Arizona Cardinals
Trey McBride has 16 targets with Kyler Murray under center.
McBride’s target share has dipped by a few points with Murray under center, but he has still seen 28 percent of Kyler’s attempts since the star quarterback returned to the lineup. That would be good for the highest target share among tight ends this year.
Baltimore Ravens
Odell Beckham earned a 32 percent target share.
That’s the highest mark for Beckham this season. He converted the role into four catches for 116 yards. The last time Beckham topped 100 yards in the regular season was in 2019. With Mark Andrews done for the year, Beckham is going to be asked to step up and he already showed the ability to do so last week.
Buffalo Bills
Stefon Diggs has a 25 percent target share and a 20 percent air yards share without Dawson Knox in the lineup.
Before Knox went down, Diggs had a 34 percent target share and 43 percent air yards share. The Bills’ shift away from 12-personnel and an increase in usage for Dalton Kincaid has been devastating for Diggs’s fantasy outlook.
Carolina Panthers
Adam Thielen has averaged 20.3 PPR points per game with Frank Reich as the play-caller in Carolina.
Thielen’s target share hasn’t changed drastically depending on the Panthers’ play-caller, but his usage on intermediate and deep throws spikes with Reich on the headset. His aDOT goes from eight under Reich to 4.8 with OC Thomas Brown calling plays.
This week, he gets a Titans defense that ranks 27th in PFF coverage grade as a unit.
Chicago Bears
Justin Fields had 12 designed runs.
Fields picked up 54 yards on designed carries and another 50 on four scrambles. Fields was pressured a dozen times but only got brought down twice. He was 7-of-11 for 89 yards and a touchdown under pressure. It was nearly a perfect day for both Fields and OC Luke Getsy until a game-ending strip-sack sent the Bears home on a sour note. Still, it’s hard to complain about much else from a fantasy angle.
Cincinnati Bengals
Quarterbacks making their first start after Week 10 have averaged 190 passing yards and .75 touchdowns since 2019.
Jake Browning will be taking over for Joe Burrow, who is out for the year with a wrist injury, in Week 12. By this time of the year, no quarterback is getting his first career start by design. Sometimes it goes well—Brock Purdy and…that’s about it—but most of the time it doesn’t have a happy ending. We should be wary of all Bengals for Week 12.
Cleveland Browns
Dorian Thompson-Robinson ranks last in the NFL in CPOE and EPA per dropback.
We’re seeing Joe Flacco by December. Possibly sooner.
Dallas Cowboys
The Cowboys have a +10 percent pass rate over expected over the past four weeks.
That one time Mike McCarthy went to Pro Football Focus headquarters in 2019—or 2020 I didn’t look it up—is finally settling in. The Cowboys have taken a scorched Earth approach on offense over the past month, racking up an absurd pass rate over expected.
Denver Broncos
Marvin Mims has one first-read target over his past six games.
He got his first first-read target in over a month last week. Mims’ route rate is up to 57 percent in his previous four games, but Sean Peyton has decided to stop scheming his team’s most electric player targets.
Detroit Lions
Jahmyr Gibbs has seen more snaps, routes, targets, and inside-the-five carries than David Montgomery since the latter returned to the lineup.
Montgomery has a slight edge in total carries, but Gibbs is being used more in every other facet of the game including at the goal line. Both backs are RB2s going forward, but Gibbs has a clear edge over his veteran teammate.
Green Bay Packers
AJ Dillon has averaged 8.2 PPR points per game when earning a snap over 50 percent this year.
Dillon was drafted by many to be a usable FLEX option when Aaron Jones is healthy and a borderline RB1 should anything happen to Jones. Neither of those things have been true this season as Dillon has been a fantasy non-factor in both scenarios. As a road underdog to the Lions, it will be hard to trust him as anything more than an RB3 this week even with Jones looking unlikely to play.
Houston Texans
Devin Singletary has more carries of 10 yards in the past two weeks than Dameon Pierce has all season.
It’s unclear if Pierce will play this week, but it is clear that he should return only for backup duties. Singletary has been a more explosive runner and the Texans have been leaning on him lately. The veteran has 52 carries for 262 yards and two scores over the past two weeks.
Jacksonville Jaguars
Calvin Ridley topped 20 half-PPR points for the first time since Week 1.
Ridley’s potential was always boiling under the surface. He just needed a great matchup with a little help from Zay Jones to bring it out of him. Ridley’s second and third-lowest rates of press coverage have come in Jones’s two healthy games. He has also faced far fewer double teams with Jones healthy. Some of Ridley’s splits with Jones are noise—Ridley caught his first contested targeted since Week 2, for instance—but teams also play the Jags differently with an extra weapon to defend.
Kansas City Chiefs
Justin Watson has a 24 percent target share over his past two games.
Watson has run a route on 69 percent of Mahomes’s dropbacks over the past two weeks and has accounted for 46 percent of the Chiefs’ air yards. He is also the only Kansas City player with a target in the end zone during that stretch.
Las Vegas Raiders
Davante Adams has a 37 percent target share and a 54 percent air yards share in three games with Antonio Pierce as the interim head coach.
Pierce has tossed out the Patriots brotherhood shenanigans in favor of getting his best player the ball. Jakobi Meyers’ target share has plummeted and Adams once again looks like one of the most dominant receivers in the NFL. He is locked into the WR1 range going forward.
Los Angeles Chargers
Justin Herbert leads the NFL in fantasy points lost via drops (17.8).
This was calculated using only the target depth of the drop for lost yards and end zone drops as touchdowns. Any potential yards or touchdowns after the catch weren’t considered. This means that Herbert has lost at least 1.8 points per game via drops and the real number is well north of two points weekly.
Los Angeles Rams
Tutu Atwell averaged 14 PPR points with Cooper Kupp on injured reserve.
Atwell earned 23 percent of the Rams’ targets and 28 percent of their air yards over the first four weeks of the season. He was plug-and-play WR2 until Kupp returned. With Kupp likely out this week, Atwell is a sneaky but phenomenal add off the waiver wire.
Miami Dolphins
Jaylen Waddle has a 34 percent air yards share over his past three games.
Waddle has only converted that role into one top-30 finish, but a 34 percent cut of the air yards on the highest-scoring offense in football is an elite role. Waddle’s production has been spotty with Tyreek Hill finding a new gear this season and that still shouldn’t prevent fantasy managers from confidently starting Miami’s WR2.
Minnesota Vikings
Alexander Mattison logged 19 touches.
It’s been over a month since Mattison saw the ball as many times as he did in Week 11. Ty Chandler looked to be closing the gap on Mattison two weeks ago. Mattison now appears to have a stranglehold on the rushing work with Chandler coming in for the occasional target and not much else.
New York Giants
Tonny DeVito has as many touchdown passes as Kenny Pickett, Zach Wilson, and Desmond Ridder.
All three quarterbacks have at least eight starts. DeVito has just two starts. Brian Daboll cut DeVito loose last with a pass rate over expected of eight percent plus a 9.4 aDOT in Week 11.
We’ll see if DeVito can keep this level of play up, but I’m officially putting him ahead of the DTR/Zach Wilson (now Tim Boyle) tier of quarterbacks in my weekly rankings.
New York Jets
Tom Boyle ranks 75th in EPA per dropback (min. 100 dropbacks) over the past five years.
Inexplicably, Zach Wilson ranks lower than him, 84th, in EPA per dropback. He is also slightly worse in CPOE. In reality, Wilson is likely better than Boyle, but the point is that we shouldn’t expect a drastic drop-off via the quarterback change because of how low Wilson has set the bar.
Philadelphia Eagles
Devonta Smith set a season-high in target share (40 percent).
Week 11 was the Eagles’ first game without Dallas Goedert this year. Philly backfilled his snaps with Jack Stoll plus a bit of Grant Calcaterra and Albert Okwuegbunam. Stoll was the only tight end to see a target but Jalen Hurts looked his way just twice. Julio Jones ran a route on 75 percent of Hurts’ dropbacks but was also targeted sparingly.
Pittsburgh Steelers
Jaylen Warren leads the NFL in rushing yards over expected per attempt.
Warren is also first among running backs in PFF’s yards after contact and top-10 in Next Gen’s success rate. To his credit, Najee Harris is top 30 in all of these metrics as well. This might be his best year of football as a runner, but Warren has proven to be one of the most electric backs in the league.
San Francisco 49ers
Brandon Aiyuk is sixth in the NFL in air yards share (42 percent).
Aiyuk is dominating the air yards for one of the most efficient offenses in the NFL. He is currently second in PFF receiving grade and yards per route run.
Seattle Seahawks
Zach Charbonnet saw 85 percent of the Seahawks’ snaps.
Ken Walker went down early in Week 11 and did not return. He looks unlikely to play in Week 12, putting Charbonnet in line to moonlight as an RB1 for a week. Charbonnet earned 71 percent of Seattle’s carries and 17 percent of their targets last week.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Chris Godwin is averaging 1.27 yards per route run over his past five games.
Godwin averaged 2.3 yards per route run over the first six weeks of the season. His target share and air yards share have also fallen over the second half of the season to date. He wasn’t doing much early in the year and now appears to be losing steam.
Tennessee Titans
DeAndre Hopkins hasn’t logged a target share below 20 percent once this year.
He only has one game below a 34 percent air yards share and is currently tied with Brandon Aiyuk for sixth in the league in air yards share. The Panthers are last in the NFL in EPA per rush allowed and rank as a below-average unit against the pass as well. That makes Week 12 a great bounce-back spot for Derrick Henry with DeAndre Hopkins in the mix for a strong game as well.
Washington Commanders
Brian Robinson has set career-highs in targets in back-to-back games.
Robinson was targeted eight times last week and six times the week before. Both performances were also career-highs in target share for the second-year running back. Robinson has surprisingly taken over the Antonio Gibson role in addition to dominating the early-down work for Washington.
