10 Things You Need to Know About Week 4 for Fantasy Football

If you’re like me, you are heavily invested in WRs in both dynasty and redraft leagues. The 2024 season has yet to do us any favors. Defenses have had the upper hand on QB play through three weeks. We’ve had only two performances of 300+ passing yards and 3+ TDs and they both came in Week 3. The combination of poor QB play with offenses passing well below expectation has real implications for our fantasy WRs.

For example, the WR6 in my expected points model is Amon-Ra St. Brown. He is averaging 13.6 expected half-PPR points per week and has outperformed that slightly with 14.4 actual fantasy points. Unfortunately for WR-heavy drafters, there are 18 RBs with a higher expected fantasy point average than St. Brown. Ouch. We focused a lot on QBs in Weeks 2 and 3 of this series. Today, let’s focus on some murky RB and WR situations to get some fantasy points on the cheap and bolster those WR-heavy teams.

Breece Hall: PANIC

I was trying out a clickbait subheader. No one is actually panicking on Breece Hall. He has seen a declining share of Jets’ carries, dropping from 94% in Week 1 to 67% in Week 2 and again to 53% in Week 3. But there is enough work to go around in the Jets offense. Hall is still ninth in my expected fantasy points model thanks to his massive 6.3 average targets per game. However, the emergence of Braelon Allen as a legitimate option does hurt Hall’s odds to finish as the RB1 overall.

The graph below shows the percentage of a team’s dropbacks with two RBs on the field on the x-axis and team RB target share on the y-axis. It might be the ugliest graph I’ve ever made. But it does a good job showing how most teams do not separate from each other on these stats. There is a huge blob of teams not using any 2-RB sets with an RB target share below 20%. The Jets, however, are all the way at the top of the graph. They are one of about 10 teams willing to put two RBs on the field for pass attempts and they lead the entire league in RB target share.

Braelon Allen is RB46 in expected points but has earned a massive 30% targets per route run (TPRR) and is the RB13 overall in rushing yards over expected (RYOE) per attempt. In short, he’s earned more opportunities and the Jets have obliged. There is no reason to panic on Hall; he’s going to be just fine. But Allen is seemingly for real and will start being on the flex radar with more work in a landscape where fantasy RBs are crushing WRs.

Rushing Yards Over Expected (RYOE): The Rachaad White Danger Zone

Here are Rachaad White’s finishes in RYOE by year: 41st in 2022, 44th in 2023, and he’s currently 46th in 2024. The bottom-left corner of the graph below has now been dubbed the Rachaad White Danger Zone in his honor. The x-axis shows RYOE per attempt while the y-axis shows Next Gen Stats’ version of success rate. There hasn’t been a drastic change (yet) in how the Buccaneers have deployed White and Bucky Irving. But Week 3 gave us the first time where the Bucs were in true two-minute situations and Irving played over White there.

Additionally, the Bucs have made it a point to get Irving the ball when he’s on the field. We’ll need more to feel confident about Irving in fantasy lineups. But his share of the Bucs’ attempts increased from 38% in Week 1 to 41% in Week 2, and again to 56% in Week 3. And now Todd Bowles, the Buccaneers head coach, has come out and said that Irving has earned more snaps going forward.

D’Andre Swift joins White in the Rachaad White Danger Zone. He’s dead last in RYOE per attempt to start 2024. And the Bears may have noticed. He hit season-lows in both running back carry share (52%) and route participation (50%) in Week 3. And I say this as the founder of the Khalil Herbert fan club, but Roschon Johnson is absolutely worth a look. He’s surprisingly only two RB spots behind D’Andre Swift in expected fantasy points per game. That’s because Johnson has averaged five targets per game and a solid 19% TPRR.

Josh Downs: Sneaky Add

Josh Downs returned from injury in Week 3 and only caught three balls for 22 yards. Now is the perfect time to either trade for him on the very cheap or add him in one of the 75% of Yahoo leagues where he’s a free agent. Downs earned five targets in Week 3, which doesn’t sound impressive until you layer in the context that he only ran 16 routes. Now it’s obviously a small sample, but his 31% TPRR is dominant. He’s currently WR78 in my expected points model. But you have to go all the way up to WR18 in Rashee Rice to find a WR with a higher TPRR.

So, what are the odds Downs gets more routes? Due to his performance and Alec Pierce’s surprising play, Adonai Mitchell was relegated to only two routes in Week 3. And if anything, I would expect Mitchell to take Pierce’s playing time, not Downs’. So, Downs’ future performance is largely dependent on how you view Anthony Richardson. He’s now had 20 or fewer pass attempts in two of his three games to start the season. And things don’t get much easier for the Colts in Week 4 against a very difficult Steelers defense. But Downs represents what I view as the right kind of bet to make. He’s a talented player who has earned both routes and targets. And Richardson as a unicorn-type athlete has the potential to figure things out in future weeks.

Rome Odunze: Rest of Season Runout

On the other side of the Colts’ Week 3 matchup was Rome Odunze and the Bears. And Odunze broke out in a big way. His 6/112/1 line doubled his receptions and tripled his yards from the first two weeks combined. But we do have two potential problems for the sustainability of this performance. The first is that Keenan Allen is still sidelined. The second is Caleb Williams attempted 52 passes in Week 3. As mentioned, Richardson only attempted 20 passes in the same game. It was by far Williams’ most attempts in his young career and will almost certainly decline moving forward.

But even with those things in mind, the schedule runout for Odunze is beautiful. The graph below shows defensive pass EPA allowed on the x-axis and rush EPA allowed on the y-axis. And you’d like your fantasy WRs to be playing teams on the left side of the graph. The Bears’ upcoming opponents are the Rams, Panthers, Jaguars, Commanders, Cardinals, and Patriots. What you’ll notice is that all of those teams are on the left side of the graph, with a few of the teams like the Rams and Commanders being particularly abysmal against opponent passing attacks. Week 11 versus the Packers is the first time the Bears play a team with an above-average passing defense. You can confidently start all Bears WRs.

Tank Dell: Better Days Ahead

If I told you before the season that Tank Dell’s expected fantasy points through three weeks were right around Tyreek Hill, Brandon Aiyuk, and Drake London, you would’ve been excited. The fact that all of those guys are next to Andrei Iosivas is the problem. Dell was on virtually every “buy low” list last week and he did have his best performance of the season. Unfortunately, it was still just five receptions for 62 yards and no touchdowns. He’s WR32 in expected fantasy points on the season and has underperformed that mark by about three half-PPR points per game. His 17% TPRR mark and especially his 0.94 yards per route run (YPRR) are not indicative of his talent.

There have been two big issues for Dell thus far. The first is his usage in 2-WR sets. He was in the game for just three of the Texans’ 19 snaps in 2-WR sets in Week 3. The second is the Texans’ offense generally. Against the Vikings, the Texans had their third-lowest success rate (29%) and EPA per play (-0.22) since Stroud came to town. They also had an untenable 11 penalties in Week 3.

I’m personally giving a lot of the credit here to the Vikings defense. They’re firmly in the top-right of the defensive EPA graph above. They’re a great example of the defensive schemes we talked about last week. They shift snap-to-snap to disguise their coverage and withhold pressure entirely before sending it full force in key moments. The Vikings have allowed only 0.94 points per drive, which is good enough for second this year and their best mark since 2010, according to Rich Hribar. Fortunately, the Texans don’t have to play the Vikings every week. Better days are ahead for Dell.

Patrick Surtain: Blotting Out the Sun

Speaking of defense, here are Patrick Surtain’s performances against opposing top WRs to start the season. D.K. Metcalf had three catches for 29 yards in Week 1 and George Pickens had one catch for 16 yards in Week 2. And according to Next Gen Stats, Surtain allowed only 8 yards and 1 reception as the nearest defender on 32 coverage snaps against the Buccaneers in Week 3. That was on one target.

With the caveat that defensive performance, particularly coverage performance from cornerbacks, is not especially sticky over time, it’s still been an insane start of the year for Surtain. Unfortunately for Garrett Wilson managers, Surtain and the Broncos are up next on their schedule. Wilson remains a great buy candidate given that he’s WR13 in expected points but has underperformed that by about three points on a weekly basis. The issue is the Jets get the Broncos with Surtain, then the Vikings (who we mentioned above with Dell), the Bills, and the Steelers as upcoming opponents. That is four consecutive games against top-seven pass defenses. Yet, the Jets do get both the Jaguars and the Rams during the fantasy playoffs. I think going after Wilson in fantasy leagues is a great move. But if you can, I’d wait at least two weeks.

DeAndre Hopkins: Dead Cat Bounce?

After back-to-back one-reception games to start the season, DeAndre Hopkins bounced back in a big way with a 6/73/1 line against the Packers in Week 3. The big issue has been a knee injury that we learned (a bit late into the process for my liking) was an MCL sprain. But his snap rates have increased each week, going from 27% in Week 1 to 44% in Week 2, and now 53% in Week 3. He averaged closer to 75% last season, and Hopkins managers are hoping he gets close to that mark in the weeks ahead.

But it’s fair to question how valuable that role is in the current iteration of the Titans. The graph below shows offensive pass EPA on the x-axis and rush EPA on the y-axis. The Titans are all the way to the left of the graph. With Andy Dalton’s superb Week 3 performance (that we’ll get to below), the Titans are now dead last in passing efficiency. What’s surprising is that some statistics don’t look as brutal for Levis. He’s throwing at an above-average aDoT and is 10th in completion percentage over expectation. Where he gets dinged is on interceptions and sacks. He seemingly makes at least one catastrophic decision each week. He has the fourth-lowest EPA mark from interceptions and the second-lowest from sacks behind only Skylar Thompson. But on the (relatively rare) occasions when he’s not getting picked off or sacked, he’s been ok.

I talked about Hopkins before the injury in the offseason, but he had an excellent 2023 season. He cleared all of the elite benchmarks we want from our fantasy receivers, including an 82 open score from ESPN Analytics, 2.09 YPRR, 9.5% first downs per route run, and 62 receiving yards per game. The age and injury concerns are very real, especially after we learned about his MCL sprain. But Hopkins still might have something left in the tank.

Rams WRs: Stay Away

With both Puka Nacua and Cooper Kupp out in Week 3, there was a lot of discussion surrounding which Rams WRs to target in fantasy. Most people reasonably settled on Demarcus Robinson who had been a starter all season, Tyler Johnson who took over when Puka went down, and Jordan Whittington who took over when Kupp got hurt. Instead, it was Tutu Atwell who started and played the majority of snaps. And Atwell ended up leading the Rams in both receptions and yards with his 4/93/0 line. The next closest WR was Robinson with only 32 receiving yards.

What’s very interesting about the Rams is their use of 2-TE sets in Week 3. The Rams under McVay have historically used a ton of 3-WR sets. But without both Nacua and Kupp, the Rams used 2-TE sets 44% of the time versus the league average 20%. If you force McVay’s hand, he seems willing to use heavier sets. So, if you had to pick Rams WRs, I would lean toward either Robinson or Atwell given they ran at least nine more routes than the other WRs in Week 3. But I’d personally only be interested in starting Kyren Williams or, if you’re desperate given the TE landscape, Colby Parkinson.

Actually Good QB Play From…Andy Dalton?

You have to feel for Bryce Young. He’s benched for Andy Dalton who immediately comes in and puts up 36 points on the Raiders. Time to throw, or the number of seconds from snap to pass attempt, is correlated with air yards per attempt. And that makes intuitive sense. Routes deeper down the field take longer to develop and so come later after the snap. That’s what the graph below shows, with time to throw on the x-axis and air yards per attempt on the y-axis.

But there are some teams like the Dolphins last year that can throw the ball close to the NFL's average target depth but very quickly. The Panthers could end up being that team in 2024. Andy Dalton is all the way on the left of the graph below. According to Next Gen Stats, Dalton’s 2.17-second time to throw was the lowest for any QB since Week 15 of 2023. And despite his low aDoT, he completed five passes with 10+ air yards in the first half of Week 3. That was the same number that Young completed in Weeks 1 and 2 combined. All of this is excellent news for Diontae Johnson, who is now up to WR7 in expected fantasy points per game.

Mark Andrews: PANIC (For Real This Time)

It’s pretty fair to be panicking on Mark Andrews at this point. The Ravens only attempted 15 pass attempts in Week 3. Their game plan was clearly to attack the Cowboys’ outlier-bad rushing defense. And they did so exceptionally well. The graph below shows pass rate over expectation (PROE) on the x-axis and how much that varies weekly on the y-axis. The Ravens are now one of the most run-heavy teams in the league after hitting -22.6% in PROE in Week 3. That is the second-lowest mark of the season behind the insane Packers Week 2 performance.

But even with 15 pass attempts, why did Mark Andrews only run six routes? If Andrews is killing your fantasy lineups, at least you’re not alone. Through the first three weeks, we’ve only had 13 receiving TDs go to the TE position. That is easily the lowest since at least 2010, with last year being the closest where we saw 25 TE touchdowns through three weeks. We have some potential good news for Andrews specifically, as the Ravens play the Bills in Week 4. The Bills defense has given up the most receptions in the league to the slot (34) versus the second-fewest to the outside (15). That’s good news for Andrews but we do need him to actually be on the field to take advantage.