Fantasy Football Target Trends for Week 18
Welcome to the Target Trends article for Week 18! Hopefully, you’re reading this as a freshly crowned league champion! If not, at least you’re staying locked in and will be ready to make another run at it next season. Week 18 is strange. Your league may still be playing, you could be researching for DFS, or maybe you’re just making sure you don’t tune out of the NFL as the season winds down. Whatever the reason, whether you’ve been reading this piece all season or just came across it today, thank you for taking the time to read it.
This article will be a bit different for the final week. Some of these trends could help you identify Week 18 targets, some will point toward next season, and some are just interesting. But, as usual, let’s begin by looking at the overall target leaders.
Target Trends
Malik Nabers leads the entire NFL with 162 targets. That’s an impressive feat for a rookie, especially considering he missed two games in the middle of the season. He is just three targets away from the all-time rookie record heading into the final game of the season and his 11.6 targets/game are 1.5 more than anybody else in the league.
Ja’Marr Chase isn’t far behind Nabers with 161 targets. He’s chasing the receiving triple crown, but it could be the quadruple crown if he can overtake Nabers in the final week. No other receiver is above 160. CeeDee Lamb has 152 but won’t get there now that he’s been shut down for the season. Garrett Wilson will need 11 targets in Week 18 to reach the 160 mark.
Brock Bowers leads all tight ends with 144 targets, which has already smashed the rookie record at the position. He’s just 12 targets away from the all-time record set by Zach Ertz in 2018. Trey McBride is next with 136 targets but is slightly ahead of Bowers in target rate, averaging 9.1 per game. His 29% target share leads all tight ends. Travis Kelce is third at the position with 133 targets, while no other tight end has reached triple digits.
Despite missing the last two games, Alvin Kamara continues to lead all running backs with 89 targets. De’Von Achane will likely surpass him in Week 18, as he currently sits at 87. It’s been a down year overall for running backs through the air, at least when it comes to targets. In the previous two years, there were at least four running backs over 80 targets each season. Unless Breece Hall sees nine in Week 18, Kamara and Achane will be the only two to reach the mark in 2024.
I led off this article with season-long target leaders all year. Now, for one last time this season, let’s check out the weekly target trends heading into Week 18.
Jerry Jeudy – 18 targets, 12 rec
Jeudy’s 18 targets set a new career high and were the most he’s seen since his rookie season. He’s averaged 10.1 targets/game since Cleveland’s Week 10 bye. He’ll head into 2025 as the top target for the Browns, though the quarterback will be an interesting offseason talking point as Deshaun Watson recovers from his torn Achilles.
Trey McBride – 16 targets, 12 rec
Marvin Harrison Jr. – 10 targets, 6 rec
McBride finally caught a touchdown to go along with his career-high 16 targets. As for Harrison, it’s been an up-and-down season for the highly touted rookie. Zooming out, he averaged 6.0 targets/game before Arizona’s Week 11 bye, then 8.3 targets/game over the last six.
Cincinnati Bengals Pass-Catchers
Three pass-catchers combined for 79% of Joe Burrow’s targets in Week 17. Ja’Marr Chase led the way with 15 targets, while Tee Higgins and Mike Gesicki each saw 12. Chase leads the way with a 27.7% target share on the season but Higgins isn’t far behind with a 26.6% share in games played. Higgins and Gesicki are both in the final year of their contracts and whether or not they return to Cincinnati will be a major story this offseason, especially for Higgins.
Puka Nacua – 14 targets, 10 rec
Cooper Kupp – 3 targets, 1 rec
Nacua doesn’t have the same counting numbers as his record-breaking rookie year, primarily due to missing five full games and the better part of two others. Still, he’s averaging 9.6 targets/game this season, slightly up from his 9.4 as a rookie. As for Kupp, he’s seen exactly three targets in each of the past three games. That kind of disappearing act makes it easy to forget that he opened the season with 21(!) targets in Week 1.
Drake London – 13 targets, 7 rec
Kyle Pitts – 5 targets, 4 rec
London is up to 140 targets this season, already 23 more than his previous career high. As for Pitts, he’s on pace to see fewer targets than last year in Arthur Smith’s offense. It’s a small sample size but in the two games started by Michael Penix Jr., 21 targets have gone to London and seven have gone to Pitts.
Green Bay Packers Pass-Catchers
It’s been impossible to predict Green Bay’s target leader on a week-to-week basis. It was Romeo Doubs in Week 17 with a season-high 11. No other Packer saw more than five targets against the Vikings last week. Doubs leads the team with 96 targets on the season with Jayden Reed just behind him with 96. Christian Watson is tied with Reed on a per-game basis, averaging 5.9 targets/game, while Doubs is just behind them at 5.7 targets/game.
Juwan Johnson – 10 targets, 6 rec
Johnson set a season-high with his 10 targets in Week 17. He’s essentially the last man standing in the shambles of New Orleans’ offense. His 59 targets this season are the second-most on the team, which is still 30 behind Alvin Kamara.
Ricky Pearsall – 10 targets, 8 rec
Pearsall was arguably the best player on the San Francisco offense Monday night. His 10 targets were a season-high and just one fewer than he had seen in the previous five weeks combined. The first-round rookie looks like he could be in for a larger role next season.
Xavier Worthy – 9 targets, 8 rec
Worthy averaged just 5.2 targets/game and never saw more than eight over the first 13 games of the season. He’s now averaged 10.3 targets/game over the last three and never dropped below nine. It appears Kansas City is taking the training wheels off Worthy, as is often the case with rookie wide receivers late in the season.
Marvin Mims Jr. – 8 targets, 5 rec
Mims had never seen more than five targets in any of his first 32 career games. He turned his career-high eight targets into the best fantasy outing of his career in Week 17. He is a player to monitor in Week 18 and the playoffs if Denver squeaks in.
Terry McLaurin – 7 targets, 1 rec
McLaurin was a major letdown in championship week, but it wasn’t due to lack of involvement. His seven targets were on par with his 6.6 targets/game rate on the season. He won’t set a new career-high in targets but he will in catch rate (71%) and touchdowns (12), leading to the best fantasy season of his six-year career.
Chigoziem Okonkwo – 7 targets, 5 rec
Okonkwo averaged just 3.2 targets/game over the first 14 weeks of the season. That number has nearly tripled to 9.3 targets/game over the last three. Those three games, however, have been started by Mason Rudolph, who is unlikely to be Tennessee’s starting quarterback in 2025.
Baltimore Ravens Pass-Catchers
There’s always a chance of a low-volume passing day when an offense has a running back like Derrick Henry. Lamar Jackson only attempted 15 passes as Baltimore demolished Houston on Christmas Day, and they were distributed to nine different players. Zay Flowers led the way with five targets, while no other Raven saw more than two.
De’Von Achane – 2 targets, 2 rec
While Achane will likely end up as the highest-targeted running back on the season, his Week 17 outing didn’t help much. He’s averaged just 3.3 targets/game in four full games without Tua Tagovailoa this season. It also didn’t help that he only played 53% of Miami’s offensive snaps, his lowest rate since Week 7, as Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson Jr. got more work in an irregular game script against Dorian Thompson-Robinson and the Browns in Cleveland.