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Week 9 brought us another round of quarterback injuries and changing backfields. Headed into Week 10, these are the 10 fantasy football storylines you need to know.
I wrote about this move in my Trade Deadline Recap column yesterday but will really dive into the spreadsheets here. For the big three, Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and T.J. Hockenson, this chart has the percentage increase in their per-route metrics (which I find extremely valuable) which put food on the table with Cousins under center in Minnesota. The number in parentheses is their average in Kirk’s starts.
| YPRR | TPRR | PPR per game | |
| Justin Jefferson | +18% (2.5) | +.2% (.25) | +36% (20.2) |
| Jordan Addison | +25% (1.7) | +19% (.2) | +77% (18.4) |
| T.J. Hockenson | +12% (1.6) | +19% (.23) | +30% (12.6) |
This reads: Jefferson’s yards per route run increases by 18 percent to 2.5 when Cousins is on the field.
The most notable thing here is how much Addison benefits from Cousins in every metric. He has not been an efficient receiver by YPRR throughout his career, but that drastically improves with “El Kirko”. His fantasy production is comically high, though it is notably buoyed by seven touchdowns in the eight games he played alongside Cousins.
Jefferson doesn’t see more targets on a per-route basis. Even the backups know who needs to get the ball. But he does average almost one extra target per game with Cousins, because Cousins’ teams simply throw the ball more. As expected, that leads to more yards, touchdowns, and fantasy points.
Hockenson gains the least from the move, but he’s still flying up the weekly fantasy ranks. For reference, 12.6 PPR points per game would make him the TE5 this year.
The Jets got Hall back in Week 9 and were content to give him the bulk of the work, just like they always do. Hall out-carried Braelon Allen 15-8 and out-targeted him 4-2. There were, however, other concerning usage notes for Hall. He ran 10 routes to Allen’s 19. Allen also saw the team’s lone goal line carry but did not convert.
Hall didn’t do much on the ground, but it was arguably his best game of the year, according to the spreadsheets (and the eye test). He was PFF’s No. 1 graded runner on the week and their No. 5 graded receiver out of the backfield. Hall also broke his first carry of 15+ yards this year. His role should ramp up as he puts more distance between himself and the quad injury.
Before we leave New York, I have to talk about how bad the poor Adonai Mitchell drafters ran. Mitchell saw seven targets and 135 air yards on Sunday. He earned a 25 percent target share and an unfathomable 79 percent air yards share. He scored zero points. It was the first time this year a player saw over even 100 air yards and didn’t score a fantasy point. Mitchell’s 135 scoreless air yards would be the second-most in each of the past two years as well. Omar Cooper Jr., on the other hand, totaled 11 air yards on eight targets. He managed 13.8 PPR points. In theory, things could be getting messy for the Jets with Garrett Wilson expected to return this week. Cooper, however, injured his ankle again in Week 9, so this might be a two-man show again for Week 10.
In a year bloated with backup quarterbacks, it was only right for three more to take center stage ahead of Week 10. The first is Jacoby Brissett, who is moving from Arizona to Baltimore. He’s another player I wrote about in my trade deadline article, so I’ll give you the cliff notes here. Brissett is inefficient on the whole but rather accurate, and Joey Fagnano is not remotely an NFL-caliber quarterback. Zay Flowers drafters should be thrilled.
The two newcomers are Carson Beck in Arizona and Kyle McCord in Miami. Beck was electric in the preseason, throwing for 188 yards and a touchdown at 9.9 yards per attempt. He’s PFF’s highest-graded Day 2 (or Day Three) rookie since 2015. The top-five of that list is rounded out by Brock Purdy and Dak Prescott, arguably the two biggest hits at quarterback outside of the first round. The other biggest hit—Jalen Hurts—did not get a preseason. With Michael Wilson out for the year, I have some faith that Beck can successfully deliver 15 passes to Trey McBride every week until the merciful end of the season.
McCord was a sixth-round pick of the Eagles last year, but he failed to crack their roster after a poor preseason. He signed with the Packers this year and had a much better preseason, throwing for 446 yards and four scores with zero interceptions, albeit a nightmarish six sacks. The Dolphins then traded for him, reuniting McCord with some of the staff that left Green Bay for Miami. McCord pushed the ball downfield and took a bunch of sacks in the preseason. That’s page one of the Malik Willis playbook. The problem is that we were barely getting predictable fantasy production in Miami with Willis under center. Any downgrade in passing output and we won’t be playing a single Dolphin.
Because it’s affecting my “bags”, I’ve become acutely aware of which running backs teams use to salt away games. For instance, Kenneth Gainwell saw 18 carries in the fourth quarter of the Bucs’ Week 8 win over the Falcons. Bucky Irving was put on ice and Tampa Bay simply wore down the clock with cannon fodder carries for Gainwell. To no one’s surprise, Gainwell leads the league in fourth-quarter carries when his team is up by more than 14 points. He has 22 such attempts. Irving has one carry under the same circumstances. These are your league leaders in cannon fodder carries:
Some of these players are already irrelevant to the fantasy picture. For others, the message is clear. Don’t play these players unless you think they are going to blow out their opponent. This would have steered you away from Gainwell last week. I hope it keeps you off Emmet Johnson in Week 10.
One other way to look at this is through a player’s share of the garbage time attempts. The same names are largely near the top of the list, but Rico Dowdle, who has 75 percent of the Steelers’ cannon fodder attempts, was a surprise to me. Pittsburgh used Dowdle to salt away their Week 8 win over the Browns, inflating his carry total to 15. Jaylen Warren should still be treated as the clear lead back in Pittsburgh.
The reverse of the running back who sees loads of cannon fodder attempts is the workhorse who gets pulled in a blowout. I pulled a player’s share of the running back carries in total and compared it to their share of the cannon fodder carries. These are the players whose roles decline the most in blowout wins:
Most of the names on the list are unsurprising, and their teammates were mentioned in the previous section. Now on injury-riddled teams, Williams and Henry might not be on the winning side of a blowout game for the rest of the season.
Brown is somewhat interesting here. His role has undoubtedly taken a hit with an uptick in Samaje Perine touches, but some of that comes down to the Bengals taking him off the field in games that were already decided. With the Brown panic hitting a fevered pitch, he’s not a bad buy-low candidate.
The Bills appeared to be in pursuit of every offensive record in the books through two weeks. Josh Allen topped 300 yards in Week 1 and threw for three scores in Week 2. Most importantly, Buffalo had a +6.6% pass rate over expected. Joe Brady was calling the shots and he wanted points… until he didn’t. Since Week 2, Buffalo has a -5.4% PROE.
Khalil Shakir leads their receivers and tight ends at a measly 10.1 PPR points per game. Allen himself has been fine because of the aforementioned goal line success, but Weeks 1 and 2 were his only 300-yard and three-score games of the year.
Buffalo has been over their expected pass rate in three games this year. Those games featured three of the Bills’ four worst opponents by EPA per dropback allowed. For the most part, it’s accurate to say the Bills went pass-heavy against bad pass defenses but took the air out of the football against everyone else. They get the league’s No. 30 pass defense in the Jets this week.
Coleman was working his way toward a backfield takeover headed into Week 9. He completed the job on Sunday with an 82 percent snap share, 65 percent of the designed carries, and a 63 percent route rate. All three were season-highs. Coleman has five goal line carries and eight targets over the past two weeks. He’s the RB4 over that sample by actual PPR points and the RB5 by expected points.
The Broncos have an incredibly easy schedule after their Week 10 bye. They get the Raiders (twice), Steelers, Jets, and Dolphins. We should expect RB1 numbers from the rookie heading into the fantasy football postseason.
Blake Corum and Audric Estime are the only running backs in the league to convert on 100 percent of their goal line carries while also handling more than one goal line attempt. They have three and two goal line carries respectively. These are the highest conversion rates for players with more than three tries:
Bijan Robinson and Christian McCaffrey are the only other players with a success rate over 50 percent, though they are notably lower than the players on the above list.
With twice as many goal line tries as Hubbard, Allen is the league’s best short-yardage player, and it’s not a close race. Already at nine rushing scores (and 88 for his career), Allen is on pace to finish the season at 98 career rushing touchdowns. That would put him at 11th all-time.
Despite their success, Tuten and Irving fall well outside the top 10 in goal line carry share. That is to say, their teams don’t buy the small sample conversion rates. There’s a good reason for this to change going forward. Chris Rodriguez is 1-of-5 at the goal line. He narrowly missed the cut for the worst goal line backs, which we’ll get to in the next section. For Irving, the switch has already happened. Tucker saw all three of his goal line carries over a four-game stretch that started in Week 4. He hasn’t played a snap on offense, let alone seen a goal line carry, since then. Irving has three inside-the-five attempts over the past two weeks.
These are the players with the lowest conversion rates at the goal line (min. four attempts):
Allgeier has five I5 carries with no touchdowns and Washington has four. Allgeier split goal line carries with Bijan Robinson last year and had a far higher success rate, converting on 4-of-7 tries. As a 225-pound back with prior goal line success, I’m expecting him to get some positive regression in scoring position at some point.
Jeanty is barely any better at the goal line than Washington, converting on just one of seven tries. The Raiders’ running backs have seen a combined -14 yards before contact at the goal line. Las Vegas has the 10th-highest stuff rate inside the five-yard line on running back carries.
Unsurprisingly, the Browns and Cardinals are second and first in goal line stuff rate. This isn’t purely an offensive line stat. A running back with better vision should avoid defenders in the backfield at a higher clip. It does, however, look more like a measure of blocking when multiple players on the same team are struggling at the goal line. Of note, Bam Knight and Jeremiyah Love are 0-of-2 in scoring position. Audric Estime (who is now on the Saints) has Cleveland’s only other goal line attempt, but he did score.
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