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Seven weeks in the books and we're heading towards the midway point. The season is really flying by.
Week seven was the bye week apocalypse, with an outrageous amount of fantasy studs not playing. That plus all of the injuries we've seen going down throughout the year probably forced your hand into starting some sub-optimal players in fantasy. Hopefully, you found a way to navigate by and notch another win.
We saw a few blowouts, some surprising, some completely unsurprising. This is a very interesting week for usage data, so let's get into it.
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Situational Data
The Baltimore/Cincinnati game was one of those surprising outcomes, as the Bengals really took it to their division rivals as a road underdog. That forced the Ravens into 75 plays, which tied them with the Patriots who got there in the opposite manner - just having the ball all game long in a blowout. The Ravens posted their highest pass rate of the year because of the big deficit, and it didn't go super well for them. The Chiefs once again were forced to the air, this time by the Titans, and they posted an absurd 88% pass rate, but didn't even have a single touchdown to show for it. Scary stuff. The Chiefs also topped the slate in neutral pass rate, with the Packers right behind them. Justin Fields was forced to throw the ball quite a bit, which went just awful for him, as we'll see in the next table.
Indianapolis, Philly, Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, and San Francisco stayed on the ground every chance they got, all posting neutral rush rates above 55%. The short pass centric play of Tua Tagovailoa, Jared Goff, and Davis Mills continued, as none of them attempted a single pass attempt of greater than 25 yards in the air. Check out the rest of the data yourself for more insights!
Snap Count Leaders for Fantasy Football
A trio of tight ends played 100% of the snaps, with Foster Moreau stepping directly into the full-time role in Darren Waller's absence. He seems to be a very viable tight end option if Waller were to miss more games in the future. The Rams ran out their dynamic wide receiver duo for 97% of their snaps, but Kupp once again hogged all of the fantasy points in that scenario. Encouraging snap counts from the Panthers' top two wideouts didn't turn into many fantasy points due to the horrid play of Sam Darnold, but there are still reasons to be starting those two guys.
Chuba Hubbard and Zach Ertz saw disappointing workloads at 53% and 49% respectively. Some other surprising names coming in under 60%: Leonard Fournette, Jarvis Landry, Joe Mixon, Hunter Renfrow, Melvin Gordon.
Now to passer data!
Quarterbacks Data for Fantasy Football
We expected less of a workload for Matthew Stafford as a massive favorite in Detroit, but the Lions kept it close enough to get him to 42 pass attempts, which resulted in another stellar day through the air. He led the slate in pass attempts while posting a strong 8.0 yards per attempt and a 9.3 average depth of pass attempt. He's a fantasy stud with his new team. The worst QB play went to Davis Mills and Sam Darnold, both averaging less than five yards per attempt, and Justin Fields, Carson Wentz, and Teddy Bridgewater didn't show anything to be encouraged about for fantasy managers that were forced into starting them.
Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts continued to send the ball deep when they weren't running it themselves, both notching ADoT values above 11 yards. Matt Ryan notched another encouraging day in terms of throwing the ball deep, which is very good to see after we saw very few deep attempts out of the Falcons offense early on in the year. Also have to give a hat tip to Joe Burrow, who was awesome against a solid Ravens defense, throwing for 416 yards with an awesome 11 yards per attempt. The Bengals are a team to be reckoned with right now.
Touches Data for Fantasy Football
The Browns just put D'Ernest Johnson right into the Nick Chubb role, giving up 24 carries and two catches. Khalil Herbert took advantage of all the practice that Damien Williams had missed, logging the lion's share of the Bears rushing work with 23 carries and a surprising five catches. Of course, these names all pale in comparison to Derrick Henry, who racked up 33 more touches in a blowout win against the Chiefs, although he posted a pitiful 3.0 yards per carry but that's nothing to be concerned about with that kind of volume and that kind of talent.
Darrel Williams posted an awful fantasy day as the Chiefs were never in a position to run the ball. Davante Adams also had an underwhelming day in a good matchup, catching just six passes but salvaging some points with the early touchdown.
Let's move on to pass-catcher data.
Receivers/Tight Ends Data for Fantasy Football
Tee Higgins paced the field with 15 targets, he has really absorbed most of Tyler Boyd's role this year plus his own normal share of targets. It's not a good time to be starting Boyd here as he came in with just seven targets and his usual low ADoT. Jamar Chase turned his 10 targets into a ridiculous 201 yards, crushing his air yard total of 117.
Marquise Brown was once again the ADoT champ, seeing an average depth of target of 23 yards on his 14 (!!) targets. The 80 actual receiving yards he racked up were really disappointing when you consider his 321 air yards, but he added a touchdown to make for a strong fantasy day.
Other very encouraging air yards days: Kyle Pitts, Terry McLaurin, Cooper Kupp, Darius Slayton, A.J. Brown, Byron Pringle.
Targets Data for Fantasy Football
We'll finish up with the target share progression table. I cut off the first two weeks to save some space, so from now on, we'll just show the last five weeks in this table.
Deebo Samuel is the clear alpha in the 49ers pass attack, seeing a crazy high 42% target share. D.J. Moore posted another huge target share at 36%, but Darnold was too inaccurate for Moore to make it meaningful. D'Andre Swift is basically operating as a wide receiver who also runs the ball sometimes, getting a 35% target share for his best outing of the year. Chris Godwin also continues to prove to be a huge beneficiary of Antonio Brown's absence, absorbing a lot of his targets for a 33% share.
The Robby Anderson day has to be coming, as he's posted outrageous target shares the last four weeks with nothing to show for it. It's hard to continue to be patient, but he really does continue to be a high-upside flex option for your fantasy team, and a great DFS tournament play. Search for your favorite team's abbreviation in there and see who their targets have broken down for the last five weeks, this table is really useful.
That's it for this week's data dump, thanks for checking it out!
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