10 Things You Need to Know About Week 5 for Fantasy Football

Calendars have flipped to October, officially making it spooky season. The NFL kicked the festivities off a bit early in Week 4, though. All of my previously incorrect pre-season takes came back from the dead, like Chase Brown delivering a two-TD game. And all of my previously correct pre-season takes died, like D'Andre Swift pacing the Bears with seven receptions and 72 receiving yards to go along with 93 yards on the ground. We even got some true WicksKraft thanks to the combination of Jordan Love returning, Christian Watson getting hurt, and the Packers going full yolo. Let’s start off spooky season looking at some broader NFL trends before turning to specific player usage.

The Underrated Impact of Sacks

We’ve talked about defensive scheme changes at length in past weeks as reasons for the decline in scoring. The combination of offensive line play and quarterback play is also a viable reason. Sack rates are up again to start this season, rising to 7.1% this year from 6.8% in 2023 after years of slow increases. And that has a substantial and under-discussed impact on both scoring and fantasy football. The graph below looks at this on a drive-by-drive basis. The x-axis shows how frequently a drive ends with a touchdown when the QB wasn’t sacked on that drive. The y-axis shows the drive TD rate when there was a sack.

It’s a pretty clear trend. The average NFL team scores a TD on a quarter of their drives when their QB wasn’t sacked. And they only score a TD on less than a tenth of their drives with a sack. About half of all NFL teams haven’t scored a single touchdown this season on a drive where their QB was sacked. So, for fantasy football purposes, we really want to be targeting the teams that can either avoid sacks or continue to score despite them like the insane start of the year for the Commanders.

With that in mind, the graph below shows pressure rate on the x-axis and the percentage of pressures that turn into sacks on the y-axis. Ideally, we want our quarterbacks and fantasy assets to be closer to the bottom of the graph. In the bottom right, we have wizards like Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, and Jordan Love who have faced a lot of pressure this season and have been able to avoid sacks anyway. Sacks are at least partially a QB stat. It’s tough to spot their teams on the graph above, but all three of the Bills, Packers, and Chargers have failed to score a TD on drives with a sack this season. The ability to turn would-be sacks into positive plays is driving value for pass catchers on these teams.

Troubles in the Red Zone

James Weaver from SIS released an excellent article last week highlighting the decline in red zone success rate as another reason for lower scoring. One of the important findings was that passing success rate has fallen off a cliff to start 2024 in part due to a big drop-off in QB accuracy rates in the red zone. The graph below shows red zone passing success rate on the x-axis and red zone rushing success rate on the y-axis. The gap narrows when you look at the average NFL team, but rushing success rate is still higher than passing success rate to start the year.

The Lions and the Seahawks had the worst red zone passing success rates in the league going into their Monday night matchup. We talked about how this particularly hurts Sam LaPorta as an outsized share of his fantasy points in 2023 came from touchdowns. Well in Week 4, both teams improved sharply in red zone passing success rate. The Lions particularly improved and are now just narrowly behind the league average. Ideally, we won’t have to worry about Jared Goff stealing receiving TDs moving forward as well.

And it hasn’t felt like it, but the Browns have actually over-achieved on red zone passing success to start the year. Unfortunately for fantasy managers of Amari Cooper and David Njoku, I would expect this to regress closer to the league average in the weeks ahead. Here’s hoping the Browns forget about sunk costs and give us the full Jameis Winston experience at some point.

ESPN Open Score Update

ESPN Analytics releasing updates to their receiver scores is one of my favorite days of the year. They use player-tracking data from Next Gen Stats to evaluate receivers on every route they run, not just on those where they earn a target. And they split their evaluation into three buckets: getting open, making the catch, and earning yards after the catch (YAC).

I’ve found success in the past clustering WRs based on their open, catch, and YAC scores. I tend to look for outliers whose route-by-route talent hasn’t yet translated to fantasy success. It’s part of the reason I was so high on Brandon Aiyuk prior to his breakout season. The graph below shows the results of that clustering from 2017-2024. And I’ve annotated the graph with a few players that are good examples of their cluster this year.

Not surprisingly, you want your fantasy players to be in the Chris Olave cluster. Those players have elite receiver scores, excelling in getting open and making the catch. We also have the above-average cluster highlighted by Jameson Williams, the average cluster highlighted by Michael Wilson, and the bad cluster highlighted by Brandin Cooks (sorry Brandin). When I looked this offseason at The Most Predictable WR Stats, I found that we start seeing positive outcomes in future season fantasy points when a WR’s open score is above 60. Meanwhile, a score above 80 is typically associated with an elite season.

At the top end, there aren’t too many surprises. Malik Nabers is obviously a special talent, but leading the league in open score as a rookie is insane stuff. There are a lot of names like Tank Dell, Brandon Aiyuk, Diontae Johnson, and Garrett Wilson who have dropped from the elite cluster to the above-average cluster this season. But some of the true surprises are on the bad side. Amari Cooper and Kyle Pitts are tied for 70th out of 72 qualifying receivers in open score. For Pitts, that’s the continuation of a three-year slide from 2022 when he had the 10th-highest open score among TEs.

Air Yards and Run Pass Options (RPOs)

With air yards continuing to decline across the NFL, I saw an interesting discussion on Twitter from Hayden Winks of Underdog on RPOs. Specifically, NFL defenses have been more successful in stopping RPOs that ultimately result in a pass attempt, with yards per RPO pass attempt declining consistently from 2020-2024. And how this coincides with air yards is that RPOs tend to be quick, low air-yard passes that can bring down the average air yards of RPO-heavy teams.

To highlight this, the graph below shows the average target depth of non-RPO passes on the x-axis and the target depth of RPO passes on the y-axis. And it’s filtered for QBs with at least five RPO pass attempts on the season according to SIS. Two things stick out to me from the graph. Anthony Richardson’s league-leading air yards per attempt have been held down by his RPO pass attempts. And Patrick Mahomes still has an aDoT of about six yards on standard dropbacks. Let’s dig into him further.

Patrick Mahomes: What Happens from Here?

According to Diante Lee of The Ringer, “on throws of 15 or more air yards against split safety defenses, NFL offenses this season have a 50 percent success rate and are averaging 0.728 EPA per dropback.” So, why is the best QB in the NFL only throwing the ball six yards down the field? A lot of that can be explained by Rashee Rice.

On the season, 29 of Mahomes’ 110 targeted passes (26.4%) were to Rice. And the 5.2-yard average target depth on those passes is the lowest for any Chiefs WRs with more than one target. Rice had the sixth-highest YAC score from ESPN Analytics in 2023 and the Chiefs clearly wanted to exploit his after-the-catch ability. As of writing this, the rest-of-season status for Rice hasn’t been finalized. But there is real concern that Rice is out for the year.

Only two other players on the Chiefs have at least 10 targets this season: Travis Kelce (22) and Xavier Worthy (14). Kelce has the third-highest average target depth on the team at 8.6 yards. I would expect his volume to spike with Rice out, and perhaps that target depth to drop a bit. Worthy has unsurprisingly been the high-aDoT man in the offense. He's going to have to step up quickly with Rice out. He did a bit of that in Week 4. On his TD reception, he hit 21.46 mph, the third-fastest play by a ball carrier this season. And that same play was Mahomes’ longest completion by air distance of his career. More of this, please!

Speaking of Air Yards…Bo Nix

According to Bill Barnwell, Bo Nix’s first half of 7/15 passing for -7 yards was the first time since at least 2000 that a QB had multiple completions for negative yards. For the entire game, the average air yards for his completed pass attempts were only 2.7 yards according to Next Gen Stats. That was about a half-yard lower than any other QB on the week. Courtland Sutton got home with a TD and has had nine or more targets in three of his four games this season. But his expected points will easily continue to outpace his actual fantasy points. Start Sutton if you must, but no other Broncos are playable in this offensive environment.

Waxing Poetic About Wicks

It might actually be happening for Dontayvion Wicks. Let’s start with the context that hurts his case. Jordan Love won’t always throw 54 times per game. And even in high-attempt games, Love won’t always have the third-highest aDoT on the day. Combining those two factors gave Love over 500 air yards in Week 4. That helped essentially every Packers receiver get home.

But turning to the bullish signals for Wicks, Christian Watson left Week 4 early with an ankle injury. And it sounds like a relatively serious issue with a potential IR stint. We never root for injuries, but this does open up the path to consistent playing time for Wicks. And I’ve been hoping for this for a while.

One of the indicators I found this offseason for great future WR fantasy seasons was earning a first down on 9.5%+ of routes run (1DRR). Wicks earned a first down on 10.2% of his routes in 2023. He also had a bullish 2.04 yards per route run and an above-average open score. The issue standing in Wicks’ way was volume. Of WRs with 9.5%+ 1DRR, Wicks had by far the lowest receiving yards per game, finishing about 16 yards below the closest qualifying WR. That could change moving forward. Wicks ran 45 routes in Week 4, which was the same number as Jayden Reed. Those 45 routes were 54% of Wicks’ total routes for the season. And in Week 4, he earned an excellent 29% targets per route run to go along with his two TDs. Go get Wicks on your fantasy team.

Bengals RB Usage

As mentioned earlier, I was bullish on Chase Brown coming into the season. Prior to Week 3, that wasn’t a profitable take. But we got a big Week 4 from Brown. He finished with a 15/80/2 line on the ground to go along with three targets. Those touchdowns are particularly good news for fantasy but also his role. Brown seeing some short yardage and goalline work in Week 4 was definitely a change. Brown still isn’t the primary passing down back. And that’s mostly likely due to the Bengals viewing Zack Moss as the better pass blocker. According to PFF, Brown only has two pass-blocking snaps this season. And Moss may retake the goalline work in the weeks ahead. But Brown is fifth in rushing yards over expected per attempt and first in success rate on the season. And we get this on one of the better offenses in the league.

Texans Continue to Hurt Themselves

The Texans lead the league in penalties this season. Coming into the week, their head coach DeMeco Ryans wanted to see how good his team was when they weren’t getting in their own way. Well, they got the win against the Jaguars but still committed 12 penalties. The graph below shows the offensive EPA split between plays without a penalty (x-axis) and with a penalty (y-axis). The Texans find themselves near the bottom of the graph. They’re an above-average offense when excluding higher-variance penalty plays but among the bottom five in terms of penalties hurting their offensive efficiency. The Texans are also bottom-five in rushing efficiency on the year. We could really see this team take off if they can clean up the penalties and get Joe Mixon back in the fold.

Panthers WRs Without Thielen

We already know that Diontae Johnson is the truth. He has back-to-back games with at least 13 targets, 83 receiving yards, and a touchdown since Andy Dalton took over. He’s easily a WR1 by expected points and a WR2 for fantasy going forward. But after Thielen landed on IR last week, we weren’t sure how big of a role Xavier Legette would have in the offense. Well, he easily delivered his best game as a pro, putting up a 6/66/1 line receiving along with two carries for 10 yards. With the current state of the Panthers defense (i.e. bad), they’re going to have to air it out. And Legette’s 10 targets indicate he is the second option on this offense. He’s absolutely worth an add.