Five Stats to Know: 2023 NFL Week 2

In this new weekly column, I pick out five of the most important stats that I think fantasy players should know from our Fantasy Points Data Suite.

I watch every game every week to collect our advanced data, and while watching, I often make notes of things that I’m eager to dig into once all of our data is fully compiled. Sometimes they will be player or team performance-based metrics, and other times they will be player usage-based metrics.

All of the stats I’m referencing today can be found using the Fantasy Points Data Suite, and I promise there is so much more to find than just these five stats.

1. Puka Nacua has 30 catchable targets through 2 weeks. 9 more than the next closest player, but only a 6.7 aDOT (average depth of target).

Nacua has a 43.5% target share when just looking at the Rams' catchable targets. Davante Adams is the next closest player at 38.1%, and last season, no player had over a 33% catchable target share. The player that led the NFL in this stat last season was fellow Rams WR Cooper Kupp at 32.5%. Kupp had an aDOT of 5.7 on those catchable targets last season. So right now, by just about every metric, Nacua looks a lot like a rich man’s Kupp.

That will likely not hold true as the season goes on, but this does show that Puka has room to regress and still be a dominant fantasy player if/when Kupp returns. For instance, he has not even received an endzone target and only has one red zone target so far this season.

2. Hunter Henry has run the most slot routes for the Patriots and the most slot routes of all TEs in the NFL.

This offseason, I theorized that the Patriots had a serious hole to fill at their slot WR position – a position which has historically been the heart-and-center of this Patriots passing attack – following the losses of Jakobi Meyers and Nelson Agholor in free agency.

Lo and behold, TE Hunter Henry was the beneficiary of their lack of slot WR talent. Henry has run 47 routes from the slot with a 1.51 YPRR. He has also played the 2nd most red-zone snaps on the team, behind Rhamondre Stevenson, through 2 weeks and is 3rd in Expected Fantasy Points behind only Zach Ertz and T.J. Hockenson. There is little reason to believe Henry will lose any volume (given the lack of receiving talent on the Patriots roster), making him a locked-in TE1 moving forward. In Week 3, he will face a Jets defense that ranks 5th worst in fantasy points allowed to players lined up in the slot or as an in-line tight end.

3. Darius Slayton leads the New York Giants’s WRs in snap rate from 12 personnel at 73.8%

Why does this stat matter? Last season Slayton led the Giants in overall snap rate at 65%, but when they went to 12 personnel, his snap rate fell to 42.5% behind Marcus Johnson, Kenny Golladay, Isaiah Hodgins, and David Sills. The addition of Darren Waller in the offseason foreshadowed a jump in 12 personnel which we have seen thus far, jumping from 19% in 2022 to 32% in 2023.

Slayton ranks 1st in Air Yard Share at 34% and is tied with Parris Campbell in Target Share and 1st Read Share at 15% and 20%, respectively, among Giants WRs. Slayton is clearly this team’s WR1 and likely has some spike weeks coming, with the Giants often trailing in games.

4. James Cook has handled only 3.8% of the team’s expected fantasy points (XFP) when the Bills are in the red zone compared to 23.5% when outside the red zone.

Here are the numbers for James Cook inside the red zone.

Keep in mind, Cook barely has a larger XFP market share than Reggie Gilliam. Who? Exactly.

Cook's red zone snap share is not too bad, but the Bills clearly do not seem to want to give him the ball there. He has 0 targets and half the carry share of Latavius Murray and Damien Harris. As long as this is true, Cook’s upside is capped as a fantasy RB2. We have yet to see Josh Allen vulture touchdowns with his legs, and Cook can’t afford to lose high-value touches to other running backs.

Murray, in particular, could be a viable DFS play some weeks if he keeps getting the red zone work and possibly has it condensed more in his direction. Through 2 weeks when the Bills are trailing or leading by no more than 10 points, Harris has a 0% snap share.

5. Derek Carr ranks last in the NFL with an accurate throw rate of 31.3% when targeting open receivers.

Carr’s accurate throw rate when targeting open receivers would be 24% worse than Zach Wilson’s accurate throw rate last year, which easily ranked worst among all QBs at the time. That’s bad. But Carr ranked 7th-best in this stat last season (71%). Like many things in life the answer is probably in the middle. We should expect Carr to get much more accurate targeting open receivers, but also, maybe he isn’t a top-7 QB at doing so like he was a year ago.

What is good is that Carr’s throws are still catchable. On those open receiver targets, he has a catchable ball rate of 90.6%, although that would still rank 10th-worst. When the QB throws the ball accurately, it sets up the receiver to be able to do more after the catch. Here are the Saints receiver’s YAC numbers on their open targets:

Rashid Shaheed and Michael Thomas look to have the most to gain from seeing more accurate targets. Still, Thomas also may or may not be a shell of his former self, so my preferred bet would be on Shaheed to see the best chance at seeing a bump in after the catch efficiency. Among all NFL players with 5 open targets or more, the Saints receiver that ranks the highest in YAC/Rec is Juwan Johnson, and he ranks just 29th. Needless to say, the entire Saints receiving corps has room for improvement here.