Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways: Dalton Kincaid, Sam LaPorta, Hayden Hurst

Hello and welcome to the Week 2 edition of Hoppen to Conclusions! This is where I, Sam Hoppen, will share some of my favorite charts, which are designed to give you an overview of the NFL landscape. These charts, along with the commentary that I provide, aim to help you make start or sit, DFS lineup construction, betting picks, or any other fantasy football decisions. There can be a lot of noise in fantasy football analysis, but these charts have been carefully selected to give you some of the most relevant and useful decision points.

Each of the charts has been designed in a way that you want to target players and teams that are in the top-right quadrant of the chart as denoted by the dotted black lines, which signify the median value for the stat on either the x-axis or y-axis. Before getting to each of the charts and analyses, here are some brief descriptions of what you will find on each chart and how to interpret them.

Team Pace and Plays: Compares a team’s average plays per game to its pace over expected, using seconds per play as a measure of pace. On the chart, the y-axis flipped to show faster-paced teams (running plays faster than expected) on top. Simply put, teams (and overall matchups) with more plays and faster pace will offer more opportunities for fantasy point-scoring.
Team Pass Rates: Compares a team’s pass rate over expectation (PROE) to its red-zone pass rate. Here we can identify which teams are passing the most when game script isn’t a deciding factor and when they get close to the goal line.
Running Back Usage: Compares rushing expected fantasy points per game to his receiving expected fantasy points per game, with the size of the player’s point as his snap percentage. I use expected fantasy points as a measure of one’s workload in that specific area of the game, so it can help us discern which players are getting strong rushing or receiving workloads.
Wide Receiver & Tight End Usage: Compares player weighted opportunity rating (WOPR) to his yards per route run (YPRR), with the size of the player’s point as his routes run rate (as a percent of the team’s dropbacks). WOPR weights both air yards share and target share to evaluate a player’s opportunity, while yards per route run is a measure of one’s efficiency with the routes (and targets) he’s given. The charts show the same information for both the wide receiver and tight end position.

Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways

Tight End Usage

With several of the top tight ends out of play this week, Hayden Hurst found his way near the top of the tight end leaderboard for Week 1. He did this as Bryce Young’s primary target, receiving seven targets on Young’s 38 attempts. That amounts to an 18.4% target share, which is solid for a tight end, but Hurst also only ran a route on 64% of the team’s dropbacks (which ranked 26th among tight ends in Week 1). Outside of the elite tight ends, target stability is hard to come by at the position. While there’s a world in which Hurst starts to run more routes given he was targeted the most, I’d be looking elsewhere for more stable tight end production with the potential for a higher ceiling.
- Action: sell Hayden Hurst
There were a lot of eyes on the rookie tight ends this weekend given the hype they came into the year with. The three highest-drafted ones in fantasy — Dalton Kincaid, Sam LaPorta, and Luke Musgrave — all ran a route on at least 74% of the team’s dropbacks and was targeted at least four times. It’s only a one-game sample, but there were just seven tight ends last year who averaged those rates for the full season. None of the teams that these players are on have very stiff competition outside of the team’s number one receiving option, so I’m bullish on the ceiling they have given this early-season usage.
- Action: buy Luke Musgrave, Dalton Kincaid, and Sam LaPorta
There were three players drafted in the top 100 in fantasy that failed to record a single point despite playing all game: the aforementioned Drake London, Tee Higgins, and Dallas Goedert. Goedert is not one of these players that I’m worried about despite not showing up on the chart above because he only got one target. First, Goedert ran a route on 92% of Jalen Hurts’ dropbacks, which is the third time he’s done so since the start of last season. Furthermore, as you saw above, Philadelphia had a +8.2% PROE in the game against New England. This is up dramatically from their -0.6% rate in 2022, but one of the big questions this offseason was how Philadelphia’s play calling might change with a tougher schedule and this has me encouraged early on. The volume will come for Goedert soon enough.
- Action: hold and start Dallas Goedert