Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

A week without football was not acceptable to me, so I decided to join an AAF fantasy league. It turns out that the AAF is a lot of fun and actually good football! This inaugural AAF Fantasy Football episode on drinkfive.com is hosted by me,  Jason Evans and will have rotating guests for now to help with the discussion. This week, Vince Foss joined me and broke down what the AAF is, the differences between the AAF and the NFL, and talked about the good performers from Week 1 and previewed a bit of Week 2. Let me know how you liked the show! You can e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.or tweet @drinkfive with lineup questions.

Listen to the drinkfive.com AAF Fantasy Football Podcast, 2/14/2019 - Inaugural Episode

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes to get notifications whenever we release a new episode. We also broadcast the shows live at http://www.mixlr.com/drinkfive on (most)Wednesday nights. Feel free to browse over and join in the discussion in the chat room!

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.

29.24 Fantasy Points

Once again, Derrick Henry led all RBs in fantasy points - this time it was a much more reasonable point total. Henry has a whopping 408 yards and 6 TDs over the last two weeks. If you started him these last two weeks, then you're probably looking at a championship matchup next week. Those numbers also account for basically half of his entire production in the 2018 season, so it's no surprise if he was riding your bench last week and you didn't want to chase points this week. Either way, it's been an impressive two weeks for Henry, and perhaps he's starting to live up to the potential he was touted to have coming out of college. This week, el "Tractorcito" will be taking on the Redskins, whom have fallen to the middle of the pack in rush defense after starting strong. Might as well fire up Henry and ride this hot streak while you still can.

142 Rush Yards

Steelers backup RB Jaylen Samuels put up a total of 172 yards from scrimmage in a tough win against the Patriots, a team that the Steelers haven't beaten since 2011. His 142 rush yards were the first time that the Steelers had a player cross the 100 rushing yard threshold since week 9 in Baltimore. Samuels' performance once again shows that it's the offensive line of the Steelers that is the real MVP here. It was the difference in a game that featured two perennial giants that have seen better days. Adding to the fun was Samuels' eligibility as a TE in Yahoo leagues. He was by far the highest scoring TE of the week, and only one of two players to hit double digits. The other player was Garrett Celek, owned in 0% of leagues. Now, the Patriots are in line to have to play during the wild-card weekend for the first time since 2009. Finally, someone else is getting a bye in the AFC.

4 of the top 8 TEs Owned in 0% of Leagues

OK, it's getting ridiculous at the TE position this year. Not only is it hard to get any kind of consistency at the TE position (the TE10 scored just 5.4 points), there are guys every week doing all the scoring instead of the ones in starting fantasy lineups. Week 15 saw Garrett Celek, Jeremy Sprinkle, Darren Waller and Lee Smith all wind up in the top 8 scoring TEs this week. All of those guys are basically rounding errors to us, as they're all owned in 0% of leagues. To look at this from another angle, all 6 TEs owned in 90% of leagues or more (we're throwing Jaylen Samuels out of this) scored a combined 18.6 points, good for a 3.1 point average. Might as well throw out the TE slot and just make it another flex position in order to take a bit of the sadness out of fantasy football.

4 of the top 10 WRs Owned in 51% of Leagues or Less

OK, it's not quite as ridiculous at the WR position, but it's not exactly full of guys you expected to be putting up big games. Starting off, you've got Mike Williams (51% owned) who scored 3 TDs and a 2 pointer for the win, led the week with 29.5 fantasy points. Then you've got Robert Foster (14%), Robby Anderson (27%) and Chris Hogan (28%) all scoring a touchdown and finishing in the top 10 WRs. Whatever happened to standards? You also had Adam Thielen, Tyreek Hill and Keenan Allen combine for a whopping 6 points - all of those guys are owned in 100% of Yahoo leagues. We've said it for a while now at drinkfive, but WR performances really get inconsistent when you near the end of the season, so here's hoping you turned some of those early stars into RBs at some point this season.

8 of the top 8 RBs Owned and Started Everywhere!

Now here's a position with some consistency, and let me elaborate. These top 8 guys are all owned in at least 88% of leagues, with the exception of Damien Williams (67%), who is being used in leagues that are paying attention, at least. Weather is a factor somewhere almost every weekend in the NFL, and bad or cold weather definitely favors the run game over the passing game, but there's something else to this trend of RBs being better than WRs this time of year. Later in the season, you wind up with teams that are able to improve their offensive line, since the only true way to practice a run game is to play real games. This is how you wind up with 8 players scoring at least 20 points at one position, and it being at least mildly predictable. Rounding out the top 10, honorable mentions go to Kalen Ballage (nice 75-yard TD) and Wendell Smallwood, both owned in 14% or fewer Yahoo leagues.

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.

47.80 Fantasy Points

Derrick Henry has set a new high-water mark for the 2018 fantasy football season, taking 17 carries and converting them into 238 yards and 4 TDs. That's 14 yards per carry for those of you counting at home. His touchdowns went for 3, 99, 16 and 54 yards and his 99-yarder tied a record held by Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, which hadn't been matched since it was first set in 1982. The rest of the Titans combined for 15 carries for just 26 yards and Marcus Mariota barely needed to do more than just hand it to Henry. He was a one-man wrecking crew, accounting for all of the Titans TDs. Henry's 47.8 points were the most in fantasy football since way back in week 4, when Mitch Trubisky threw for 6 TDs. There were 4-40 point performances in the first 4 weeks of the season, and then not another until 10 weeks later. Heck, even Amari Cooper's incredible (and personally heartbreaking) 39.70 point performance is the most points in the last 10 weeks, aside from Henry's game Thursday night.

368 Passes without an INT

Aaron Rodgers has just 1 INT on the season, which isn't really a good look for those people blaming Rodgers for the decline of the Packers. Rodgers is just fine, thank you - throwing an INT on just 0.2% of his pass attempts. This was highlighted Sunday when Rodgers threw a TD to Randall Cobb in the 3rd quarter and broke Tom Brady's streak of consecutive passes without an interception. Rodgers went on to finish the game cleanly, and now the streak sits at 368 consecutive passes since his last INT. Rodgers' last pick came in week 4 when the Packers shut out the Bills. I'd like to think he threw a sympathy pick for Josh Allen, just to help the rookie feel like he belongs. Most importantly, the Packers got a win with their new interim coach, Joe Philbin - who to me is the boring version of Hue Jackson. The Packers ran the ball a whole 25 times on Sunday, which were the most since they beat Miami. What a coincidence, that's the last time they won a game too.

210 Receiving Yards

George Kittle had 210 receiving yards and a TD on Sunday, and completed a fantasy football trifecta on Sunday. The highest scoring WR, RB and TE all beat out the highest scoring QB. Kittle's day could have been much better, considering he was only targeted once in the second half. The 49ers were leading, and did win, but not without sweating a little. Kittle was also only 5 yards away from breaking the record for TE receiving yards in a game - a record held by Shannon Sharpe of the Broncos - Kittle's opponent that very day! It would have been a great time, but still, Kittle probably led a lot of fantasy teams to victory with the third highest point total of the week, a cool 27.00. Also in this game, rookie Bradley Chubb got his 12th sack of the year, which breaks his teammate Von Miller's team record of 11.5, set back in 2011. Of course, Miller is probably fine with it - he still has more than Chubb this year with 13.5.

101 Rush Yards

Since returning from injury, Josh Allen has been unleashed as a rushing QB, and the results are amazing. In the last 3 weeks, Josh Allen has 335 rushing yards, and he would have 3 consecutive 100-yard games if he didn't take a knee at the end of the game week 12, when he finished with 99 yards. This is just one yard less than Lamar Jackson's total across four games since he took over as starter. Allen is averaging 10.8 yards per carry during this stretch and is has 25.8 fantasy points per game over the last three weeks. Both Jackson and Allen are showing tremendous production as soon as they get dropped into their offenses' starting role. Being a rushing QB just provides a great instant advantage and jolt to your team. It's a shame that there's no great rushing QBs out there that a team once in the playoff hunt could have turned to once they had not one, but two QBs break their leg. Total shame. One with a much better TD:INT ratio than Mark Sanchez would be real nice.

582 Total Passing TDs

I would be remiss if I didn't give props to Tom Brady, who broke Peyton Manning's combined regular season & playoff passing TD mark on Sunday. Brady now has 582 total TDs, 511 regular season, 71 playoffs. By comparison, Manning has 539 & 40 - I'm sure that Tom is fine with having made up the difference during the playoffs. Brady did have to break the record on a bittersweet day, one where the end of both the first and second half went quite wrong for the Patriots. At the end of the first half, Brady took a sack with no timeouts left, thus blowing his team's chance for a FG as time expired. That's an uncharacteristic mistake, but at least Brady doesn't get blame for the second half. Kenyan Drake wound up scoring on a 69 yard double lateral play. That's the longest play to end an NFL game in the Super Bowl era and definitely swung some fantasy games and wrecked some parlays. Brady now has 10 losses in Miami, and it's probably the only place where he actually has a losing record.

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.

4 of the top 8 QBs - Owned in 34% of Leagues or Less

Week 13 was a rough one for fantasy footballers. The end of the fantasy regular season brought a ton of chaos at the QB position. Only half of the top 8 QBs are likely to be owned in your league. Josh Allen (2nd - 5% owned), Derek Carr (4th - 18% owned), Nick Mullens (6th - 7% owned) and Marcus Mariota (8th - 34% owned) all put up at least 22.5 points in standard leagues. We also saw three regular starters finish outside of the top 25 QBs. Drew Brees and Matt Ryan both had terrible statistical games and were led by Jared Goff who at least won his game on the way to his 9.08 points. With all of this inconsistency at the position, we must give props to Patrick Mahomes, who once again led the way with 33 points and threw for 4 TDs for the 7th time this year (now up to 41 on the season). If the Chiefs can avoid off-field distractions and hold off the red-hot Chargers, then Mahomes is definitely in line to win the league MVP in his first year as a starter.

3 of the top 5 WRs - Owned in 3% of Leagues or Less

Whaaaaaaa? Who are these mystery men that dominated week 13's stat sheets? Well, Dante Pettis led the way with 24.70 points and is owned in just 3% of leagues. Pettis is actually a decent waiver pickup this week, with 20 targets in the last 3 weeks he is definitely trending up. Outside of the Sunday night game, where Keenan Allen and Antonio Brown put on a show, finishing 2nd and 3rd in points this week, we're right back to the guys that are not on any teams. Zay Jones (20.70 pts - 1% owned) and Jaron Brown (18.70 pts - 0% owned) both had 67 receiving yards and 2 TDs, with Jones adding a 2pt conversion. Ultimately, 13 of the top 30 WRs this week are owned in 30% of leagues or less.  In a week where points were at a premium, there were sure a lot of touchdowns that made you say "That helps nobody!".

23% More Fantasy Points Than 2nd Place

Saquon Barkley is having a hell of a season. He's nearly to 1000 rushing yards, he's got over 600 receiving yards and has found the end zone a dozen times, but he's in a distant second this year behind Todd Gurley's 282.90 points at the RB position. Gurley is dominating his position in a very Mahomes-esque fashion. He has nearly doubled up the RB10 and has more than doubled up the RB12. Gurley has paid off as the consensus #1 draft pick before the season started, something that usually does not wind up happening. So far, he's racked up 1649 yards from scrimmage along with 19 touchdowns. He's still got 3 weeks to go for fantasy players, so good luck if you've in the playoffs with him. Gurley has topped 20 points in 9 out of 12 games this season. He's got a couple of tough matchups in weeks 14 and 15, but his week 16 matchup is a juicy one in Arizona, so once again he will be delivering some fantasy championships for Christmas.

3+ TDs in 8 Straight Games

Andrew Luck had  a great streak of games going, throwing 27 TDs in 8 games, but that was broken on Sunday by the confusing and sometimes-decent Jacksonville Jaguars defense. The Jags blanked the Colts, 6-0 in Cody Kessler's first start for the Jaguars since the official benching of Blake Bortles. Kessler is clearly not the answer at QB, based on the 6 whole points that the Jags were able to muster. But back to the Colts for a moment - their last shutout was in week 7 of last year - also to the Jaguars. Before that, the Colts hadn't been shutout in the regular season since week 13 of the 1993 season - that's right, I had to go all the way back to the Jeff George era. The Jaguars, on the other hand, have a lot of rebuilding to do - with 4 weak opponents on the remaining schedule, they will still struggle to get another win.

135 Rush Yards

Josh Allen has been cut loose and is running free over his last two opponents. Week 13, he put up 135 rushing yards on only 9 attempts, giving him 234 yards on 22 attempts over two games, good for 10.6 yards per attempt. Allen is now third in rushing yards for QBs and has only played 8 games, compared to 12 games for the two guys above him. Extrapolated for a full season, he would have over 580 yards by now, on pace for 778 in 16 games. That's 75% of what Tom Brady has on his entire career, and yes, fine, congrats on getting to 1000 rushing yards, the most meaningless stat of your life. To wrap up on Josh Allen, his 30.74 points in week 13 were second best among all players. He's got 57 points in the last two weeks and has cupcake matchups against the Jets and Lions the next two weeks, so he could wind up as the best streaming option for the first couple of weeks of the playoffs.