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.
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.