Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

In the majority of fantasy football leagues, Week 15 will determine who goes to the championship and who competes for crumbs. Go for the gold! Use our rankings as a guide to select waiver picks and choose who to start on your quest for the trophy. Listen to or watch the Fantasy Finish Line podcast to stay on top of the latest news and analysis - we broadcast live on YouTube weekly on Wednesdays at 9pm CT.

Top guys for this week? Aaron Rodgers, Derrick Henry, Davante Adams, and Travis Kelce. What else is new? :) 

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!

Well, we've officially made it to championship week - this year has had more ups & downs than usual due to COVID-19, but the season went on! And now it's up to you to make those all-important final decisions that will carry you to victory and secure the fantasy football championship (or 3rd place) in your league(s). Listen to or watch the Fantasy Finish Line podcast to stay on top of the latest news and analysis - we broadcast live on YouTube weekly on Wednesdays at 9pm CT.

Top guys for this week? Patrick Mahomes, Derrick Henry, Davante Adams, and Travis Kelce. What else is new? :) Some sleeper candidates include Matt Ryan, Leonard Fournette, Rashard Higgins, and Tyler Higbee.

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 half PPR scoring unless otherwise noted.

252 Yards from Scrimmage

For the second week in a row, Dalvin Cook reached 200 yards from scrimmage in another dominating performance. This time around, he only needed 22 carries to hit 206 rushing yards, but he still added 2 catches for 46 yards for good measure. He did “only” find the end zone twice, but it was enough to be the top scorer for the second week in a row with 38.2 points. Most weeks I wonder if someone will turn in a performance on Monday night that makes one of my entries a moot point. This week is not one of those times. Cook is now the RB1 on the season with a 10-point lead over Alvin Kamara, who turned in a mere 49 yards from scrimmage in a game where his team put up 38 points. Cook has 13 touchdowns in just 7 games and is basically single-handedly dragging his team out of the basement of the NFC North. An honorable mention goes to Christian McCaffrey, who did not skip a beat and put up 32.1 points in his return, continuing his average of scoring 2 TDs per game. Unfortunately, it sounds like McCaffrey is headed to the bench with another injury.

2% Ownership in Fleaflicker Leagues

There were a number of familiar names on the top WR list of the week, but the one above all the others was definitely new to me. Richie James, who is owned in just 2% of Fleaflicker leagues, and was started in zero leagues that you or I are in, had 3 receptions over 40 yards, including his 41-yard touchdown in what can only be described as garbage time while the 49ers were down 34-10 late in the 4^th quarter. Fantasy football, however, does not care what the score is on the field, so James gets credit for all the 28.9 points that he earned last Thursday night. James just barely edged out Tyreek Hill, who put up his first 100 receiving yard game of the season and caught the 100^th (and 101^st) touchdown pass of Patrick Mahomes’ career. Hill has been around for all of them – he also caught Mahomes’ first TD pass back in 2018. Mahomes is the fastest QB to 100 passing TDs, beating Dan Marino’s mark by 4 games.

3^rd Week as the Top TE

Travis Kelce has been the top TE on a weekly basis for 1/3^rd of the season so far. Not too bad when you consider just how volatile the position is in fantasy football. Kelce is basically a lock for the top spot when he reaches the 20-point mark. This week, and last’s, 20.9-point performances were good for the lead, and it wasn’t even close. He also put up 20.8 in Week 5 and led the league. On the season, Kelce is just dominating the position and is in tier 1 all by himself and it’s not even close. You might say that tier 2 is his as well, considering he has 139.9 points on the season and the next closest player is over 50 points behind him. Darren Waller has quietly been the TE2 on the season without ever finishing in the top 2 of any given week. Waller leads his team in both receptions and receiving yards, though being 8 games into the season and not having a single receiving leader over 400 yards is nothing to write home about.

8^th Most Rushing Yards in the League

Kyler Murray did all he could on Sunday to win but lost to a very surprising Miami team that is playing way beyond any level that people expected this season. Murray added another 106 rushing yards to his already gaudy numbers this season. For the year, he has the 8^th most rushing yards of any player in the league. He’s averaging 7.14 yards per carry. If he never threw a pass, he would be the RB13– 102.3 points come from his rushing yards and 8 rushing TDs. As it stands, Murray is the QB1 on the season with 240.5 points in 8 games. He leads a tier 1 of QBs that include 3 other players, all of whom deserve MVP votes so far this year. Patrick Mahomes got a shout out earlier, but really the major props go to Josh Allen who shut up his critics for a week with his 44-34 win over the Seahawks. Russell Wilson was the only one of the group to struggle, turning the ball over 4 times and scoring his second-lowest total of the season, 24.1 points.

8 Rushing Yards

Tom Brady suffered the worst defeat of his career (35 points) last night and everybody was invited to watch it on Sunday Night Football. The Buccaneers combined for just 8 total rushing yards in a game where none of their players reached double-digit fantasy points. Brady had just 209 passing yards and 3 INTs as he could only muster a late field goal for his team to keep them from being shut out. On the other side, Drew Brees was the only one with a good fantasy game, despite his team putting up 38 points. Brees found the end zone 4 times reaching 22.68 fantasy points, nearly 10 more than the next highest player on his team. Of note in this game was the fact that it contained the two all-time passing touchdown leaders in the NFL. Brees and Brady keep trading the top spot, but this week it was all Brees. He’s now in the lead 564-561.

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.

0 Targets in Week 11

The WR3 this week, (or TE1, depending on your hosting site) had exactly zero targets in the passing game this week but put up 24.42 points. In surely the most controversial issue of the fantasy season, Taysom Hill started at QB this week for the Saints, while retaining WR or TE eligibility on most fantasy platforms. This was surely a triumph of the well prepared because Hill found the end zone twice on the ground and also threw for 223 yards, more than doubling his career passing yards total. He still sits at zero passing TDs, but has 13 career rushing & receiving TDs, already halfway to Drew Brees’s career total. The fantasy football story from this game that has been buried is that Michael Thomas finally had a good game. He broke out for 9 receptions and 104 yards, more than he had combined in his previous three starts in 2020. Going into next week’s much tougher matchup against Denver, it’s anyone’s guess how Taysom Hill will perform, or even what positions he will be eligible to start in. One thing I think we might be able to speculate with some confidence is that Michael Thomas has resumed duties as the WR1 on the New Orleans Saints.

25 Fantasy Points Per Game

With 9 starts now under his belt, Chargers rookie QB Justin Herbert is averaging 25 points per game, which is good for 5^th among all QBs in the league. This week he put up his second-highest total of the year, 27.74 points, on the strength of his highest passing yards total of 366 and 3 touchdowns in an easy victory of the Jets. Herbert is now 7^th in overall points at the QB position and 5^th in points per game, which is a remarkable feat considering he was only inserted as an emergency starter in Week 2, with no apparent plans to make him a starter that early in the season. Now that Joe Burrow is done for the year and we saw Tua Tagovailoa benched against Denver in the 4^th quarter, I think it’s safe that say that Justin Herbert has the Offensive Rookie of the Year award all but wrapped up with 6 games still remaining in the season.

16 Receptions

Keenan Allen caught 16 passes on Sunday, a franchise record for the Chargers, in a game that they had to have to avoid supreme embarrassment. Let’s face it, anyone who loses to the Jets this year will be the laughing stock of the week, so the Chargers did dodge that bullet in a game where they were up 24-6 at one point. That’s very on point for the Chargers this year. But I digress, let’s go back to Keenan Allen. He’s now leading the league with 81 receptions after 10 games. A bit off of Michael Thomas’s record-setting pace last year, but still on pace for 130 on the season and by far the most he’s had in a single season of his career, which was 104 last year. Allen has been a huge part of bringing Justin Herbert along as a rookie, and I don’t think that either player would be in the excellent fantasy position they are in without the other one.

3 Out of the Last 4 Weeks

Dalvin Cook has now led all running backs in fantasy points in 3 of the last 4 weeks. In Weeks 8 and 9, it was from gaudy totals of 47 and 38 points, but last week he led a rather low scoring group with 22.50 points. Cook has 14 total touchdowns on the season and has scored in all but one game this season. He also exceeded 100 yards from scrimmage for the 6^th time this season – his 4^th week in a row. Cook is now sitting all alone as the RB1 on the season, having edged out Alvin Kamara by 5 points, though Cook does have one fewer game played on the season, putting his average points per game well ahead of everyone other than Christian McCaffrey. While it’s certainly possible that Cook is passed in points by a player tonight, let’s just suppose that doesn’t happen. That means that while Cook has been on this hot 4 game tear, his team is 3-1, sweeping through the NFC North while dropping a game to the Dallas Cowboys of the embarrassing NFC East. Of course, the Cowboys did get Andy Dalton back who threw 3 touchdowns and saw Ezekiel Elliott crack 100 yards for the first time all season.

22.86 Fantasy Points

Travis Kelce continued his utterly dominant season this week, catching a wide-open touchdown to seal the victory for the Chiefs late in the 4^th quarter last night. Kelce now has 162.76 points on the season, which would make him the WR3 on the season if he played that position. Of course, instead, he’s the TE1, but since the numbers line up so well with Taysom Hill, why not just play with positional eligibly a little bit. Kelce has now finished as the top TE of the week 4 times on the season, and 3 of the last 4 weeks, just like Dalvin Cook. Kelce has the 3^rd most receiving yards in the league and leads all tight ends in every statistical category. Kelce is on a pace to have the second-most fantasy points in a season by a TE in NFL history, right on pace with Jimmy Graham’s 2013 season. He’s still got some work to do if he wants to match Rob Gronkowski’s 2011 season, however.