Fantasy Football Player Notes

Flowers has a 27.3% Target share and a 21.8% air yard share. Among 60 qualifying wide receivers, he's ranked 16th in receiving grade and YPRR. In Week 1, he drew a ridiculous 45.5% Target share and 60% first read share. Yes, a large portion of that first-read share was related to screens. In Week 2, his usage came crashing back to earth with a 15.2% Target share and a 19.2% first-read share. That first-read share was still good for second-best on the team, though. Against zone coverage (excluding designed or screen targets), Flowers leads the team in YPRR, but he falls down the pecking order in TPRR and first-read share. Flowers will run about 62% of his routes against Dallis Flowers (50% catch rate and 100.0 passer rating) and Darrell Baker Jr. (61.5% catch rate and 125.8 passer rating). Week 3 Positional Value: WR3

With Beckham Jr. out, Bateman likely takes over the starting spot outside opposite Zay Flowers. Nelson Agholor worked in last, but he has run 70.4% of his routes from the slot this season (72.2% last week). Agholor and Bateman play two very different roles in this offense. Last week, Bateman ran 80% of his routes on the perimeter. Bateman could be bumped up into a full-time role this week. He saw his route run per team dropback rate increase from 48.4% in Week 1 to 52.5% in Week 2. If we zoom in further, in the second half of last week's game, Bateman ran a route on 75% of the team's dropbacks, which was tied with Mark Andrews for second on the team behind only Flowers. The talent has always been present with Bateman. This week, it looks like we get Bateman finally unleashed in a full-time role. With his 23% TPRR and 2.00 YPRR against zone this year, he could explode this week while running his routes against the burnable perimeter cornerback duo of Flowers and Baker Jr. Week 3 Positional Value: WR3/4 with WR2 upside