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Week 9 was a weird one. Very few things played out the way that the odds said they were likely to, leaving a lot of sharp fantasy players not finding much success.
In this post, we will finish the part of the week where we are looking backward by summarizing the week in a bunch of dynamic data tables.
Let's jump right into it, starting with the plays run breakdown.
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Situational Data
The Ravens and Vikings played a fast-paced, back-and-forth, overtime game. That led the Ravens to run 99 plays, an insanely high number. You've probably seen the ridiculous line that Lamar Jackson posted, which was hugely buoyed by the extra 20 or so plays they got to run on Sunday. Shockingly, the Vikings ran just 56 plays in the same game. Very strange stuff. The 49ers surprisingly were brutalized by a Cardinals team playing without Kyler Murray and DeAndre Hopkins, which forced them to the air as they led the slate with an 83% pass rate. The Bills ran a pass pay 81% of the time and had no success, another thing that was impossible to see coming in Week 9. Very strange stuff all over this table - check out the rest yourself for more insights.
Neither Robert Woods nor Cooper Kupp left the field for a single Rams snap on Sunday night, and Tyler Higbee sat out just two offensive snaps. The Rams continue to be a super-concentrated offense, and this is especially true when they aren't playing from ahead. Emmanuel Sanders posted yet another week with strong usage but without a great fantasy result, playing all but one snap for the Bills. Monday Night Football showed us a huge vote of confidence in David Montgomery's health, as he played 86% of the snaps for the Bears - which really kills any hope for Khalil Herbert's fantasy relevance for the rest of the year.
Other more surprising/interesting high snap rates: Van Jefferson (96%), Zay Jones (96%), Robby Anderson (92%), Michael Pittman Jr. (86%). You can search this table by team to see more specific results!
Quarterbacks Data for Fantasy Football
It was an encouraging week for Matt Ryan who led the slate in yards per attempt at 11.4. Baker Mayfield was also quite good on his 21 attempts, racking up a YPA of 10.4 with a high ADoT of 10.2. Speaking of high ADoT's, Justin Fields led the way with a mark of 15.2 while posting the best game of his season by a good margin. The lowest ADoT's went to Colt McCoy (3.3), Ryan Tannehill (4.0), and Ben Roethlisberger (5.0), and the worst passers on the week by YPA was... wait for it... Patrick Mahomes who averaged just 4.5 yards on his 37 attempts - scary stuff for the Chiefs who continue to struggle. Sam Darnold was awful once again with just a 5.2 yards per attempt, so it will be interesting to see if he keeps his job moving forward (maybe Christian McCaffrey will help him out moving forward, but man he looks bad).
Touches Data for Fantasy Football
Two surprising names at the top of the list here as Myles Gaskin and James Conner led the way with 26 touches and both grabbed a handful of catches as well. Najee Harris posted another hefty workload, and the Giants continued to show their reliance on whoever starts the game at running back, giving Devontae Booker another big day with 21 carries and three catches.
It was a pretty encouraging day for the aforementioned Christian McCaffrey who racked up 18 touches after there were ambiguous reports all week about how much he'd play. You were happy if you took the risk and started him this week, and he should probably be considered the RB1 moving forward again.
Receivers/Tight Ends Data for Fantasy Football
If Jordan Love showed nothing else, he showed that he was smart enough to force the ball to Davante Adams who led the way with 14 targets. The problem was that Love wasn't very good and Adams reeled in just six of those targets for 42 yards, very disappointing considering the volume and the high 11.6 ADoT. The highest ADoT of the week went to Donovan Peoples-Jones on his three targets, with Marquise Goodwin not far behind at 25.5 on his four targets. The two highest air yards receivers in Week 9 both put up really gross fantasy scores, as CeeDee Lamb found just 23 actual yards on his 212 air yards, and Tyreek Hill went four catches for 37 yards on his 11 targets and 199 air yards. Better days ahead for those two.
We'll finish up with the target share progression table, we're just looking at the last five weeks for save-spacing purposes.
Davante Adams and A.J. Brown led the way in target share, both eclipsing 40% without posting very good fantasy days. Again, it was just a super strange week all over the league. DeVonta Smith had the best game of his young career with a 37.5% target share that led to 116 yards and a touchdown. This table is best used by searching for a team abbreviation and seeing how the last five weeks work.
I'm out of time here, but I hope you take some time to go through the tables and see what interesting data points you can find. Thanks for reading!
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