Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways: Rashaad Penny, Antonio Gibson, Khalil Herbert

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

Running Back Usage

I’m not sure there was any more declarative usage on a running back situation than what happened in Washington, where Brian Robinson dominated the backfield with a 74% running back touch share. Antonio Gibson was still modestly involved in the passing game by running a route on 44% of the Commanders’ dropbacks. But, what makes this so fascinating is that Robinson had the same route rate after failing to eclipse a 30% rate all of last year. Robinson may not be a huge threat in the passing game (only two targets), but he has 20+ opportunities in six of the last eight games he’s played, and that’s elite usage.
- Action: buy Brian Robinson, sell Antonio Gibson
Sunday morning, Rashaad Penny was a surprise healthy scratch for the Eagles, leaving backfield duties to D’Andre Swift, Kenneth Gainwell, and Boston Scott. Gainwell dominated the backfield touches commanding 82% of the running back touches and recording six high-value touches (HVT), which was tied for eighth-most on the week. Swift did run a route on 34% of the team’s dropbacks (Gainwell was at 42%) and earned two targets, so it seems like most of his value may come in the passing game. Unfortunately, Gainwell is now dealing with a rib injury that puts his status in question for Thursday night’s affair against the Vikings, but he’s still a priority waiver add with a long-term view in mind.
- Action: add Kenneth Gainwell, hold Rashaad Penny
Whether you believe in Justin Fields or not, the game script we saw in Chicago on Sunday is one we could see often given the state of their defense. The negative game script gave us a pretty even split in the backfield between Khalil Herbert (9 carries, 4 targets) and Roschon Johnson (5 carries, 7 targets). With those targets and playing on nearly half of the team’s passing down snaps, Johnson amassed a league-leading eight HVTs. Most of this work came in garbage time, so Herbert is still the lead back as he played on 55% of the team’s first-half snaps with Johnson down at a mere 20%. I’m not worried about D’Onta Foreman’s 27% snap share and 23% running back touch share.
- Action: hold Khalil Herbert and Roschon Johnson