Fantasy Football Metrics That Matter (Week 8)

This column dives into all of the stats and data generated for fantasy football. More importantly, it gets rid of all of the noise and misleading numbers to highlight the fantasy football metrics that matter for success. On a weekly basis, I’m going to highlight a few players who might surprise you with how well, or how alarming they are performing in these metrics. Using this, you can get ahead of your competition for Week 8 and beyond.

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Time to Panic on DeVonta Smith?

Targets Per Route Run

It was a mere two months ago, back in August, when DeVonta Smith seemed like a sure thing. His ADP this summer was 25th overall, top of the third round. He was the wide receiver 13 taken off the board!

In fairness, we all wanted a piece of that electric Philadelphia Eagles offense. And with a big question mark about how the backfield would shake out, it felt like a sure thing the passing attack would continue to be the engine of that offense.

Seven weeks into the season though and Smith has been an epic letdown. In four out of seven weeks, Smith has scored single-digit fantasy points in 0.5-PPR scoring. His 1.81 Consistency Score (CS) ranks 43rd among receivers and he has a median fantasy points of only 6.9.

But what is truly alarming is his 18.75% Targets per Route Run (TPRR). That ranks 56th among receivers with three or more targets in three or more games, which is behind players like Josh Palmer, Mack Hollins, Michael Gallup, and Curtis Samuel. Oddly enough, they are all players you could have picked up for free off the waiver wire. It’s always been said for running backs that “volume is king”, well the same goes for receivers too and players with a 21% or higher TPRR correlates with future success. All things considered, Smith is clearly well below that threshold.

On top of Smith underperforming in almost every metric that matters for fantasy football, what may be equally alarming is the fact that his own teammate, A.J. Brown is crushing TPRR at 30.54% ranking ninth among all eligible receivers. Pair that with Dallas Goedert getting more involved, and Julio Jones signing off the couch and the slice of that offense that could go to Smith just gets smaller and smaller.

If you can get anything for a trade where you package Smith plus another player, do it and jump ship while you can!

Pierre Strong Jr. is Worth a Stash

If you’ve put in all of your waiver wire bids for Week 8 already and didn’t try to pick up Pierre Strong Jr. anywhere you should probably open your phone again. The second-year rusher is going to get overlooked by most fantasy football managers, so you can likely snag him for a $1 FAAB bid or if you have the low waiver priority in your league. Actually, you can probably get him for free after waivers run this week.

He’s not a sexy name, and we are all familiar with Kareem Hunt who most are presuming will be the lead back. But we also know the Cleveland Browns are going to want to run the football. And with the way their quarterbacks have been playing, they’re going to need to run the football. Once Jerome Ford went out, and he’s expected to miss the next two weeks, it was Strong who saw more snaps, 23 to 19, with the offense while Hunt led the two in opportunities, 11 to 8.

Again, Hunt scored the game-winning touchdown and will get all the glory. Not to mention, most of the FAAB has been and will be thrown at him. However, Stong still contributed with 10.7% of the total offense compared to Hunt’s 14.7%, which is not that far of a gap.

In the next two weeks, Cleveland faces off against two tougher opponents for running backs. The Seattle Seahawks in Week 8, just surrendered 9.3 fantasy points to Emari Demercado. Then, the Arizona Cardinals in Week 9 who have the fourth-highest D-PAC score and are averaging 25.81 fantasy points allowed to the running back position.

Keep an Eye on Jaxon Smith-Njigba

For the most part, Jaxon Smith-Njigba is rostered. However, he is available in about 25% of Sleeper leagues and 40% of Yahoo! leagues. Besides scoring his first touchdown of the season, and thus first double-digit fantasy output of the season, he also spiked in TPRR

The Week 7 affair between Seattle and Arizona was a strange game in terms of the Seahawks offense. But nonetheless, if Smith-Njigba continues on a trend of 20% or more TPRR he’s going to be a valuable fantasy wide receiver. Which he absolutely can be and has the pedigree to be.

Finally, if he’s on the waiver wire in your league, fix that. Go pick up this talented rookie now before the breakout really comes.

Did you like this piece? Disagree? Drop me a line and let me know @DumpsterDiveFF and go ahead and follow for more fantasy football nuggets & all things Consistency Score related! If you’re a fantasy football content creator, please take advantage of the Consistency Score and use it in your content!

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