Hello and welcome to the Week 5 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 are all of my takeaways and actions ahead of Week 5. Below we dive into a few notable players.
- Waiver Wire Advice
- Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
- Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
- Fantasy Football Trade Tools
Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways
Wide Receiver Usage
- Calvin Ridley got off to a blazing-hot start this season with a receiving touchdown as part of an eight-catch, 101-yard performance in the season opener. Since then, Ridley has recorded just seven catches for 110 yards and another receiving touchdown. In those three games, he has had eight, seven, and two targets (though Ridley was also targeted 40 yards downfield Sunday which resulted in a 40-yard defensive pass interference penalty). Still, Ridley ran a route on every dropback Sunday (and leads the team with an 89% routes run rate this season), so he’s consistently on the field. In London, I suspect the Falcons’ heavier use of man coverage is what led to a scheme-driven approach to Christian Kirk (eight catches on 12 targets for 84 yards) having the bigger day. The Jaguars also needed just 30 pass attempts to win on Sunday, and the Bills will put much more pressure on Jacksonville to score while being a more zone-heavy defense that Ridley can find the gaps in. He should have no issue bouncing back in their second London game.
- Action: buy Calvin Ridley, hold Christian Kirk
- Things are pretty bleak in New York, but let’s put their wide receiver group under the microscope real quick. So far, no Giants wide receiver has recorded more than six total targets in a single game. In fact, so far this season, Giants wide receivers as a whole are earning a 58.3% target share, the 10th-lowest rate in the league. The receiver with the most stable workload so far has been Darius Slayton, who has run a route on 80% of the team’s dropbacks and has been above a 70% rate in every game this season. That said, his five-target-per-game average is fourth on the team overall. Parris Campbell is averaging 5.2 targets per game but has just a 4.0 aDOT that severely limits his ceiling. He’s also seen his route participation drop in each of the past two weeks at the expense of the guy who I think is the most intriguing of the bunch, Wan’Dale Robinson. Robinson missed the first two games of the season as he was still recovering from his late-season ACL tear in 2022. He was eased in with a 24% routes run rate in Week 3 but ran a route on 63% of dropbacks in the Monday Night Football debacle. It makes sense that Campbell’s workload suffered with Robinson back as he also has an appallingly low 3.4-yard aDOT. Still, I’m intrigued by the second-year receiver if he can start to separate himself and earn more targets as a potential PPR threat.
- Action: add Wan’Dale Robinson, fade all other Giants wide receivers
- So far this season, the Las Vegas Raiders have been the most concentrated passing attack in the league by a long shot. Three of their players — Davante Adams, Jakobi Meyers, and Josh Jacobs — make up a whopping 77% of the team’s total targets this year. All three of the players mentioned have at least 25 targets this season, with Adams leading the bunch with 50 total targets (in four games, that number is absurd). This past week, Aidan O’Connell filled in for an injured Jimmy Garroppolo and showed the same tendencies. The Vegas trio combined for 28 of O’Connell’s 39 attempts, so the trend should hold regardless of who is under center for the Raiders. The only other name to keep an eye on, should there be an injury, is Hunter Renfrow. In the one game that Meyers missed, Renfrow ran a route on 76% of dropbacks (but only earned one target). Until that time comes, though, he can remain on the waiver wire.
- Action: buy (or hold) Davante Adams and Jakobi Meyers, disregard all other Raiders pass-catchers
-Sam Hoppen
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