10 Things You Need to Know About Week 8 for Fantasy Football

We’re halfway through the regular season for most fantasy leagues. I hope you’re 5-2 or better in your most important leagues. But if you’re not, the pressure is on to earn a playoff spot. Today we’ll focus on that pressure. But before turning to the more traditional sense with QBs, let’s check in on the highly drafted rookie WRs.

Xavier Worthy’s Route Tree Needs More Branches

The Chiefs have lost their top RB and WR to injury already this season. And now JuJu Smith-Schuster left the game after only 7 snaps in Week 7 and is ruled out for Week 8. The pressure is on Xavier Worthy to step up, especially since his competition outside of Travis Kelce is Justin Watson, Mecole Hardman, and Skyy Moore. While the box score results were still poor, Worthy did hit a new career high in both targets and target share last week. A rookie WR with strong draft capital earning more targets off the bye is encouraging.

But he’s clearly not trusted to run traditional routes by the Chiefs coaching staff. The graph below shows the route types for the first-round rookie WRs. And I’ve collapsed the routes outside of the traditional route tree into an Other bucket. This includes a lot of routes like screens, quick routes, whip routes, etc. A lot of these are schemed-up looks. Worthy has a clear lead over the rest of his cohort in non-traditional routes. And then even among routes on the route tree, a lot of these are just Go balls.

At least through his first five games, SIS did not chart Worthy as having run a comeback or a dig. Not a single time. Here’s hoping the lack of alternative weapons will expand Worthy’s route diversity in the weeks ahead. But he hasn’t consistently won against man coverage. We’ll need that to improve quickly for both more consistent success and for the Chiefs coaching staff to trust him on traditional routes. In the meantime, it would be nice if Mahomes could hit him on his Go routes.

Ja'Lynn Polk: Drops Don’t Matter

Continuing with rookie WRs, a lot will be made of Ja'Lynn Polk’s drops, especially after the Patriots played in an island game in Week 7. Among WRs with at least 100 routes, Polk has the 7th-highest drop rate out of 97 qualifying players. This is your reminder that drops don’t matter. There is almost no correlation year-over-year in WR drop rate (+0.14) or between WR drop rate and future fantasy points (-0.09). If anything, we should target players whose fantasy points have temporarily been harmed by drops.

The bigger issue for Polk is that he’s not consistently getting open. And that does matter for fantasy points. In ESPN Analytics’ receiver rankings, Polk is 72nd out of 73 qualifying WRs in open score. Meanwhile, Alex Van Pelt, the Patriots’ offensive coordinator, clearly wants to highlight tight ends in the passing game. With Drake Maye under center, it’s been a lot of play-action passes getting Maye on the move and finding Hunter Henry as his safety blanket. So, while you can ignore Polk’s drops, he still should be dropped in your redraft fantasy league if you’ve been holding out hope.

Rattler Rattled by Quick Pressure

Spencer Rattler had a rough day against the Broncos. He was at his worst when under pressure, like any QB but particularly a rookie QB. The Broncos' defense generated 14 pressures in less than 2.5 seconds after the snap, which is the most by a defense this season according to Next Gen Stats. The graph below shows pressure rate on the x-axis and the share of those pressures that turn into sacks on the y-axis. And we’re solely focusing on quick pressures here or those that occurred within 2.5 seconds of the snap.

You’ll find Rattler in the top-right of the graph. He has the 5th-highest quick pressure rate and the 2nd-highest quick pressure-to-sack rate among qualifying QBs. What’s interesting, though, is that Rattler did not face any pressure against the Broncos when he was moved out of the pocket by design. Assuming Derek Carr still can’t go this week, I’d bet we see Rattler booted out in play action a lot more like we saw from Drake Maye this week. Getting Chris Olave back would also be huge for his performance.

Goff Has Been Excellent Against Pressure

Alternatively, Jared Goff has been playing lights out against pressure of any variety. He actually has a higher rate of quick pressure than Rattler does but takes sacks at about half the rate. According to Next Gen Stats, Goff faced pressure on a ridiculous 51.7% of his dropbacks against the Vikings. But he went 10/11 for 164 yards and 2 TDs on his pressured attempts. He’s currently leading the league in yards per attempt under pressure.

And that efficiency is even more impressive given the high volume. He’s seventh among qualifying QBs in pressure pass rate, which is just his number of attempts per pressured dropback. He can get a pass attempt off on 75.4% of his pressured dropbacks versus the league average of 69.8%. And that’s excellent for fantasy football because taking sacks or scrambling in those situations is detrimental to our WRs and TEs scoring fantasy points. Speaking of TEs, perhaps there is some small glimmer of hope for Sam LaPorta in the short term with Jameson Williams suspended?

Trevor Lawrence: We Finally Got Some In-Breaking Routes

It’s hard to find a quarterback or team facing more pressure than Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars. But we’ve now had three consecutive games of strong efficiency from Lawrence. Where did this come from? According to Next Gen Stats, 159 of Trevor Lawrence’s 193 passing yards last week came on in-breaking routes. His +15.2 EPA on those throws was the highest by a QB this season. I’ve been yelling about Lawrence’s middle-of-the-field passing for over a year now. What comes to mind when you think of Lawrence last year passing to Calvin Ridley? I’d bet that it’s a deep shot with Ridley pinned to the sideline.

Well, we’re finally getting some pass attempts from Lawrence over the middle of the field. And he’s been excellent on those attempts. The graph below shows EPA per dropback on middle of the field attempts on the x-axis and that same metric for passes to the outside on the y-axis. On a small sample of QBs with at least 50 attempts to the middle, Lawrence has been the second-most efficient passer. Lawrence throwing to Brian Thomas Jr. on intermediate routes over the middle of the field is a recipe for success. More of this, please!

Texans: Establishing the Run

On the season, the Texans are about average in their run/pass split on early downs, with a called pass rate of 50.5% on 1st down. But in Week 7, they opted for a 28% pass rate on 1st down, which was somehow only the 3rd-lowest on the day. And those runs were not particularly successful, finishing the day with a 22.2% success rate on 1st down rushing attempts. Without Nico Collins and with the return of Joe Mixon, the gameplan was clearly to rely on the run game, rather than C.J. Stroud’s arm.

The graph below shows pass rate over expected (PROE) on the x-axis and how much that fluctuates weekly on the y-axis. The Texans are now dead-center for the season. But that does hide their -12.5% PROE in Week 7, which was about 8% lower than any other week this year. Even if the Texans do opt to run more than usual with Collins injured, -12.5% should be more of an outlier than the short-term norm. And as your local Tank Dell apologist, that is good news for…Tank Dell. He goosed you this week. The big ole stinky zero in your lineup is a tough pill to swallow. But he did have two red zone targets in Week 7, with one drop and one caught out-of-bounds. It’s a get-right spot against the Colts in Week 8. Keep the faith.

Eagles: Also Establishing the Run

The Eagles were one of the three teams with a lower called pass rate on 1st down than the Texans last week. While their -15.0% PROE was their lowest on the season, it was only about 3% lower than in Week 6. So, they’ve had back-to-back games after the bye with double-digit negative PROEs. And DeVonta Smith somehow finished the day with fewer receiving yards (-2) than Tank Dell (0).

I do think this game says more about the Giants offensive line than it does anything about Smith. Excluding the drive where the game ended, the Giants managed 11 punts and one field goal on their 12 drives against the Eagles. In response, the Eagles receivers only had 11 targets on the day according to PFF, with Smith earning two of them. Similar to Dell, better days are ahead. And I would expect Week 8 against the Bengals to be one of those better days, requiring the Eagles to actually pass the ball.

Browns: Their Hand Was Forced

Congratulations to all Browns fans who no longer have to watch Deshaun Watson play. We generally don’t root for injuries here, but I think we can all make an exception for Watson. With that chapter closed, what comes next for the Browns at QB? I’ve been an advocate for the full Jameis Winston experience since he signed with the team. According to Ryan Heath, David Njoku had a 27.3% target share with Winston in the game last week, including his TD score. He was the fantasy TE1 down the stretch last season with Joe Flacco. Njoku is a clear top-five TE the rest of the way if Winston is announced as the starter. He’s already top-five in expected points at the position.

But is that what we’ll actually get? With the Browns clearly out of contention, they may opt to start Dorian Thompson-Robinson instead. He did not play well after Watson went down, continuing a trend of poor performance. But he is only 24 years old and would be a much better long-term option than Winston if he has anything. I’m expecting Thompson-Robinson, if healthy, to play in the short term. But eventually, the Browns might have to turn to Winston to pacify their fan base. If you can’t get a good price on Njoku now, I would wait a week or two with Thompson-Robinson at the helm. And then trade for him at a discounted cost with the hope that Winston will take over during the fantasy playoffs.

Target RBs Against the Saints

The Broncos were able to beat the Saints in Week 7 on the back of an extremely successful ground game. They hit a 70.4% success rate on rush attempts, which was the highest mark for any team this season and about 15% above the second-place Falcons last week. The graph below shows defensive efficiency via EPA, with passing defense on the x-axis and rushing defense on the y-axis. The Saints now have the second-worst rushing defense in the league, behind only the Cowboys. I’m no film expert, but the tackling I’ve seen from the Saints' defense has been atrocious in recent weeks.

So, how can we take advantage of this in fantasy football? During fantasy football championship week, the Saints play the Raiders. And Alexander Mattison has been quietly productive all season. He’s RB34 in expected points for the season as a whole, despite only really getting a shot in the last three weeks. And over those three weeks, he’s had at least 14 attempts and 3 targets every game. He’s available in about half of all Yahoo leagues, so he’s either free to add or extremely cheap to acquire. I would personally wait until after this week if you do have to trade for him, as his efficiency versus the Chiefs will be a rough watch. But he has a nice volume floor, with average efficiency, and a great matchup in the fantasy championship. And he’s cheap to acquire.

Kenneth Walker: RB1 Rest of the Way?

Unlike Mattison, Kenneth Walker will not be cheap to acquire in fantasy leagues. It’s his receiving work that has been a surprise. He set a career-high with seven receptions in Week 5. And that record didn’t last long with an eight-reception performance the following week. Unfortunately, he only earned two targets last week, with Zach Charbonnet actually running more routes than Walker. But he turned one of those targets into a touchdown. And he came into the game facing an illness, so I’d be willing to assign some of the lack of routes to his health.

He’s RB11 in expected points for the season. Of players with more than one game played, you have to hit Devon Achane at RB18 to find an RB with fewer attempts per game than Walker. You similarly have to hit RB17 to get an RB with fewer green zone attempts, or attempts five yards or closer to the opponent’s endzone. If we can keep the receiving volume since Week 4 and add in a few more goalline touches, Walker could finish as the RB1 overall the rest of the way.