Week 5 Thoughts and Notes
Wow, two weeks in a row? Consistency. This is how you appeal to the masses.
Here are a few things that I may do in my notes:
BOSS means a player is in my BOSS models (you can get full Excel access to them and some nice stats on my patreon)
Route Hero means a player that is popping in my route based expected fantasy points model. I will share more details on this at some point, but for now definitely take it with a grain of salt.
Buy Low is Josh's Buy Low model. Go subscribe to his substack! he's the GOAT of football analytics in my eyes
NEEDS TD, you will see a lot. This is just if a player is popping in my expected TD model.
I try to collect a lot of valuable information from a lot of different sources. I will do my best to always give credit to where credit is due. Please go sub to those people! There is a reason i think that information is useful.
Favorite Plays
Josh Jacobs: BOSS - Needs TD - #3 in RBOPR (RB Opportunity). Playing GB who is #32 in PROE allowed (meaning they beg for the run). Jacobs continues to bounce back this week and has his best game of the year. Alts on Rushing/Receiving & TD (maybe 2)
Travis Kelce/TJ Hockenson: Both Route Heroes, Kelce BOSS, Both have great RZ usage. Likely a high scoring game. Really don’t hate any alts or correlations involving these two. Kelce TD + Hock TD + alts on both.
Michael Pittman: BOSS + Buy Low + Route Hero + (-.57 NEEDs TD) + Single Cov Beast. Tbh, my “AR isnt a passer” bias is SCREAMING to not put Pittman as a fav play, but dang it, Pittman is in a great spot. If you believe in AR, this is the week you bet big on AR + Pittman and maybe even throw some Josh Downs in there. AR 250+ & Pittman 100+ & Downs 50+
Plays I Like (in order)
Olave: BOSS + Buy Low + Route Hero + Needs TD. Carr is my biggest worry… idk why he played last week tbh (he looked pretty bad). If Winston plays, wheels up. If Carr plays I’m skeptical but still playing just not quite as committed.
Deandre Hopkins: Route Hero - Needs TD - Weak Colts secondary. Feel great about a big Dhop game. Biggest worry is a big Henry game. Otherwise would be a fav play. I like the idea of combining Pittman + Dhop parlays (or mini cor for DFS folk)
Zach Ertz: BOSS + Buy Low + Needs TD + Route Hero. ugh I hate being high on old guys. If Ertz was 27, he would be a fav play. His stable PFF metrics are also AWFUL. i think i will bet TD and leave it be.
Tyreek Hill: Route Hero, I don’t have a lot of numbers for this one. No clue what the Giants will do to stop this man.
DeAndre Swift: Rams are #30 in PROE allowed. Rams allow a lot of explosive runs, Eagles are good at creating E-Runs.
PUKAAAAAAAAAAAAAA: Eagles #4 in PROE allowed, weak secondary, Puka the god, Kupp is the backup now, 70+ and a TD *again*
Garrett Wilson: Buy Low, BOSS, Broncos Def, would be a fav play but idk how much I believe in Zach Wilson quite yet. I will have an SGP where Jets offense puts it together.
Chase: Needs TD. Burrow/The Bengals just look awful. Normally when I see a bad team on a regression list I take it with a large grain of salt. Right this moment, the Bengals are that bad team.
TD Plays
Pollard TD basically required by me this week
Mattison TD (Needs TD and Boss) in a high scoring game. Should’ve had it last week but bad luck. I do worry his number is a bit inflated relative to his future role with Akers.
Zay Flowers TD: Needs TD - Single Coverage Beast - Ravens probably get a few extra possessions against the BAD Steelers offense. (I don’t mind a Nelson Agholor Bet for a big TD either). Steelers D is good but plays a lot of Single and allows a lot of explosive pass plays (Agholor has 11.8 aDoT)
Dawson Knox: Needs TD. Diggs cant keep stealing ALL the TDs.
Zach Ertz FINALLY gets his TD.
Needs TD
This is a fairly simple model that uses ffopportunity in R expected rushing and receiving TD model. simply adds up the expectations and compares it to what actually happened. I believe Tanho created it? he seems to create everything so go follow him anyways.
Pollard is down BAD. based on his opportunity we would expect almost 4 TDs through 3 weeks and he has 0. baddddd luck. Putting the mortgage on a Pollard TD this week.
BOSS
The good ole BOSS Model. If you have been following for a while you know whats up. Basically a model to find players who need to regress positively based on purely on the opportunities they receive. Ignore Deon Jackson
RB
WR
TE
Route Hero
FP and XFP are in Routes Run
The basic idea is that not all routes are created equal and some WRs run routes really well! We can see Deebo has been running extremely valuable routes in the table below AND he has been playing the ball well (On Target XFP). Most stats in the table are a WEIGHTED 3 week rolling average (50% on most recent week, 33% on 2 away, 17% on 3 away). So for Samuel, we would read this as:
Based on how well he is running his routes and the kind of routes he is running, we would expect him to score .62 FP every time he runs a route. Instead, he is scoring .46 every time, if he runs similar or more routes to what he has been doing, he should positively regress.
TEs:
Single Coverage Beasts
I dont have a good graph or table for this yet… sorry
The basic idea is that some defenses like to run single coverage a lot. These defenses:
Now we find the best WRs against single cov who play those teams:
Tutu Atwell! (idk how Kupp will affect this)
Lamb!
Downs/Pittman? Downs and Pierce are BETTER against SC but Pittman gets more targets
Pickens and Austin both showing up but idk about that steelers offense. Weird play for sure would be a Austin Big TD, but idk about Pickett and such.
Not even gonna look at the Giants tbh. its bad
Interesting Game Environments:
Texans > Falcons, Cards > Bengals
Titans v Colts has weird shootout potential
Eagles v Rams seems like GREAT shootout potential.
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