Seven Stats & Expectation Trends for Week 18 (Fantasy Football)

The fantasy season is in the books…for most of us, that is! If you’ve got a Week 18 championship, I’m here to break down the numbers. All data, unless otherwise specified is from nflfastR.

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 QBs and pass catchers:

From here, we can analyze which defenses perform best against different positions. 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 lot of QB points to the Dallas Cowboys; we also don’t want to credit a defense that holds the New England Patriots wide receivers to a low-scoring total.

Here are some of my takeaways:

• The Los Angeles Rams have been exceptionally weak against quarterbacks and wideouts…unfortunately, the San Francisco 49ers have already clinched the number one seed in the NFC. Pay attention to what Kyle Shanahan says this week about his starters; if Brock Purdy, Brandon Aiyuk, Deebo Samuel, and George Kittle are set to get at least a half of football, they have a decent chance at putting up solid numbers.
• It’s been really tough sledding for running backs against the Houston Texans. Jonathan Taylor has been solid in the past two weeks (27.2 total points) but only on 61% of snaps. Both the Colts and Texans are sitting at 9-7 and will be battling hard to make the playoffs, so Taylor isn’t the worst play…but be cautious, especially if Zack Moss returns to the rotation.
• It’s great to see Joe Flacco and Amari Cooper dominating with the deep ball, and the Cincinnati Bengals have not been especially stout against passing offense. But, once again, the Cleveland Browns don’t have much to gain by winning (they have clinched the wild card but can’t win the division over the Baltimore Ravens). So be sure to monitor the team’s communications this week as to how much we should expect these players to play.

Math Behind the Matchups (Rushing)

We can break out yardage for rushers based on where the play took place:

And what defenses have allowed:

The Philadelphia Eagles have been pretty generous to left- and right-facing runs during their tailspin, which is where the New York Giants have found success. Saquon Barkley had a semi-disappointing 7.3-point outing last week but is seeing a ton of work (79% of snaps and 20.5 opportunities per game since the Week 13 bye). Plus, I’m sure the Giants would love to play spoiler on the Eagles’ claims to the NFC East. You can start Saquon with confidence.

On the other hand, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have returned to their run-stopping ways; they are ranked as the third toughest against the position according to our Streamfinder. Chuba Hubbard has been super solid — 13.8 points over the last six weeks — and he did torch the Bucs for 22.4 fantasy points back in Week 13. But I just have a hard time trusting Chuba in a divisional matchup against a tough run defense, especially when the Bucs are looking for a win to clinch the NFC South.

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:

It’s no surprise to see Jerome Ford atop this list: he turned just three targets into 57 yards and two touchdowns. Unfortunately, lurking just beneath the surface is his dwindling snap count: 51%, 43%, and 40% over the last three weeks (although his opportunities have stayed around 15). Indeed, he scored just 13.9 total points in Weeks 15-16, and it feels more likely that he’ll have that type of output in Week 18.

On the other end of things, a quick shoutout to Kyle Pitts, who had five targets for one catch and five yards, and DJ Chark, who saw six targets that turned into one catch for 18 yards. You definitely can’t roll with Chark in Week 18 — he has three performances inside the top 20 all season…and, who I am kidding, you probably can’t roll with Pitts either.

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 rushing plays:

Devin Singletary has had a pretty strong run: 13.2 PPG since Week 10. He hasn’t been setting the fantasy community aflame because of a lack of touchdowns (just three all season)…but he’s also putting up 97 yards from scrimmage per game since that Week 10 mark. He’s a really solid high-floor option — with some ceiling potential if he scores — in a game the Texans want to win.

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:

Tee Higgins was on quite the fantasy playoff heater (20.1 and 22.5 points in Weeks 15-16) before a 2.4-point dud in Week 17. His targets dropped from eight to two, and DPI made his day worse. But my guess is that Tee wants to ball out before hitting free agency this offseason, and I would expect him to have the volume to do it. He certainly has the talent.

Dominators

I enjoy charting out the players who have scored the most in terms of share of their team’s fantasy points.

It’s pretty absurd that Breece Hall is the highest RB on this list, even higher than Christian McCaffrey. If you survived his 2.3 points in Week 15, you’ve benefited from 30.1 PPG since. The New England Patriots aren’t a great matchup for running backs, but any offense the New York Jets do have goes through Breece.

What Changed?

It’s always fun to look at which units had the biggest changes from year to year.

No surprise that the Miami Dolphins‘ RB group is the biggest gainer on the year: De’Von Achane has been off-and-on, but he’s still had five 20+ point performances, and Raheem Mostert is the RB2. Interestingly, it looks like the Dallas Cowboys swapped RB scoring for WR scoring: CeeDee Lamb is up BIG this year, while Tony Pollard hasn’t been able to produce where Ezekiel Elliott succeeded last year. Also, the New Orleans Saints‘ TE bar is misleading; that’s because Taysom Hill‘s position was changed in the dataset from TE to QB.

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