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There are just a couple of weeks left in the season, and most leagues are probably into their playoff weeks now. It has been a whirlwind of a season, and I think we're all hoping next year brings a little bit more normalcy.
Week 15 was no exception to the weirdness of the year, as all kinds of goofy stuff happened. We had two games on Tuesday, dozens of players missing games, and plenty of more incredibly disappointing fantasy performances right when they were needed most. Let's put a bow on the week with the data dump.
Situational Data
Editor's Note: Our incredible team of writers received five total writing awards and 13 award nominations by the Fantasy Sports Writers Association, tops in the industry! Congrats to all the award winners and nominees including Best NFL Series, MLB Series, NBA Writer, PGA Writer and Player Notes writer of the year. Be sure to follow their analysis, rankings and advice all year long, and win big with RotoBaller! Read More!The Titans led the way in plays run at 82, with a 50% rush rate in a very competitive game. The Steelers are best attacked on the ground, so it wasn't a surprise to see that even without Derrick Henry. The Chiefs, Cardinals, Ravens, and Bucs led the way in pass rates all with clips above 70% in their respective games. It did not work out well for the Cardinals and Bucs this time, but I would expect more of the same moving forward. The Vikings have really been letting the ball fly in recent weeks, eclipsing another huge deep pass rate here at 21.7%. That did not turn into a ton of good for fantasy purposes, but it certainly raises the ceiling for guys like Justin Jefferson and K.J. Osborn. Denver also went deep quite a bit with Drew Lock filling in for Teddy Bridgewater, but there was not much success on those attempts. Let's move on to the snaps data.
Five names here achieved 100% snap shares, with Najee Harris being the most fantasy-relevant. He did not have a good fantasy game but continues to shoulder a huge load for the Steelers, who now find themselves well within the running for the division crown. Some more interesting names at the top of the list: Brandon Aiyuk, Laquon Treadwell, Christian Kirk, Tim Patrick, and Tyler Johnson. The Bucs backups are very interesting for the rest of the season with Chris Godwin and Leonard Fournette set to miss the rest of the year, so give those names a look if you're still surviving in your fantasy league and in need of some waiver wire help.
Quarterbacks Data for Fantasy Football
Jalen Hurts looked surprisingly competent as a passer on Tuesday night, going for 296 yards on an elite 11.4 yards per attempt against a beat-down Washington defense. That's a good sign. We see Drew Lock's high ADoT popping up here, which makes things pretty interesting for his receivers next week. There could be a big game or two from Broncos' pass-catchers moving forward. The worst quarterback play of the week was Kirk Cousins with a pathetic 3.6 yards per attempt, with Cam Newton and Mike Glennon not far behind him. On to touches data!
Touches Data for Fantasy Football
D'Andre Swift is likely going to return this week, but if he does not it looks like this Craig Reynolds fellow could be quite good for fantasy. He carried it 26 times and added seven catches to lead the week with 33 touches. Any NFL running back is likely to put up a good score with that kind of workload, so keep an eye on that situation. Very familiar names after him down to Duke Johnson, who took the lead-back role for the Dolphins pretty surprisingly. He turned his 23 touches into a big fantasy game and fantasy managers are flocking to the wire to grab him for next week.
Receivers/Tight Ends Data for Fantasy Football
Tyler Huntley and the Ravens threw the ball a ton this week, which ended up putting their two main receivers at the top of the list with 14 targets each. That's a wild number, and they should both be started with confidence even in the absence of Lamar Jackson (actually maybe they can be started with even more confidence!). More normal names after those two Ravens, with a couple more surprising names in Christian Kirk and Jakobi Meyers popping up. Kirk seems to be the beneficiary of the DeAndre Hopkins injury, so he can be started with a relative amount of confidence. The air yard winner of the week was D.K. Metcalf who saw 174 air yards but turned that into just 52 actual yards on his ridiculous 50% target share. There just does not seem to be much chemistry there with him and Russell Wilson; it's been a very disappointing year for Metcalf and most of the Seahawks.
We'll finish up with the target share progression table, we're just looking at the last five weeks for save-spacing purposes.
Here's your target share data from the last five weeks. Cooper Kupp continues to earn a ton of targets, as does Justin Jefferson and MIchael Pittman. Marquez Callaway's 36% target share was one of the more positive developments of the week, as he had not turned his WR1 role into much good for fantasy, but that may be changing as Taysom Hill throws the ball a bit more.
That's the data, thanks for checking it out! Merry Christmas, RotoBallers!
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