Fantasy Football Beneath the Surface: Week 5
Fantasy Football Beneath the Surface
Another week of NFL football, another pile of data to sift through looking for clues. Clues as to what leads to certain results and clues for speculating what might be coming next. They say, “looks can be deceiving.” The same can be said for surface-level statistics in fantasy football. In this weekly article series, I will be looking beneath the statistical surface, beyond the standard box score, using the premium statistics provided by FantasyData, including advanced and efficiency metrics across the fantasy skill positions, to search for puzzle pieces that fit together.
Peripherals
Week 5 of the 2022 NFL season is upon us, which is when I typically start digging into some of the peripheral statistics accumulated over the first quarter of the season. Four games are not a large sample size, but it is enough data to start looking for patterns and takeaways within the peripherals for the fantasy skill positions now that fantasy points leaderboards are taking form and some of the early season, one-game spike weeks that make leaderboards look bizarre start to fall away.
In this article I will be looking at the current Top 50 WRs and Top 24 TEs (PPR format) by revisiting many of the metrics I highlighted in my first article for FantasyData, available here:
https://fantasydata.com/wr-market-share-statistical-breakdown
I recommend you read that article as I explained some of the metrics more than I will in this article. In that article, I looked at the results of the 2021 season.
The following are the statistics used in this article across the Top 50 WRs and Top 24 TEs heading into Week 5:
- Targets
- Targets per game
- Routes per game
- Snap share
- Routes per snap
- Route participation
- Targets per route (target rate)
- Target share
- Receiving yards per team pass attempt (YPTPA)
- Receiving yards per route run (YPRR)
- Weighted Opportunity Rating (WOPR)
- Air yards share
- Average depth of target (aDOT)
- YAC per target
- Fantasy points above expected (FPOE, data from Rotoviz.com)
- TD rate (receiving TDs divided by total targets)
I realize this is a relatively long list. A mixture of volume/opportunity and efficiency metrics, I have found that this grouping of statistics can be useful in multiple ways. The stud-level, top-scoring players typically have very good peripherals across most of these statistics, which is represented in the data. Not rocket science, but it does attach partial validity to their relative predictability. I say relative because, as I have been saying throughout my writing, there are many pieces to the puzzle. You will see that higher scores across these specific metrics do not necessarily translate into fantasy points. And vice versa. Some players begin to stand out as either overperforming or underperforming from a fantasy points-scored angle, which allows us to start asking why that is. You will see that Kyle Pitts has solid peripheral statistics but currently sits at TE19. What factors outside of this data set might explain his underperformance, and might those factors change? Is it simply regression and we just need to be patient? With an overperformer, can they sustain what they have shown or are they taking a next step we might not have expected? These are the types of questions I choose to ask every week.
WR Peripheral Statistics
Starting with WRs, here are the current Top 36 WRs in PPR fantasy points scored entering Week 5:
Sign Up Today To Continue Reading...
The rest of this article is for FantasyData Subscribers only. Luckily for you, now is one of the best times of the year to subscribe. We are offering amazing deals on our Annual subscriptions. That means you get all our awesome DFS content, projections, rankings, and tools along with downloadable data for one full year. You will be set up for the rest of this NFL season and almost all of next year!
Scott Rinear
My name is Scott Rinear and I live in Seattle, Washington with my wife, two daughters and golden retriever (Jasper). Our biggest passion as a family is camping. We camp at least 10 times a year. My biggest passion personally is fantasy football. I have been playing fantasy football since 2006 and started producing content in 2020. I am a lifelong Seahawks and Mariners fan and will continue my fandom for the SuperSonics once they return to Seattle. I love everything about football, especially analytics and data analysis, and I’m a sucker for a good spreadsheet. I am a proud member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association (FSWA).