Hello and welcome to the Week 3 edition of Hoppen to Conclusions! This is where I, Sam Hoppen, will share some of my favorite charts, which are designed to give you an overview of the NFL landscape. These charts, along with the commentary that I provide, aim to help you make start or sit, DFS lineup construction, betting picks, or any other fantasy football decisions. There can be a lot of noise in fantasy football analysis, but these charts have been carefully selected to give you some of the most relevant and useful decision points. Here is the full article.

• Waiver Wire Advice
• Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
• Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
• Fantasy Football Trade Tools

Each of the charts has been designed in a way that you want to target players and teams that are in the top-right quadrant of the chart as denoted by the dotted black lines, which signify the median value for the stat on either the x-axis or y-axis. Before getting to each of the charts and analyses, here are some brief descriptions of what you will find on each chart and how to interpret them.

• Wide Receiver & Tight End Usage: Compares player weighted opportunity rating (WOPR) to his yards per route run (YPRR), with the size of the player’s point as his routes run rate (as a percent of the team’s dropbacks). WOPR weighs both air yards share and target share to evaluate a player’s opportunity, while yards per route run is a measure of one’s efficiency with the routes (and targets) he’s given. The charts show the same information for both the wide receiver and tight end position.

Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways

Tight End Usage

• Before this season started, I was convinced that a 32-year-old tight end coming off of a torn ACL would have little-to-no impact on his offense. Well, Zach Ertz has proven me wrong so far through two games. Ertz leads all tight ends in targets per game (9), target share (31%), and WOPR (0.64). Not to mention, he’s running a route on 85% of Arizona’s dropbacks (of which there are a plethora). You’d think this blurb was from 2017, but here we are again with Ertz being a valuable TE1. His competition, Trey McBride, who I thought would be more involved is running a route on just 35% of the team’s dropbacks and has earned only 5 targets.
  • Action: add Zach Ertz
• David Njoku fits perfectly in the “mid” tier of tight ends. On one hand, he has run a route on 81% of Cleveland’s dropbacks, which is second on the team only to Elijah Moore. That’s really about all he has going for him, because his season-long stat line of six catches for 72 yards is what you might have been hoping from him on a weekly basis. But, Cleveland has a -4.9% PROE through two games (though it was -0.1% after Nick Chubb‘s injury in Week 2) and Njoku’s aDOT is just 2.3 yards. I’d have no issues with dropping Njoku given Deshaun Watson‘s completion percentage over expectation is currently an abysmal -7.4%.
  • Action: drop David Njoku and find a replacement

Quick Hops

• Alexander Mattison has run a route on 57% of Minnesota’s dropbacks so far with 10 total targets earned. He’ll need to convert those into more than just 21 receiving yards, but the workload for him is extremely strong, making him a buy.
• Kyren Williams is a stud. He got every running back rush on Sunday and all but one of the running back touches. With Cam Akers seemingly on his way out, he’s a top-20 RB rest of season.
• Marvin Mims feels like a trap. His two long receptions were fun, but he still ran just six total routes, putting his season-long total at 16 routes run. You can spend your waiver priority and FAAB in better places.
• The Bills’ tight end usage is mildly frustrating. Both Dalton Kincaid and Dawson Knox are running a route on around 70% of dropbacks and have a target share of at least 12%. While these numbers would be solid for a tight end in a vacuum (especially on a heavy-passing team), it’s clear they’re cannibalizing each others’ potential ceiling.
• You can’t drop Kyle Pitts (yet) as he’s running a route on 92% of Atlanta’s dropbacks, but the Falcons’ -12.2% PROE will keep me from starting him until further notice

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | SoundCloud | iHeartRadio