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Another whirlwind week in the books as we barrel towards the fantasy football playoffs. We have increasingly seen undrafted players become key fantasy contributors and a lot of big performances from names that the average fantasy player probably had not even heard of prior to this season.
There are five weeks left in this extended season, and chances are you are preparing for your playoffs to begin in the next couple of weeks.
It's never too late to find a breakout player, so hopefully we can help you identify some positive opportunities with the data dump this week. Let's go!
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Situational Data
A pretty normal-ish week in terms of play counts, with the Bears and Ravens leading the way with a close-to-average 80 plays run. Most teams distributed their plays very similarly to how we've come to see from them this year. The Raiders took to air early and often with a 75% neutral situation pass rate in a game that was pretty close throughout. That did not result in much fantasy goodness, but it's interesting to see nonetheless.
The real outlier of the week, as we'll see, was what happened on Monday night in Buffalo. The wind was crazy, so the Patriots just decided to not even try to throw the ball. They executed 51 plays with 90% of them being run plays (keep in mind that this data includes plays that were brought back by penalty, so the numbers here might not be exactly what you'll see elsewhere). It was quite impressive that they were able to do this and still beat the high-powered Bills team, but that's just how insane the weather was.
Trent Sherfield stepped into a huge role in Deebo Samuel's absence, playing 98% of his team's snaps although not doing much in the box score. The surprisingly-active Darrell Henderson turned out to be a decoy as Sony Michel went ahead and played 97% of the snaps for the Rams and had a great fantasy game to boot.
The Lions' pass game has been all over the place this season, but we saw a vote of confidence for Amon-Ra St. Brown, who led the receiving corps in snaps at 69 for a 96% share while adding a game-winning touchdown to make a nice fantasy day for himself. It is still hard to stomach starting a Lions pass catcher, but there may be more value with St. Brown now, at least until D'Andre Swift returns.
Fantasy darling Cordarrelle Patterson played just 48% of the snaps, as the Falcons continue to rein his workload despite being fully depleted in terms of skill players. He touches the ball a ton when he's on the field, but these sub-50% snap rates are really bad for his fantasy ceiling.
Quarterbacks Data for Fantasy Football
Jimmy Garoppolo was pretty darn good without Deebo, averaging 10 yards per attempt on his 30 throws. Gardner Minshew also proved to be a very viable backup quarterback for the Eagles, albeit against the weak Jets defense. He went for 9.7 yards per attempt and racked up 242 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He's an interesting DFS play, if nothing else, moving forward (provided he stays very cheap, of course). Justin Herbert continued his campaign to prove that he is, indeed, one of the league's best quarterbacks.
On the bad side of this table are Tyrod Taylor, Davis Mills, Mike Glennon, and Trevor Lawrence. It is not surprising to see any of those names posting bad yards per attempt numbers. Josh Allen also finds himself at the bottom here, but that can and should be forgiven when you consider the elements he was up against on Monday. Russell Wilson also continues to struggle, posting just 6.2 yards per attempt on his 37 throws. It will be quite interesting to see his draft price next year. Let's get to touches.
Touches Data for Fantasy Football
The Colts are not relenting on Jonathan Taylor, which has been massive for fantasy managers. In their shutout of the Texans, he got to 32 carries. That is probably a little bit further more than expected given the game was all but over by the fourth quarter. He did sit out the last couple of drives, but it was incredibly encouraging to see them rely on him early, often, and late.
David Montgomery also showed more bell-cow usage with 21 rushes and eight catches, and Javonte Williams gave up very little to backups in the absence of Melvin Gordon. It will be quite interesting to see if he earns himself a higher percentage of the work when Gordon does return given how awesome he was on Sunday night. Same story with Antonio Gibson, who absorbed a good portion of the J.D. McKissic role, carrying the ball 28 times and adding five catches.
On to pass catchers!
Receivers/Tight Ends Data for Fantasy Football
It was Chris Godwin's week. He posted one of the best lines of the season with 15 catches on 17 targets to go for 143 yards. Somehow he didn't find the endzone, but it remained a complete smash game in PPR formats. Justin Jefferson wasn't far behind with 15 targets of his own along with 182 yards and a score. The big season for Tee Higgins continues, as he has actually been the Bengals receiver to roster over the last few weeks. Joe Burrow is loving him, feeding him 14 more targets in Week 13.
Big games for George Kittle, Russell Gage, and Cooper Kupp as well as they all capitalized big time on their huge volume. The air yards winner was Elijah Moore, who racked up 201 air yards, although his final line left something to be desired. Check out the rest of the table!
We'll finish up with the target share progression table, we're just looking at the last five weeks for save-spacing purposes.
This table is super weird this week since the Patriots threw the ball just three times. The target share numbers can fluctuate depending on what data source you're using, so elsewhere you may see Brandon Bolden and Jonnu Smith at 33%, but here we have 50%. Anyways, those numbers are insanely weird given the outlier game we saw in Buffalo.
Outside of that, George Kittle dominated with a 40% target share in a pass-heavy game by the 49ers' standards. Then, you see the familiar names Diontae Johnson and Michael Pittman Jr., who have been posting huge target shares all season. Search up your favorite team and see how their targets have been distributed over the last month.
That's it and that's all, thanks for being here once again!
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