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.
0 Interceptions
For only the second time in his career, Jay Cutler did not thrown an INT in his opening game. This means that next week will be the first time that Cutler takes a snap in Week 3 of an NFL season and doesn't have an INT to his name. OK, fine, this might be a way to pick on Smokin' Jay, but I must tip my cap to him and the Dolphins for winning on the road after the surprise Week 1 bye. 230 yards and 1 TD isn't going to blow anyone's socks off, but as I noticed during the game, it's still the same old Cutler. He's still throwing off his back foot, airing it out and getting lucky as hell from time to time. It's nice having tall receivers.
25% Field Goal Percentage
The Chargers new kicker, YoungHoe Koo doesn't even have a success rate that would keep you employed in baseball. The rookie kicker is just 1-for-4 in field goal attempts this season. He's missed or had blocked two at the end of games that would have either tied or give his team the lead with time running out. Both are only from 44 yards away, and his other miss is from 43. His only make has come from 41 yards, and to his credit, he has made 5/5 extra points. Making all your extra points is getting hard to come by in this league. It must be rough being a Chargers fan now. On top of playing in a tiny stadium that people are making fun of, having an owner people poke fun at, you now have to worry about kicking problems on your 0-2 team (which has just a 12% shot at making the playoffs, historically).
20+ Fantasy Points
This week felt a lot more like a normal week of fantasy football. There were 12 players that scored at least 20 points in standard scoring this week, and 9 of them are owned in at least 96% of Yahoo leagues. So, I guess go pick up C.J. Anderson if your league has been asleep? Lots of big names went back to their normal productive selves, but a few new names might stick around a bit. Trevor Siemian leads the league in passing TD's and has the most fantasy points for QB's (second overall). He's only owned by 13% of leagues right now! The Broncos look good at home, but I want to see a them on the road before inserting Siemian in my lineup. It is, however, the right time to pick him up off the waiver wire.
0.1 Fantasy Points
In our drinkfive.com fantasy league, my opponent had her TE break his foot, and he still scored 10x the points that my TE scored. Greg Olsen's 1 point was an order of magnitude larger than Jimmy Graham's 0.1 points. The tight end position is about to get a lot thinner as two of the main starters are looking like they aren't options going forward. Olsen's broken foot definitely leaves him out of your lineup, and Graham has some knee issues and is playing on Thursday night this week. It's time to scour the waiver wire for a new TE, thankfully, there are actually several options out there for you.
14 Seconds
At the end of the first half in the Patriots-Saints game, Tom Brady was tackled with just 14 seconds to go and no time-outs. Bad clock management some of you may say? Not from Belichick; he got his team ready for this. The field goal unit scrambled onto the field and snapped the ball with 2 seconds to spare and gave the Pats a 30-13 lead going into halftime. The poise and calmness that this all happened with made it seem like they planned on just this exact situation coming up on this very drive. It makes you wonder if Belichick told the special teams that they're not allowed to have timeouts anymore, and if they screw it up, they don't get to eat on Thursdays.
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.
1 Pass Completion
A trio of position players completed passes this week. Perhaps, I should be more specific that they each completed one pass to their own team, but more on that in a moment. On Thursday, we saw Logan Thomas, a TE on a Football Team, hit Terry McLaurin on a 28-yard completion in the first quarter, the longest pass play of the day for Washington. Washington only really needed Antonio Gibson on Thursday, but we’ll get to him in a little bit. Cole Beasley joined in the fun on Sunday, throwing a 20-yard pass to Gabriel Davis in the Bills’ victory over the Chargers. Which brings us to the more infamous player who completed only one pass on Sunday. This, of course, needs a qualifier, because Kendall Hinton did complete two passes to the wrong team, and only one to his own team. A stat line of 1 for 9 with 2 INTs is not something I thought I would see in the NFL in a game that didn’t include some sort of blizzard or hurricane. Here we are, in 2020, where a practice squad player gets to start at QB because he was a backup QB in college.
51.4 Fantasy Points
We’re not here for tiny numbers, generally speaking, though sometimes they can be fun. Let’s break down the top fantasy performance of the season. Tyreek Hill did most of his damage in the first quarter, coming just a few yards shy of the all-time record for receiving yards in a single quarter. Hill started off with a 34-yard completion on the very first play of the game. He added another 23 yards on the same drive and had 57 yards total before 2 minutes had elapsed in the game. Two drives later, Hill got loose behind the defense and caught a 75-yard touchdown, his 6th receiving TD from Patrick Mahomes of 50 yards or more. A good quarter, you say? There was still 7 minutes left to go! On the next Chiefs drive, Hill caught 3 more passes, capping it off with a 44-yard TD reception. Hill ended the quarter with 7 receptions on 7 targets for 203 yards and 2 touchdowns. In comparison, Hill slacked off the rest of the game and finished with “only” 13 receptions for 269 yards and 3 touchdowns.
3 Touchdowns on the Ground
Tyreek Hill wasn’t the only player to find the end zone three times in Week 12. A pair of running backs managed that feat. First, on Thursday, Antonio Gibson was all the offense that Washington needed to defeat the Cowboys in their annual “why do the same teams always play on Thanksgiving?” afternoon naptime entertainment. Gibson started the game just fine, scoring early to put fantasy owners at ease. It was his finish that was truly impressive. He had fourth-quarter touchdown runs of 23 and 37 yards to turn his average day into the best game of his rookie season. A pick-six by Washington on the play following Gibson’s last touchdown put away the game for the Football Team and also buried the Cowboys' last playoff hopes for this year. Gibson was outdone on Sunday by Derrick Henry, who did almost all of his damage in the first half against the Colts. Henry finished with 178 yards and 3 more touchdowns. This brings his season totals to a league-leading 1,257 rush yards and 12 touchdowns, just one behind Dalvin Cook.
1 WR Over 1,000 Yards
We’re 12 weeks into the season, so while almost every team has played 11 games, we have just one wide receiver averaging 100 yards per game, Davante Adams at 100.9 yds/gamee – a definite departure from the high-flying passing numbers that we’ve seen in recent years. Tyreek Hill is the only WR who has cracked the 1,000-yard mark (1,081) and it took a monster game from him on Sunday to do so. His teammate, Travis Kelce, who is the TE1, 2, and 3 is second in the league in receiving yards with 978. On the rushing side, we have two players averaging 100 yards per game – the aforementioned Derrick Henry with 114 yds/game and Dalvin Cook just behind him at 113 yds/game. The lack of a truly dominant top end in fantasy football has probably prevented teams from running away with it and made waiver wire moves and starting the right guys in the right matchups even more important in this chaotic football season.
23 Fantasy Kicker Fantasy Points
In a surprise to no one, kicker ownership is completely off track. This week’s top kicker was Younghoe Koo of Atlanta who went 5/5 on field goals and 4/4 on extra points for a whopping 23 points, second on his team to only the D/ST, who put up 28 fantasy points on their own. Of course, the Raiders turning the ball over 5 times helped, but I digress, this is about the ridiculous ownership numbers of kickers. Going by our drinkfive writer’s league, Koo is the only kicked owned (by yours truly) of the top 12 kickers this week. In fact, only 5 of the top 20 are on a team at all. The average ownership in Fleaflicker of the top 12 kickers is only 34.5%. So have fun picking a kicker for next week, I suggest that whatever you do, just swap out the kicker you have for someone at random!