Fantasy Football Outlook: Cooper Kupp, Tutu Atwell, Darrell Henderson, Royce Freeman

Hello and welcome to the Week 8 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. Let’s dive into a few notable players this week.

Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways

Team Pass Rates

Despite missing Cooper Kupp for the first four weeks, the Rams came out as a very pass-heavy team, with two games over a 10% PROE in the first three weeks. That has cratered recently, though, as they have just one game with a positive PROE since Week 4. It makes sense why they would lean more into the running game as their 45.5% rushing success rate ranks fourth in the league and they face light boxes at the highest rate. However, this leaves less meat on the bone for ancillary pieces of the passing game like Tutu Atwell and Tyler Higbee, who have combined for just 17 targets over the past three games. Atwell has also been pushed to the wayside with Kupp’s return, totaling just three targets in the last two games. As far as the running backs go, in their first game without Kyren Williams and Ronnie Rivers, Darrell Henderson was the only one who saw a target (he had two), but neither he nor Royce Freeman eclipsed a 40% routes run rate (Williams had been above 60% in every game he played this season). The rushing workload favored Henderson slightly as he was given 18 carries, but the increased rushing approach allowed Freeman to handle 12 carries of his own.
- Action: bench Tutu Atwell, drop Tyler Higbee, and buy Darrell Henderson and Royce Freeman