Seven Stats & Expectation Trends for Week 15 (Fantasy Football)
In this series, I walk through seven trends that I’m seeing evolve as the season progresses. All data, unless otherwise specified, comes from nflfastR. It’s playoff time…win or go home!
Math Behind the Matchups (Passing)
We can break down passing yardage by distance: checkdown, short, mid, and deep passes based on air yardage. Here are the leaders over the last three weeks for pass-catchers:
From here, we can analyze which defenses perform best against these different types of passes. This performance is vs. expectation: that is, it accounts for the strength of the opposing offense. We don’t want to punish a defense that gives up a large amount of yardage to the Dallas Cowboys; we also don’t want to credit a defense that holds the New England Patriots to a low passing total.
Here are my takeaways:
- You’ve probably seen a few deep-shot highlights from Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill this season. Unfortunately, they face the New York Jets in the first round of the playoffs, the team who has been (by far) the toughest against deep passes (and pretty strong against all other phases of passes). There’s no way that you are sitting Tyreek — even if he is a little banged up — but you might find better options than Tua in single-QB leagues. he’s put up just 13.4 PPG since the Week 10 bye and has fallen to the QB12 on the season. It’s not the craziest thing in the world to sit him for the first week of the playoffs.
- Ezekiel Elliott is back! He had a whopping 30 opportunities on Thursday Night Football, which was enough for 23.5 points and an RB1 overall performance. A bunch of his work was through checkdowns, and the Kansas City Chiefs have been quite generous against those sorts of passes. Zeke is shaping up to be a league winner.
- For the first time in forever, Tyler Lockett has been a disappointment this season. He’s the WR30, with a very boom-bust profile: three weeks in the top 12 at the position, five outside the top 50. Fortunately, he has been producing on short passes, which the Philadelphia Eagles have had a hard time stopping. According to our Stream Finder, the Eagles are dead last against fantasy wideouts…which means Lockett is a high-upside WR2, and a great flex option, this week.
Math Behind the Matchups (Rushing)
We can break out yardage for rushers based on where the play took place:
And what defenses have allowed:
Rachaad White has been great on runs up the middle, and the Green Bay Packers haven’t been able to stop left- and middle-facing runs. White hasn’t been outside the RB18 since Week 6, and he should have a very comfortable run of it in Week 15. He’s the overall RB5, and we’re going to discuss him more in a minute…
On the other hand, the New England Patriots have been stout against the run, ranking first against left- and right-facing runs, exactly the plays that the Kansas City Chiefs prefer. If Isiah Pacheco plays, you probably have to start him — he’s averaging 13.1 PPG this season — but I would stay away from any other Kansas City backs, and would honestly be open to looking at options other than Pacheco. There’s also a chance that a very angry Patrick Mahomes just wants to throw for five touchdowns, and the running game is left on the shelf!
Big Play Mavens
Volume is an important aspect of fantasy: we generally want players who are seeing a lot of work vs. players who make a couple of big plays out of their few opportunities. Here are players ranked by how many points they’ve scored from their top 20% of receiving and rushing plays:
It’s incredibly impressive that Rachaad White is the fifth-best running back in fantasy with just seven touchdowns on the year. If he finds his way into the end zone during the fantasy playoffs, watch out…
De’Von Achane sits, unsurprisingly, on the other end of things. He’s insanely explosive — 6.7 yards per carry this week — but it does look like the Dolphins are using him primarily in a backup role (53% of snaps the last two weeks). You have to start him because of the upside, but you should be aware of the boom/bust profile and adjust the rest of your roster for stability!
In terms of wideouts, it’s frustrating to see Jaylen Waddle at the bottom of the chart; that’s a product of just three touchdowns on the year (he scored eight times in 2022). It’s unclear if the scoring dip will turn around this season with all of the mouths to feed in Miami, but you should feel comfortable with steady production. He’s seen exactly eight targets in each of the last four weeks!
Over/Underachievers
In this section, I use a simple regression model that uses air yards, targets, and defensive ability to predict how many fantasy points a player should score, and compare that to how many they actually score. An overachieving player might be one who catches a few TDs on only a couple of targets; an underachieving one sees a lot of targets (against a bad defense) and doesn’t do much with them. Here are the standouts:
No surprise to see David Njoku and Hunter Henry atop this list, after both TEs brought in a pair of scores. More interesting to me is Chase Brown, the backup RB in Cincinnati, who scurried to an RB9 overall finish in Week 14. This was on the back of 80 receiving yards and a score…which came on just three targets, and 30% of snaps. Chase is a great player to roster in keeper dynasty leagues, but I would be hard-pressed to start someone with this workload in the fantasy playoffs.
On the other end of things is “The Spot Start” himself…Zay Jones saw fourteen targets that turned into just five catches for 29 yards, meaning he scored about 16 fantasy points less than expected. This game had all sorts of problems, from windy weather to Trevor Lawrence getting injured…but 14 targets is nothing to sneeze at. Jones is an interesting flex option in deeper leagues, although don’t get your hopes too high: he has three weeks this year with 9.8 fantasy points or more.
Hidden Statistics
One of my biggest pet peeves in fantasy football is that receivers don’t get credit for drawing defensive pass interference penalties. The ball still moves down the field, after all! Using a similar regression model to the ‘under/over’ achievers section, here’s how many ‘expected’ points were obscured by DPI calls:
Poor Puka Nacua… his 11.5-point, WR23 performance could have been even stronger if not for defensive pass interference! Seriously, though, Puka is seeing 7.5 targets since the Week 10 bye, right around Cooper Kupp‘s 7.7 targets since returning from injury in earnest. The Los Angeles Rams get the Washington Commanders‘ defense this week, a.k.a. a gift to opposing passing attacks. Start Puka without any fear.
The Correlation Game
Fantasy football is often about matchups. Maybe you’re projected to beat your opponent, but their most explosive player is Patrick Mahomes. Perhaps to try to ‘cap’ their roster’s potential, you opt for Rashee Rice in the flex instead of Jaylen Warren. After all, if Mahomes has a monster game, Rashee Rice could participate in the upside, and you could be able to ride the wave.
It’s interesting that Brandon Aiyuk is such a good ‘hedge’ if you are facing Christian McCaffrey: when CMC tends to do well, so does Aiyuk. On the other hand, starting Tony Pollard against CeeDee Lamb could spell disaster: CeeDee’s big games usually coincide with Pollard’s duds.
Dominators
I enjoy looking at the share of offensive fantasy points that each player accounts for:
Russell Wilson has had himself a very solid comeback year: he’s the QB14 on the season, his team is 7-6 and he is scoring nearly a quarter of the Denver Bronco’s fantasy points. That type of domination means steady production: Russ has only scored under 13.9 points once on the season (Week 6 against Kansas City). He’s an excellent QB2 and a steady hand at QB1 in a pinch.
Shoutout to Breece Hall who, despite the on-and-off performance, is on a New York Jets offense that is so meager that Breece has 23.3% of fantasy production. I think you have to start Breece for the upside, and the downside hasn’t been disastrous: his lowest score since Week 3 is 7.5 fantasy points, and he’s seen 18.4 opportunities per game since the Week 7 bye.
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Comments
“One of my biggest pet peeves in fantasy football is that receivers don’t get credit for drawing defensive pass interference penalties.”
QBs don’t get penalized for sacks, RBs, TEs and WRs don’t get penalized for holding calls, the list goes on and on. I bet you’re a strong advocate for kickers remaining a part of the fantast football game and not being penalized for missing kicks too…. hahaha