Five Stats to Know: 2024 Week 7

Week 7 is (mostly) in the books! In case you aren’t an insane person like me who likes to spend his Sunday night digging through usage data, I’ve curated five stats that will help you make better decisions in all fantasy football formats for the coming weeks.

I’ll also do my best to provide buy, sell, and waiver recommendations for managed leagues where applicable based on my findings. For a broader (if slightly less detailed) overview of usage across the league, I recommend this Twitter thread.

Stat #1: Anthony Richardson Has Demolished Our Boy

In three games with Joe Flacco this season, Josh Downs averages a 26.5% target share (would rank ~WR10 this year), 10.0 targets per game (~WR3), and 19.2 FPG (~WR7). In two games with Anthony Richardson, that falls to an 18.2% target share (~WR41), 4.0 targets per game (~WR72), and 3.3 FPG (~WR113).

It’s not just that Richardson locks onto inferior talents in Michael Pittman and Alec Pierce (who tied for the team lead with 20.8% target shares apiece in Week 7). It’s that his presence neuters both the volume and efficiency of this entire passing game. It’s difficult for any receiver to post fantasy-relevant scores when his QB completes only half his passes.

Sarcasm aside, if you click to expand the tweet above, you’ll be greeted with even more wacky NFL characters like Ryan Mallett, Malik Willis, and Tim Tebow. You get the point — Josh Allen is the only successful comparison for a player who has performed like Richardson has as a passer to date.

I don’t have a desire to take a detailed position on Richardson’s future as an NFL player today. Richardson is on a roster and paired with a head coach that many of the above names could only have dreamed of, and he has flashed abilities only matched by Allen on that list. Aside from providing that historical context, the only point of this blurb is to say that you can’t play any of his WRs in your fantasy lineups. And that’s just unfortunate.

Stat #2: The Backfields That Will Drive Us Insane, Week 7

The Jaguars are making a second straight appearance in this section after spanking the Patriots in London. With Travis Etienne out, Tank Bigsby led all RBs this past weekend with 26.3 weighted opportunities (a usage stat that captures the true value of carries, targets, and red zone work). That might sound great — and it was, if you started him as I pushed you to do in Advanced Matchups, benefitting from his 23.8 fantasy points and multiple rushing touchdowns — but I feel pretty confident in saying this was Bigsby’s best game of the season.

Entering the week, Bigsby had run a route on just 9.8% of his team’s dropbacks. He has only two targets this season. Whether Travis Etienne is healthy or not, the Jaguars’ coaching staff refuses to play Bigsby on passing downs. That was why D’Ernest Johnson outsnapped him (55% to 27%) in Week 6, and it’s why whichever of Etienne or Johnson is available will outsnap and out-touch Bigsby over the next month of the season and beyond.

The Jaguars play Green Bay, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Detroit, and Houston over their next five games. You can’t project one of the positive game scripts Bigsby requires until December. Perhaps he could be useful in the fantasy playoffs with matchups against the Raiders and Titans, but so could a player you receive in trade for him right now. If you can sell him as an RB2 or FLEX-level player now, do so immediately.

The Giants are the only other backfield I’d like to spend time on here. In a disaster of a game for Daniel Jones and this entire offense, we at least caught a look at how the work will be split with both Tyrone Tracy and Devin Singletary available.

Excluding Eric Gray’s meaningless rush attempt on the final play of the game, Tracy received 56.3% of the backfield’s opportunities (carries + targets), with Singletary and Gray soaking up 37.5% and 6.2%, respectively. Tracy’s 10.3% target share was better than I’d have expected after the return of Malik Nabers. As the clear leader of this committee, he’s in borderline RB2 territory, depending on how functional we expect this offense to be each week.

Stat #3: Bobby Slowik Loves Joe Mixon

The Texans had a lot of trouble moving the ball at Lambeau Field on Sunday. (I mention Lambeau because of C.J. Stroud’s increasingly widening Home/Away splits.) Frequent pressure seemed to be a factor, but Texans OC Bobby Slowik deployed a frustratingly conservative gameplan, with Stroud attempting just 21 passes in a game they trailed for much of the 2nd half.

Obvious game management issues aside, the offense becomes rather predictable when you call a run play on every first down. Constantly putting your offense into 2nd or 3rd-and-long creates a feedback loop, causing the passing game to struggle, causing the coaching staff to call more run plays on first down, and putting their offense into more 3rd-and-longs.

Tank Dell finished the day with just four targets (though one was wiped away by a penalty, in the end zone). I still believe in Dell’s talent and still view him as a buy for all the reasons I’ve discussed over the past two weeks. You just have to hope the Texans will learn the correct lesson from this loss — it’s not as if Stroud cannot beat teams by airing it out.

Of course, if you roster Joe Mixon, you’re hoping nothing changes. He’s scored at least 26 fantasy points in all three of his fully healthy games, across which he’s averaging 26.8 FPG, 21.2 weighted opportunities/game, and 3.0 carries per game inside the 10-yard line. All three of those stats would lead all RBs across the full season.

Stat #4: The De’Von Achane Buy Window

This blurb is my desperate plea to you to check in on De’Von Achane’s price in all of your leagues, whether redraft or dynasty. This isn’t particularly important to my reasoning why, but just for reference, here’s how the Dolphins’ backfield was split up today:

Though the health of the rest of its members has been in flux (as it will likely be all season), Achane has led this backfield in carries in all five games he’s been fully healthy. He’s received 80% of his backfield’s rush attempts inside the 10-yard line. And he’s averaged a 15.4% target share in those healthy games, 2nd-best on the team and ahead of Jaylen Waddle (14.1%).

Only two other RBs have averaged above a 15.4% target share this season; Alvin Kamara and Breece Hall, who rank as the RB5 and RB9 by FPG, respectively. On last year’s Miami offense led by Tua Tagovailoa, a 15.4% target share would have been worth roughly 5.0 targets per game; again, a mark only being hit by Kamara, Hall, and Kenneth Walker (RB2) this season. About half of all league-winning RBs average at least 5.5 targets per game — Achane and the trio mentioned above are the only players for whom that appears realistically within reach this year.

If I’d told you any of the above facts about Achane’s usage before the season, you might have considered him at the 1.01. And even though Tagovailoa appears likely to play in Week 8, you won’t have to pay anything close to that to acquire Achane today. And this is to say nothing of the record-breaking efficiency Achane showcased as a rookie, which he’s had no chance of unlocking on a Skylar Thompson, Tyler Huntley, or Tim Boyle-led offense that every opposing defense knows poses no threat through the air.

The best part of this buy recommendation (particularly in dynasty leagues) is that the Achane owner (and, for similar reasons, the Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle owners) could well have started 2-5, and be looking to sell off assets. If they aren’t competitive this season, they have some actual incentive to move off of an RB viewed as a volatile asset in order to stockpile picks. These are the types of deals that can actually get done.

Stat #5: The Bijan Bounceback, And A Word Of Caution

Excluding Jase McClellan’s carries on the final five garbage time plays of Week 7 (but making no other game script-based adjustments), here’s the percentage of his backfield’s weighted opportunities Bijan Robinson has seen each week:

• Weeks 1-3: 74.7%

• Weeks 4-6: 53.6%

• Week 7: 85.4%

Just last week, I dedicated an entire section of this piece to the decline in Robinson’s workload, speculating that his appearances on the injury report with hamstring and shoulder ailments could explain his reduced involvement. At least one doctor appears to agree with me.

Moving forward, I’d keep this in mind if Robinson logs any limited (and not explicitly rest-related) practices, especially for DFS purposes. We’re often conditioned as fantasy players to take a full Friday practice as a sign a player will be full-go, and that doesn’t necessarily seem to be the case with this coaching staff.