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 half PPR scoring unless otherwise noted.

47.6 Fantasy Points

For the second week in a row, we have a new season-high fantasy point scorer. Dalvin Cook defeated the Green Bay Packers, and he did not require a whole lot of help from the rest of his team. Cook touched the ball a whopping 32 times, had 226 yards from scrimmage, and scored 4 TDs. He led his team in both rushing and receiving on Sunday, which is impressive when you have two top WRs on your team. Of course, that’s likely to happen when you have 70% of your team’s total offense. Cook had an absurd 1.5 points per touch during the game. He was so efficient that Kirk Cousins only needed to attempt 14 passes – his second-fewest attempts in a start in his career. On the season, Dalvin Cook, the RB2, is averaging an impressive 1.14 points per touch, second only to Alvin Kamara who is the RB1 and averaging 1.16 per touch. They’re the only RBs in the top 10 who are averaging over 1 point per touch on the season.

5 of the Top 10 RBs

Using our drinkfive.com fantasy league as a metric, we see that this week, 5 of the top 10 RBs are not even rostered. It’s been an interesting week, setting aside the fact that Dalvin Cook outscored the 2^nd and 3^rd highest scoring RBs by 5.5 points. The probably-soon-to-be-rostered list contains DeeJay Dallas, Zack Moss, Jordan Wilkins, Nyheim Hines (awesome TD celebrations buddy!), and Damien Harris. On average, they are only owned in 40% of Fleaflicker leagues but definitely helped you win the week if you were bold enough to insert any of them in your lineup. It was a low scoring week, where the RB2, Giovani Bernard, only topped out at 21.3 points. In fact, our guy Dalvin Cook was only 1.5 points shy of scoring as many as the 8^th-10^th ranked RBs on the week. The waiver wire will be active with RBs this week but remember that Dallas will be replaced by returning starters, Moss is in a split backfield, and Harris is on a team that is notoriously bad at sticking with one RB. Finally, I have no clue what to make of the Indy backfield. Clearly Jonathan Taylor has angered the gods (or just Chuck Pagano) in some hideous manner.

3^rd Time as QB1 in 2020

Patrick Mahomes absolutely lit up the Jets, a minor league football team that plays its games out of New Jersey. For some reason, this game counts as an actual game in all historical statistics and for the official NFL record. Perhaps the most fun item from the game is that Le’Veon Bell, Chiefs running back, was the highest-paid Jets player on the field. He would have finished 2^nd on the team in yards from scrimmage with a whopping 37 too. But I digress - two years ago, I gushed about Mahomes in nearly every weekly column, but he’s been mostly absent this year, so let me make up for that now. On Sunday, he had his best passing performance of the year, completing 31 of 42 passes for 416 yards and 5 TDs, good for a 144.4 passing rating. The latter number, of course, making little sense since his performance was basically perfect, but his rating was not. This is the third time this season that Mahomes finishes as the QB1 for the week. What’s amazing is that Russell Wilson, who has played 1 fewer game, is still the QB1 on the season, leaving Mahomes as the QB2 in fantasy football, but the QB1 in our hearts.

7-0 Steelers

There’s not a ton of fantasy numbers to crunch out of the Pittsburgh Steelers this week. This tends to be the case when your D/ST outscores all of your position players. As a team though, they are very impressive. Their 7-0 start is tied for the best in franchise history with the 1978 team, which won the Super Bowl. This team also has recorded at least 1 sack in 64 straight games (that’s 4 seasons) and is closing in on the all-time record of 69 games which was set by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the early 2000s. The lack of fantasy dominance in a dominant team is frustrating for casual fans, but not for Steelers fans, which the drinkfive staff is lousy with. On Sunday they got the best of Lamar Jackson, forcing his first-ever pick-six very early in the game and sacking him 4 times. The Ravens now fall to 2 games behind the Steelers, who should have a very easy time next week against the Cowboys, where, I can only assume, Ben DiNucci will be musing about what horses want when they are hungry.

7 TDs by Two Players

A few fun random stats that didn’t fit elsewhere. The Vikings-Packers game saw 7 touchdowns scored…by only 2 players. In addition to the aforementioned Dalvin Cook’s 4 TDs, Davante Adams was responsible for all three TDs for the Green Bay Packers. The Chargers lost after giving up a 17-point lead for the third time this season, an NFL record for consecutive losses. Tua Tagovailoa started and won, but it was about as ugly as it could be with just 5.72 fantasy points and none of his receivers reaching 20 yards. Drew Brees again holds the NFL record with 560 passing TDs, but perhaps only for a day. Tom Brady is at 559 and plays tonight against the hapless Giants. Finally, Tuesday is a very important day. The NFL trade deadline is at 4 pm ET. Oh yeah, there’s also a bit of an election going on. GO VOTE!

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.

38.1 Fantasy Points

Good things do indeed come in small packages, as proven last night by Kyler Murray. His 38.1-point performance last night vaulted him to the top of the overall points list for all fantasy players this year. His per-game average is still a few points behind Russell Wilson, who has already had his bye week, but Kyler defeated Russell last night, so let’s focus on him today. Kyler’s consistency is remarkable – his lowest scoring week this season is a healthy 23.12 points, which is a floor that not even Wilson can match. The Cardinals now have a 5-2 record in the toughest division in football. He has at least 2 TDs in every game, and in 5 games he has 3 TDs. He’s putting up some great rushing numbers as well, with 437 total rushing yards he has the 11^th most rushing yards in the entire league. Murray has made great progress since last season, and his future is very bright. As he gets better, his interception rate will drop, his completion percentage will go up, and he will be a frequent participant in the playoffs, both in fantasy football and real football.

51.4 Points in 2 Games

Yesterday was the Jeff Wilson show again for the San Francisco 49ers. Wilson found the end zone 3 times and is the RB1 on the week with 31 fantasy points. In 2 games, this season, Weeks 3 and 7, he has 51.4 points. In the other 3 games he appeared in this season, he has a whopping 5.4 points total. It’s enough to give you whiplash. This just kind of shows that the best RB on the 49ers in the last few years seems to be whoever the backup is. Another player who’s going to give your fantasy team whiplash, though not quite as badly, is Tyler Lockett. Yesterday he put up the biggest single-game total that we’ve seen in fantasy football this year. 15 receptions, 200 receiving yards, and 3 TDs for a grand total of 45.5 points is truly an amazing performance. Weeks 3 and 7 were also Lockett’s good weeks, where he put up a total of 78 points. His two games between those weeks combined for just 11.3 points. Lockett, unlike Wilson, is at least an every-week starter that has to stay in your lineup for his absolutely absurd ceiling.

1 NFL Victory

Rookie QB Justin Herbert has been quite remarkable since he was called in to start Week 2 with just a few minutes' heads up. Sunday, he finally notched his first win and Herbert led all QBs with 38.48 fantasy points. This year, Herbert has 3 games over 300 passing yards and has at least 3 passing TDs each of the last 3 weeks. He’s now averaging just a hair under 30 points in each of his last 3 games. His schedule going forward isn’t too bad through week 16, with only 2 opponents not in the bottom half giving up fantasy points to opposing QBs. It also seems like regardless of Tyrod Taylor’s status, Herbert will remain the starter going forward. As for Herbert’s opponent yesterday, it seems that Minshew Mania has dwindled down to a golf clap at best after his paltry 14 for 27 performance netting just 173 yards passing. The Jaguars 1-6 record is going to have them thinking long and hard about the future of the team through their upcoming bye week. The only bright spot on the team has been rookie UDFA James Robinson, who is the RB6 on the season.

5 Go Ahead 4^th Quarter TDs

Baker Mayfield and Joe Burrow combined for 5 go-ahead touchdowns in the 4^th quarter on Sunday, an NFL record. Both of the young QBs are playing very well this year for their respective teams. The two teams combined for 34 total points in the 4^th quarter, with a missed XP at the very end looming very large for the sports bettors out there. With his first 30+ point performance of his career, Joe Burrow moves up to the QB10 spot on the season. He broke the 400-yard mark for the first time, and also helped his own cause by scrambling for a TD to start the scoring on Sunday. Burrow also threw 3 TDs to 3 different players. On the other side, Baker Mayfield also cracked 30 fantasy points, but he sits as the QB21 on the year and is just an interesting streaming option for now. The Browns will continue to focus on running the ball first – they’re still 5^th in the league in rushing attempts. The impressive 5-2 Browns will host the Raiders next week, but will not have the services of resurgent WR Odell Beckham Jr, who is out for the season with an ACL tear.

24 Fantasy Points on Defense

For the second time this season, the Kansas City Chiefs have the top D/ST score in the league. A gaudy stat line of 1 kick return TD, 2 interceptions, 3 sacks, 2 fumbles recovered and 1 defensive TD contributed to their 24-point total on Sunday. This doubled up the 12 points that Patrick Mahomes put up this week. Not that Mahomes had a bad game, he just didn’t need to do much with his defense doing all the work. We also saw rookie RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire find the end zone for the first time since Week 1. He’s clearly seeing Le’Veon Bell filling his entire rearview mirror. Side note – isn’t it awesome to see football in the snow? I freaking love it and the chaos that can sometimes ensue in it during a football game. Finally, you can add Denver to the list of teams (that include the Jets, Giants, and …Team) to fade when streaming a D/ST.

Watching trends in fantasy football is a key way to measure how a player is doing and to try and predict future success - or lack thereof. This week I present to you a pair of players trending up and a pair of players trending down and attempt to extrapolate which direction to expect them to go in the future. For our purposes, a trend is a player that has gone up or down three consecutive weeks. 

Trending Up

Kenyan Drake (RB-ARI) – Wk 4 @ CAR, 3.5; Wk 5 @ NYJ, 12.7; Wk 6 @ DAL, 28.4. Drake currently finds himself in a classic trending up situation where nearly all of his stats are trending in the correct direction. His carries, yardage, touchdowns, and fantasy points are all trending up. He put on a show on Monday night, running all over the busted Dallas defense, capping it off with a 69-yard rushing TD at the end of the game. Drake did what he is supposed to do against bad teams in the last two weeks and wound up as the RB2 just last week. He’s averaging 5.9 yards per carry in the last 2 games and has 3 total touchdowns as his team has put up at least 30 each week. Now Drake has some more nice matchups coming up. He’ll play 2 of his next 4 games against Seattle, who give up double digits to anyone with a respectable running game. He also has a game against Miami coming off a bye which should be a fine matchup as well. With the Cardinals offense past their early season jitters and back to their winning ways, I expect Drake to be a large part of the offense going forward and think his upward trend is a good indicator of what’s to come.

Darren Fells (TE-HOU) – Wk 4 vs MIN, 3.1; Wk 5 vs JAX, 12.7; Wk 6 @ TEN, 17.5. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I’m not looking for TE magic here, just a one-eyed man…if you’ll let me stretch this metaphor. Fells is the TE5 when measuring across the last 3 games of all TEs. If you are not currently in possession of George Kittle or Travis Kelce, then it’s likely that you’re a blind resident of the TE wasteland. Fells is only owned in 32% of Fleaflicker leagues, so he’s been trending in the right direction if you’re streaming TEs. In the two games since Bill O’Brien was fired, the Texans have scored 66 points. They only had 80 points in the previous 4 games, so clearly they have identified at least part of what was broken on their offense. Fells has increased his yardage total 3 weeks in a row, and scored each of the last two weeks. He had 7 targets last week, good for third on the team. Fells has a mixed bag of matchups coming up, which means he will continue to just be a good streaming option and probably not a permanent fixture on your team. Regardless, it’s hard to find your way around the TE wasteland, best to at least go with someone who has an eye for the end zone.

Trending Down

Antonio Gibson (RB-WAS) – Wk 4 vs BAL, 20.8; Wk 5 vs LAR, 7.6; Wk 6 @ NYG, 7.5. Gibson was trending up and peaked in Week 4 with a rather good performance of 128 yards from scrimmage and 1 TD. Since then, however, his yards per carry has dropped to below 3.3 in each game. He’s seeing fewer carries and is also less effective in the passing game. Credit for his reduced workload goes to J.D. McKissic, the #2 RB in Washington. He has technically started half the games this season, and is definitely receiving a lot more attention in the passing game when compared to Gibson. The Washington offense is in QB limbo and there’s barely enough production on that team to support one fantasy WR, let alone a RB on a committee. The nature of this split has actually led to McKissic getting a larger percentage of the snaps than Gibson over the last couple of weeks. It was a nice idea, but the rookie is just not producing enough to warrant starting every week. Another week or two of this, and I expect to find him on Dave’s cutlist.

Juju Smith-Schuster (WR-PIT) – Wk 3 vs HOU, 14.3; Wk 5 vs PHI, 4.8; Wk 6 vs CLE, 1.6. On the season, Juju has not broken 70 yards and since the Steelers impromptu bye week, he is averaging a dismal 5.7 yards per reception. With the emergence of Chase Claypool and Diontae Johnson back to full health, it looks like Smith-Schuster is relegated to 3^rd or 4^th on the target list. The Steelers are playing well, a 5-0 start is the best they’ve had since the steel curtain of the late 70’s. There’s no need to fix what isn’t broken, so I don’t see a bounce back in store for Juju any time soon. He is still rosterable because he will have a role on this high powered offense if there are any injuries ahead of him.

(dis)Honorable Mention - Joshua Kelley (RB-LAC) – While not officially trending down by our standards, Kelley has been just utterly useless when it comes to fantasy. Justin Jackson has assumed the role of the injured Austin Ekeler, who will be back “later than sooner” according to coach Lynn.

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.

24.2 Points…From a Kicker

Brandon McManus was responsible for the entire scoring output of his team on Sunday, and it was enough to go into Foxboro and beat the Patriots. McManus was a perfect 6 for 6 on the day, converting 242 yards of field goals into 18 points on the board. His 24.2 fantasy points made him the 6^th highest scoring non-QB player of the week so far. Elsewhere, other kickers are continuing to kick butt. Younghoe Koo went 4/4 on field goals and 4/4 on extra points for a cool 20.1 points. Koo is the second-best kicker this year in terms of points per game and is very consistent. His lowest game is 8.5 points, which was his only game below 10 points all season. Then you have Justin Tucker, perhaps the most famous fantasy kicker in the game. He’s missed just one of his 34 total kicking attempts this season. His 17.7 points definitely were critical in leading at least one fantasy team (mine) to victory.

3 of the Top 10 Fantasy WRs

Three of the top 10 fantasy WRs by points in Week 6 are rookies. Leading the way is Justin Jefferson, who once again finds himself in the discussion for top WRs of the week. His 9 receptions for 166 yards and 2 TDs mark the third time this season he has broken the 100-yard mark. Jefferson is now the WR4 on the season, and he and Adam Thielen (WR2) are stepping up as the NFL's biggest power combo at WR. Last week’s WR leader, Chase Claypool, had a nice encore performance with 81 yards from scrimmage and another TD. Claypool is now leading his team in both receiving yards and receiving touchdowns. Finally, we have Tee Higgins rounding out the top 10 of the week. His 6 receptions for 125 yards are both career highs, through 6 games. Higgins has emerged as probably the best WR on the Bengals, who have shown signs of life just one season after finishing with the NFL’s worst record. Higgins has a nice rapport with Joe Burrow developing and has moved into the every week starter conversation.

601 Yards of Offense

After an odd and shortened week, the Tennessee Titans put up a franchise-record 601 yards of offense, led by the one and only, the unidread, Derrick Henry. Henry had nearly half of those yards himself, 264 yards from scrimmage, including a 94-yard touchdown run in the 4^th quarter to take the lead back from the Texans. Ryan Tannehill managed to outduel Deshaun Watson, putting up 364 passing yards and throwing 4 TDs, though really, it’s the skilled manner in which he hands the ball to Derrick Henry and then gets the heck out of the way that got him this victory. 9 different Titans had receptions in this game, led by, as expected, Anthony…Firkser? Firkser saw a larger role with Jonnu Smith sidelined by injury and had a whopping 8 receptions for 113 yards and found the end zone as well. Firkser now has a Michael Thomas-esque 78.1% catch rate on his career. He is owned in 3% of fantasy leagues and was the TE1 on the week, so place your bids now! A quick digression – not to call out our drinkfive.com fantasy league or anything, but only 4 of the top 20 TEs so far this week are even on rosters in this league!

39.4 Fantasy Points

Let’s take another look at Derrick Henry’s ridiculous fantasy performance on Sunday. 22 carries for 212 yards is a 9.64 yards per carry average, meaning that every time he carried the ball, he went 29 of the 30 feet traditionally required to make a first down. He added two receptions for 52 yards, 53 of them (what?) coming in overtime to flip the field and set up the Titans for his game-winning TD 4 plays later. This is his third consecutive season where he has a game of at least 200 rushing yards. Henry is the first NFL player to accomplish this feat. He has 9 TDs in those three games. He can add two playoff games last year where he broke 200 yards from scrimmage to that leader board as well. How dominant was Henry? Well, the second-best RB this week has only 65% of his fantasy points. He scored 3x the points that the RB10, Adrian Peterson, had this week.

3 Pick-Sixes

Aaron Rodgers threw his third-ever pick-six on Sunday in 179 regular-season games. By contrast, his opponent on Sunday has 16 on his career. How about showing that stat when you try inflating Brady’s ego, Fox? Anyways, I digress. It was one of the worst games of Rodgers’ career and the Packers even managed to lose their first-place status in the NFC North. Meanwhile, the Bucs move into sole possession of first place in the NFC South with their 4^th victory. Brady’s old team only has 2 victories…if anybody is counting. The Bucs are managing to win with defense and a solid run game, just what we expected out of the traditionally high-flying offense of Bruce Arians. Ronald Jones is the first player this season with 3 consecutive 100-yard rushing games. Even Rob Gronkowski is getting in on the action, scoring his first TD as a Buc and finishing with 16.3 points this week, his best game since Week 14 of the 2018 season.