.6 last season. His rushing attempts and yards per game are also down from last year. What worries me most is that the Bears appear to have an anemic offense at best and might struggle to move the ball early in games, thus turning them one-dimensional late in games.Until the Bears figure out what they want to do at QB, whether it’s running out a game manager, or developing Justin Fields, Montgomery will be a touchdown dependent RB2/3 with a relatively low floor for a guy that is going to still see a high percentage of snaps.

Ezekiel Elliott (Week 1: 4.90, Week 2: 16.70, Week 3: 25.10) - Zeke has trended up in many stat categories, so he’s the perfect example for this segment. His carries have gone 11, 16, 17. His yardage is 33, 71, 95 and his TDs have gone 0, 1, 2. Zeke was obviously a first round pick and is being started regardless of his slow start, but it’s nice to see that he’s ramped his production up nicely and while Tony Pollard is going to get his share of touches, Zeke is still the primary back and will be in line for 15-20 touches on average every game. The only thing that worries me about Zeke is that the Cowboys have a tendency to go pass-heavy in some games, as evidenced in week 1, thus leaving Zeke with a very low floor for a premier RB. If he was more involved in the passing offense, I would be fine with any game script that the Cowboys are presented with. Unfortunately so far this year, he has 2.3 receptions per game, down from 3.5 just a year ago, and way down from his career high of 5.1 in 2018 when he led the league in touches. 51 touches through 3 games is not what you drafted Zeke for, so you’re going to have to hope he does a lot with the touches he does get.

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 half PPR scoring unless otherwise noted.

5 Rushing TDs

Nearly a quarter into the 2021 season, the league’s leader in rushing touchdowns is certainly not someone anyone expected. Sam Darnold now has 5 total rushing TDs on the season after back-to-back 2 TD games. He’s also got 5 total passing TDs, but his two INTs yesterday cost his team their perfect record.  But hey, fantasy football isn’t all about wins and losses. Darnold was the QB1 on the week, just edging out Patrick Mahomes and his 5 passing TDs. Darnold is now the QB5 on the season, just a fraction of a point behind Tom Brady for 4^th. Darnold is a game manager who just happens to be scrambling into the end zone at the right moments. His 20 carries for 58 yards on the year do not inspire confidence in his rushing abilities. My advice to you is to package Darnold in some sort of trade where you can sell him at his highest value of the season, especially before Christian McCaffrey comes back and the ground game takes over the Panthers' offense once again.

32.1 Fantasy Points

Cordarrelle Patterson is continuing his spectacular season. The 2013 first-round pick has bounced around the league for 9 years, and now finally on his 5^th team, it seems like they have unlocked his offensive abilities. Patterson finished Week 4 as the RB1 on the week, and sits as the RB2 on the season, behind only Derrick Henry (who is on pace for nearly 2,700 yards from scrimmage). Patterson’s 5 TDs is the highest total he’s had since his rookie season (and tied with Sam Darnold for the league lead). His 45 touches and 354 yards from scrimmage are both more than halfway to career highs. It’s pretty rare that a player can blow away their season-best stats 9 years into their career. He’s still only owned in 70% of Fleaflicker leagues, so I imagine that the rest of the leagues will be frantically scrambling on the waiver wire to pick him up.

4 of the Top 6 Quarterbacks are Free Agents

In fantasy football, we’re used to positional volatility. We might expect a bunch of the top-scoring kickers, defenses, or tight ends to not be on any team in a given week. What we generally don’t expect is that to be true for the quarterback position. Using our drinkfive.com fantasy league for reference, we find that 4 of the top 6 QBs in week 4’s scoring were all free agents. This includes the week’s top scorer, the aforementioned Sam Darnold (56%), Matt Ryan (76%), Taylor Heinicke (34%), and Daniel Jones (60%). We also find the most owned QB, Tom Brady (98%) put up a whopping 11.06 points, despite 43 passing attempts. So, it’s sometimes a crapshoot, even at the most consistent position in the game. That’s what makes fantasy football so much fun (and aggravating), isn’t it?

10% League Ownership

Want some positional volatility? The tight end position has it in droves. This week’s top scorer, C.J. Uzomah (another candidate for a late-career break-out) is owned in only 10% of Fleaflicker leagues. His monster game on Thursday night helped propel the Bengals to victory. 5 receptions for 95 yards and 2 TDs gave him a total of 24 fantasy points, almost 6 points more than the next highest scorer. Among the top 5 scoring TEs so far this week, their ownership caps out at 58% for Dalton Shultz. The average ownership is only 29%. When we look at the TEs who are owned in at least 90% of leagues (we must exclude Gronk and Waller, who did not or have not played yet), we find that they only scored an average of 6.6 points. This is going to be the season that benefits QB and TE streamers the most.

8-100 Yard Rushing Performances

With all of this craziness, let’s check out a position that’s all chalk, shall we? This week, there were 8–100-yard rushing performances by running backs. Every single one of those players are owned in at least 92% of Fleaflicker leagues. In fact, if you expand that list to include all-purpose yards, there were 13 such games by running backs. All but one, Cordarrelle Patterson (who led in both AP yards – the guy Is still returning kicks, and points) are owned in at least 89% of leagues. This consistency at the running back position is probably the most predictable thing in all of fantasy football this year. Even the WR position has some wacky stuff going on, like Randall Cobb’s 21.4 points, good for WR6 on the week and helping exactly nobody since he’s only owned in 24% of leagues. This is certainly an important week to work the waiver wire!