Target Share And The Value Beneath: Week Twelve

Welcome back. I thought I’d change it up this week and try and dig into some rookie situations as well as posting the players rising and falling in opportunity. Let’s dig in!

Data and Links

I’m writing my opinion on data. You can, and should disagree at will. I hope these are links that can help you do that.

You can see snapshots of the receiving opportunity for all 32 NFL teams here.
You can see the complete data with extra stats and metrics I’m collecting, including snap and touch %, here.

Sources: Airyards.com, ffstatistics.com, and 4for4.com

The Top 12

Here are the players who have led in receiving opportunity over the last three weeks:

Notes

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– Kenny Golladay has been a receiving monster when Marvin Jones has been out and now he’s on IR, so that should continue. His PPG has been in line as expected so he seems to be living up to the targets

– Tyreek Hill has also been tearing it up lately. What strikes me about his PPG, however, is that he has a much lower floor then his fellow top 12 players and despite now ranking in the top 5 in PPG for the season. His consistency still seems to be an issue

– Devante Adams and Antonio Brown are the only ones operating in 2018 with a 15 point floor in PPR scoring. That’s’ right, neither of them has scored fewer than 15 PPR points in any game this year. Give up on which secondary option will hit in Green Bay and just enjoy Adams’ top five level breakout season

– Anyone who undervalues Antonio Brown because of his age is a fish and you should take advantage of them until they quit your league

– Emmanuel Sanders is the Broncos receiving game. If it’s at all possible to get him for your playoffs, do that

– Willie Snead and Tre’Quan Smith look like the odd ones out on the list this week. It should be noted both are being propped up (in the three-week sample I’m using) by one big game. Tre’Quan Smith had a monster game in week eleven but had no chances in week ten or week twelve. His usage continues to be very up and down in his rookie season. Here’s a graph of the Target Share over the last five week for the Saints.

In Lamar Jackson’s first game, he only had eyes for Willie Snead – this led to a skewed perspective of his opportunity. Still, he seems to be favorite of Jackson’s so far. I also want to highlight that based on my PPG model he is underperforming his opportunity. He could be due some positive regression upwards. But again, this is largely based off that one big game in week 11 and he is still getting hardly any red zone targets.

Note: The colors on these graphs get confusing sometimes. The deep blue line that was highest in week 12 is John Brown not Maxx Williams or Chris Moore.

The Risers

Here are the top 12 players to gain the most opportunity in the last three weeks.

Risers

Notes

– Dede Westbrook is the latest passenger on the Jaguars receiving carrousel. He’s been there before and it’s still not a good idea to believe in it – not in 2018, at least.

– Dante Pettis was not my guy from this rookie wide receiver class. But there’s no denying he does continue to pick up targets when he is on the field. I think this could be in part because the team invested a lot of faith in him based when they reached for him in the draft. But for now, he is showing well in what may be the best “talent stat” we have, averaging 6.5 targets per game over the last three weeks

– Hayden Hurst and Mark Andrews have traded off who gets the targets. Andrews ran more routes in week 12, and it wasn’t that long ago that Nick Boyle led the team in receiving for large part of one game. The Baltimore Ravens tight end position is still a minefield

– Nick Chubb now owns receiving production in the NFL, so the concerns over his college stats should be quelled. He’s easily a top 12 RB in dynasty, in my opinion.

– John Ross is about to get AJ Green’d and that never works out well for anyone but AJ Green. The Bengals look ready to start him this week despite the loss of Andy Dalton

The Fallers

Here are the players who have lost the most opportunity over the last three weeks.

Fallers

Notes

– Tyreek Hill’s opportunity rise has come directly from Sammy Watkins. Both could trend back the other way at some point

– Jordy Nelson ran a fair number of routes in week 12, so I’m half expecting to see his numbers rise. However, targets are more predictive of future targets then routes run. I think we should stay away from that potential from him until we see it

– Eric Ebron’s usage concerns should get a little lighter now that the Colts have lost Jack Doyle and Mo Alie-Cox is already declared out for week 13. He’s still a touchdown-dependent player but…well…he gets a lot of red zone targets and catches a lot of touchdowns. So it can, and probably should keep working out

– I’m just surprised Dorsett had usage left to lose

– Alshon Jeffrey may be someone to trade on name value at this point in dynasty

– James White has seen a loss of usage and with the return of Rex Burkhead from IR his life in the top 12 could be a thing of the past. Right now, however, they go up against a tough run matchup. White has had 15 PPR points or more in 63% of his games in 2018 ranking eight at the position in that measure. That looks like a very safe floor to me

Carolina situation

Here is a graph of the Target Share for every player in Carolina since week eight.

If you can follow along DJ Moore’s light blue line (it hides behind Funchess and McCaffrey in week 10 and 11) you can see that he has been rising in target share since week nine. Despite McCaffrey’s dominance in all volume, Moore looks set for a late-season breakout that could make Calvin Ridley’s touchdown streak look like a Robby Anderson “breakout.”

Looking at Carolina’s team snapshot on my twitter thread shows Moore ranks inside the top 24 at the position in targets, target share and targets per game over the last three weeks. Devin Funchess still leads in WOPR with an early season lead.

Buy DJ Moore.

Arizona situation

Here’s a graph of the target share over the last five weeks for the Cardinals.

Arizona

Christian Kirk is in a much worse situation right now than DJ Moore. However, he is another rookie who continues to increase in target share. Since their bye week, Kirk has seen his target share move from around 15% up to over 30% in week 12.

I don’t think he can sustain a 30% target share but his lead could last even through the end of the season. Either way, it is yet more reason to target him in dynasty and hope the team can put together a better, more productive season in 2019.

Anyway, I better get this to the editors. They already have a tough job checking over my writing as it is.

If you are interested in any other situation or team breakdown just comment below or hit me up on twitter. Thanks for checking this out, again, and I’ll see you next week. No, let’s go get some championships!

SERIES NOTES

Zeno James, from ffstatistics.com, has been invaluable in collecting this data on a weekly basis. Give him a follow at @theDude_Z on Twitter
I’m using a mix of data from 4for4.com and Airyards.com

CoV = The Coefficient of Variation, it measures the variance in a sample (i.e. how much change there is week to week)

Airyards = the total distance before the player caught his targets (essentially receiving yards minus yards after the catch)

Regression = a rate should return closer to “normal” or average when it is greatly over or under that average over a long sample size

WOPR = Weighted Opportunity Rating. It weights target share by the player’s share of air yards. It is one of the most stable (week to week and year to year) opportunity metrics and has extra utility because it describes some of the value in opportunity. It’s also useful because it can highlight potential regression when compared with fantasy points

It should be noted that the WOPR calculation is my own and imperfect when compared Airyards.com. It has a slightly different player order at times, however, it is ranking them in ranges appropriately.

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Tom Kislingbury

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Being from England Tom only discovered American Football in the late 90s. From there he's gone from casual defender to devoted obsessive and likes to delve into deep data primarily about defensive players. He spends his days trying to pretend the spreadsheets and graphs he makes about football are actually work for his day job. No-one is fooled.

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