Fantasy Football Outlook: David Njoku, Trey McBride, James Cook, Leonard Fournette

Hello and welcome to the Week 9 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 for Week 9. And below we dive into a few notable players.

Fantasy Football Trends & Takeaways

Tight End Usage

A couple of weeks ago I said that I was out on David Njoku and here I am again to tell you that his production this past week may have been a mirage. This past week Njoku had his best game of the season in Week 8 with 15.7 Half-PPR points, thanks to a season-high 77 receiving yards and his first touchdown of the season. But how he got there is not necessarily sustainable. Of Njoku’s 77 receiving yards, an astounding 74 of them came after the catch. Cleveland did a great job of scheming up screen passes for PJ Walker not only to Njoku, but also to Cleveland’s running backs. Njoku has yet to record an aDOT higher than six yards in a single game this year. His 79% routes run rate is still encouraging, but as Cleveland continues to operate as a run-heavy team (they’ve had a neutral-script pass rate below 50% in each of the last three games) targets are going to be hard to come by.
- Action: sell David Njoku
Trey McBride got one game without Zach Ertz this year and instantly became a star (relatively speaking). On Sunday, McBride set season-high and career-high marks in targets (14), receptions (10), and receiving yards (95) while scoring the second touchdown of his career. McBride’s 86% routes run rate was also a season-high and the first time that it eclipsed 55%. While the Cardinals, like the aforementioned Browns, don’t care to pass the ball a ton, that could change with Kyler Murray‘s return getting seemingly closer (though he won’t play next week). Not to mention, Arizona’s target tree is much narrower as Marquise Brown is the only Cardinals player with a target share over 15%, so the opportunity to continue to earn targets for McBride is wide open.
- Action: buy Trey McBride

Quick Hops

James Cook‘s 68% snap share in Week 8 was a season high and just the fifth time he’s been over a 60% rate this season. But, the addition of Leonard Fournette could muddy the waters even more for this backfield.