10 Things You Need to Know About Week 3 for Fantasy Football

It’s been a brutal first two weeks for fantasy football. And I’m not even talking about the high-profile injuries. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but offensive scoring is down this year. The NFL averaged 108 passing TDs through the first two weeks of the season from 2019-2022. That dipped to 86 in 2023 before hitting 69 this year. Rich Hribar has some other excellent stats that show a decline in explosive plays, an increase in sacks, and a decrease in red zone TD conversion rates. With all of this in mind, the scheme that your fantasy players operate in matters more than ever before.

Scheme Matters

Defenses have continued their record use of two-high coverage this season. And in addition to the use of those two safeties to limit explosive plays, defenses are also rotating a lot more after the snap. That rotation makes it difficult for QBs to read the defense before the snap because what they’re seeing is about to change. In turn, it forces QBs to make more difficult post-snap reads in real time. And most QBs are having a hard time with this so far in 2024.

So, are NFL offenses just out of luck moving forward? I would argue no, we just need more offensive coordinators to implement schemes like we’re seeing in New Orleans. We talked about the use of 2-TE sets last week, and the Saints were one of the five teams that have separated from the pack. They’re using a lot of condensed sets to create leverage in both the run and pass game. And they’re using purposeful motion to make defenses react before the snap again. It should be obvious to offensive coordinators that simply lining up without putting any additional stress on the defense is not working.

The graph below shows the motion rate per dropback on the x-axis and EPA per dropback with motion on the y-axis. We want to be heavily invested in teams in the top-right corner of the graph. We want our fantasy players to be on teams where their offensive play callers are fighting back against modern defensive concepts. And this is over-simplifying things, but teams with an above-average motion rate per dropback in Week 1 are 19-11 to start the season, while teams with a below-average motion rate are 13-21. I mentioned above that it’s not that simple. But maybe it is with how drastically the Saints have improved.

Pass Rate Update

Continuing on the discussion of offensive scheme, the graph below shows pass rate over expectation (PROE) on the x-axis and how much that has varied by week on the y-axis. There are a ton of NFL teams huddled in the bottom-left corner; so many that I couldn’t find a clear spot to annotate the graph. The average NFL team is operating with a pass rate about 4% below expectation. And even on those passes, the target depth of those passes continues to fall. In response to two-high shell coverage, offenses are running the ball and throwing shorter passes when they do pass.

The Bengals continue to pass at a very high rate anyway but at very low target depths. However, it is the Raiders that stick out like a sore thumb on the graph. The Raiders have started 2024 with truly historic rushing inefficiency. But I didn’t give their coaching staff enough credit. I thought they would stubbornly stick with an offense closer to where the Steelers are on the graph. Yet, that hasn’t been the case. The Raiders have the third-highest PROE on the season, and Gardner Minshew is only behind Josh Allen and Derek Carr in terms of EPA per dropback on passes to the middle of the field. So, we’re seeing a lot of passes, with a relatively low depth but high efficiency, to the middle of the field? This is your last call to get Brock Bowers on your fantasy team, especially because he’s crushing with only a 65% route rate that will certainly increase.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that the Packers are not on the graph. And that was purposeful because their location makes it very difficult to see the other teams. The Packers are somewhere floating in the ether in the top-left of the graph, as their PROE standard deviation is twice as high as any other team. That will happen when you switch from Jordan Love to Malik Willis at QB. No Packers player other than Josh Jacobs is playable in fantasy in the short term. Shoutout to the Packers coaching staff for getting the win anyway, though.

Expected Fantasy Point Leaders

Included below are two tables; one for RBs and one for WRs. All of the stats included in the tables are either on a per-game or per-route basis. First, I wanted to call out how the expected fantasy points were calculated. For every target and carry from 2008-2023, I looked at where the offense was on the field (for targets and carries) and how many air yards the target had (obviously, just for targets). And then calculated how many fantasy points each of those targets and carries generated based only on those variables. From there, I built a simple model that gives the expected number of fantasy points for any given field location and target depth.

I like looking at expected points because they provide insight into whether a player’s actual fantasy scoring is sustainable. That’s what the above/below expected bar graph shows for each player. If you’re seeing gray at the end of a player’s bar graph, it means their actual fantasy points have been lower than their expected fantasy points. Theoretically, this makes them a buy-low candidate. The opposite is true if you’re seeing light green at the end of a player’s bar graph. They’ve scored more fantasy points than expected so far.

I’ll talk about more players below, but Rhamondre Stevenson is a big surprise right at the top of the RB table. He’s been getting true bell-cow usage. Stevenson’s getting a lot of carries but crucially, he’s earning four targets per game and 1.5 attempts per game within his opponent’s 5-yard line (aka green zone attempts). And his performance has looked sustainable so far, as he’s actually underperformed his expected fantasy points.

The Kids are Alright: Nabers and Harrison

Turning to the top of the WR expected points table, we have Malik Nabers. In last week’s article, I mentioned that the Giants would “funnel as many targets as they possibly can to Nabers going forward”. Well, the Giants listened in Week 2. On just 26 routes, Nabers was targeted 18 times for an insane 69.2% target rate. That is the highest target rate for any receiver who ran 15 or more routes since at least 2016 according to Next Gen Stats. It won’t always be pretty going forward, but I don’t see a scenario where Nabers falls outside the top 10 in expected fantasy points.

Marvin Harrison Jr. is not among the top-20 WRs in expected fantasy points, largely because of his Week 1 dud. But he came back in a big way in Week 2. We’ll want more than eight targets going forward, as he won’t score two long TDs every week. But the Cardinals didn’t need to force anything in this game after Harrison put the Rams away. He’ll clearly see more volume going forward in more neutral game scripts.

The Kids…Need Some Help Against the Blitz

The Bears’ offense has been a tough watch so far. They have the third-lowest passing EPA per dropback, ahead of only the Panthers and the Broncos. They’re similarly in the bottom 10 in rushing EPA per attempt. I’m sure not having Keenan Allen in Week 2 hurt. I think it’s more than fair to question the offensive scheme the Bears are using as well. Jakob Sanderson put it best on Twitter: “The best play callers dictate terms to get the ball to their best players. The others just accept the defense giving you DeAndre Carter touches.”

On top of all of that, the Bears offensive line has struggled. They were projected to be a bottom-10 passing blocking unit by PFF coming into the season, and they’ve certainly looked like it so far. So, all of this is to say that it’s not just Caleb Williams’ fault the passing game has struggled. But some of it does rest on his shoulders. With those offensive line issues noted, Williams has not played well against the blitz. When blitzed in Week 2, Williams went 3/12 for 15 yards and an interception to go along with five of his seven sacks. His completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) was -21.0% when blitzed but +4.6% when not blitzed. Something needs to change here and quickly to boost the fantasy performances of our Bears skill players.

Air Yard Callouts: Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Dalton Kincaid

We finally got the Jaxon Smith-Njigba breakout game we’ve been promised. He finished Week 2 third in targets with 16 behind an insane 19 from Amon-Ra St. Brown and 18 from Nabers. And he turned those targets into 12 receptions for 117 yards. One of the best aspects of his performance was his 10.3 average target depth. Fantasy managers have been begging the Seahawks to expand JSN’s route tree after hitting only a 6.2 average target depth last year. There was optimism that the new coaching staff would unlock JSN, though we didn’t see anything in Week 1. Here’s hoping his Week 2 usage continues moving forward.

It’s more difficult to find hope for Dalton Kincaid. His average target depth to start the season is -0.3 yards. That’s not a typo; he actually has a negative average target depth. It’s impressive that he turned in 33 receiving yards in Week 2 given that context. For some optimism, the Bills clearly wanted to get Kincaid the ball. He got two designed targets on the Bills’ first drive. Unfortunately, he got injured on his second reception and missed the Bills’ next drive entirely. There were also some strange game script situations like James Cook hitting a 49-yard TD run that limited the Bills’ number of plays. Given that the Bills want him to be their number-one receiving target on a Josh Allen offense, we should hold onto Kincaid for one more week. But I’d understand if you choose to move on from him now.

Sam LaPorta: Two Big Problems

Speaking of TEs, it’s also been a rough start for Sam LaPorta. The emergence of Jameson Williams is the thing I’ve been most wrong about so far in the 2024 season. And unfortunately, that has come at the expense of targets for LaPorta. As mentioned, Amon-Ra St. Brown is still getting his volume, leading the league in targets in Week 2 and sitting fourth among WRs in expected fantasy points. But Jameson Williams is right behind him in sixth place. And he’s not just getting constant bombs. He’s earning targets at intermediate depths over the middle of the field. That’s exactly where LaPorta crushed last season.

In addition, the Lions have really struggled in the red zone. They went 1/7 in the red zone against the Buccaneers in Week 2. I think we can be reasonable here and assume this will increase sharply in the weeks ahead. The Lions were third in red zone efficiency in 2023 after finishing fourth in 2022. I bring this up for LaPorta specifically because he earned an outsized share of his fantasy points from touchdowns last season. 31% of LaPorta’s fantasy points from touchdowns in 2023, which was third among TEs with over 30 receptions. The Lions’ red zone success rate should turn around, but it doesn’t look like they’ll put Jameson Williams back in the bottle.

Can the Panthers Get Below-Average QB Play?

I could give you basically any stat on how bad it’s been for Bryce Young but this one stood out for me. In two games, Young only had one first-down conversion through the air. The Panthers took the surprising but needed step to bench Young and bring in Andy Dalton at QB. And if you have Diontae Johnson on your fantasy team, you’re about to find out how drastic the improvement will be from Bryce Young to below-average QB play.

Johnson is actually 30th in expected fantasy points despite only averaging 3.0 actual fantasy points per game so far. The Panthers are a team like the Broncos where I have real concerns that the expected fantasy points will never materialize into actual fantasy points. But bringing in Dalton increases the odds that we get some return on our expected fantasy point Sklansky bucks.

One additional note for the Panthers is they’ve operated at the slowest neutral-situation pace so far. But that is very misleading. A situation is neutral if it’s in the first three quarters of the game and the score is within eight points. The average NFL team has run 62 offensive plays in a neutral situation so far this season. The Panthers have somehow only run 13 total plays where they were losing by at most eight points. Woof.

Cowboys RB Situation

It doesn’t feel like it, but the Cowboys have had above-average rushing efficiency to start the year. Even with that in mind, it’s been an ugly start in fantasy. Neither Ezekiel Elliott nor Rico Dowdle have separated from a usage standpoint, as they rank 34th and 36th in expected fantasy points, respectively. And in Week 2, the Cowboys felt the need to get Deuce Vaughn involved. It’s apparently still short king summer for the Cowboys.

If we could get one of Zeke or Dowdle to get 65% of the opportunities, we have a low-end RB2 on our hands even before baking in improved offensive performance. The best bet continues to be Dowdle. After Zeke started in Week 1, Dowdle got that distinction in Week 2. And Dowdle has averaged more targets, better targets per route run (TPRR), and about the same number of carries per game as Zeke. Zeke did get the one green zone attempt that the RBs have had so far, though. We’ll ultimately need the Cowboys to abandon their rotation by drive they’ve implemented so far. But I’m willing to hold on to Dowdle to find out if that happens.

Brandon Aiyuk: Incoming Smash Game

Brandon Aiyuk dominates against single-high coverage. According to SIS, 67 of Aiyuk’s targets were against single-high coverage in 2023, and he earned an insane 3.9 yards per route run (YPRR) on those targets. Aiyuk earned only 37 targets for a simply elite 2.6 YPRR against all other coverages.

And we’ve got four things that should help Aiyuk in Week 3. The first is that the Rams play single coverage more frequently than the Vikings. On a small sample in 2024, the Vikings' defense ranks 30th in the number of pass attempts in single-high coverage. The 49ers play the Rams in Week 3 who are a more reasonable 21st. On top of that, the Rams defense has been awful so far. Based on the graph below, you could make a reasonable argument that they’ve had the worst defensive play in the league. The second factor is that Aiyuk’s route rate is getting back to normal after his pre-season holdout. His route rate increased from only 79% in Week 1 to 93% in Week 2. The third factor is that Deebo Samuel will not play in Week 3.

And the fourth factor is Brock Purdy’s TD rate. Purdy popped up in the offseason as someone whose fantasy points would likely regress in 2024 due to his unsustainable TD rate. Well, that’s happened and then some. After a scorching 7.0% TD rate in 2023, Purdy’s TD rate is down to 1.5% in 2024. I think we can reasonably expect that to even out going forward. Don’t panic on Aiyuk yet; his smash game is coming up.