Fantasy Football Outlook: Quentin Johnston, Josh Jacobs, Chigoziem Okonkwo, Tyler Higbee

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.

Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways

Tight End Usage

Tyler Higbee, fresh off of a new contract extension, had his highest-usage game of the season. Though it still wasn’t his best fantasy performance, Higbee was targeted a team-high 11 times in the overtime game against the Colts. So far this season, Higbee has consistently run a route on around 90% of the team’s dropbacks, but he has consistently been the team’s third receiving option (sometimes fourth behind Kyren Williams). Now, the Rams are closer to getting Cooper Kupp back, and, not for nothing, Higbee got his thumb banged up a little bit in Week 4 (though it doesn’t appear to be serious). Since the start of 2022, Higbee has just three receiving touchdowns and with the Rams leaning more run-heavy in the red zone (see chart above), it seems unlikely he’ll have a touchdown-heavy season.
- Action: sell Tyler Higbee
This offseason, the thesis behind Chigozeim Okonkwo improving as a fantasy asset was driven by the expectation that he’d run a route on more than his rookie-season rate of 32% of dropbacks. So far, that’s more than doubled with a routes-run rate of just over 70%. Regretfully, that hasn’t come with an increase in targets as he’s gotten just 13 targets across four games this season. Tight end is a bleak position once again, but you can do much better than Okonkwo at this point, especially with Tennessee
- Action: drop Chigoziem Okonkwo

Quick Hops

Josh Jacobs‘ 11 HVTs were third-most on the week thanks to his eight receptions. The buy-low window on him is long gone and he looks like he’s back to his former RB1 status.
The Cardinals threw the ball 41 times against the 49ers on Sunday (by far a season-high). This turned into a big day for Michael Wilson, who caught all seven of his targets for 76 yards and two touchdowns. He looks legit and I’m adding him where I can.
In the first game without Mike Williams, Josh Palmer (100% of routes run) and Quentin Johnston (71% of routes run) saw massive bumps in usage. That said, Palmer led the team in targets with eight while Johnston only earned three, bringing his season-long total to 11 targets. I still believe Johnston could win out in this position battle long-term and think there’s a new buy-low opportunity on him given the Chargers head into their bye this week.

-Sam Hoppen