Target Share Report: Week Four
Welcome back to the target share report, where we try to understand player usage and production through volume. Week four felt like a curveball in a few respects, but one more week of data also helped to stabilize our understanding of players’ roles in the 2020 season.
So, let’s take a look at it.
Top 12 in Target Share
Keenan Allen, WR LAC and DeAndre Hopkins, WR ARI
I know, I know. I start every week talking about how “some of these target shares are just too high based on history.” But these two players are some of the few who have consistently maintained target shares well above average, even for top 12 wide receivers.
Players produce fantasy points in slightly different ways, however. Having maintained large target shares does not mean they will be the top two scoring wide receivers this year. However, it does make it much more likely they will continue to be target hogs.
Allen has maintained those levels of volume through two quarterbacks and had 18 targets for the first two weeks with Mike Williams also establishing a significant role.
Hopkins is going to be in the top two wide receivers for fantasy in 2020. He’s just, really good. Week four may have been slightly disappointing for those starting him, but stay the course, obviously.
Which brings me to the player not on this list.
Amari Cooper, WR DAL
Amari Cooper is the number one scoring wide receiver in PPR leagues so far in 2020. His target share (26%) is top ten for wide receivers and 13th overall. Hence why he’s not on the list above.
CeeDee Lamb is third on the Cowboys in target share (14%, below Ezekiel Elliott, 16%.) It has risen since week one, and he is above Michael Gallup, but it also seems fairly stable through three weeks. For dynasty, he is a mouthwatering player who is going to have a great career. But don’t let his big weeks – which will continue to come (along with Gallup’s big weeks) – obscure the fact that Cooper is dominating this season in fantasy.
Odell Beckham, WR CLE
Jarvis Landry hit his highest target share in week four (23%) and yet Odell Beckham still had a 31% target share (in week four). It’s good to see Jarvis Landry get back to scoring fantasy points, but they are not mutually exclusive in fantasy. The only thing holding either back is the overall volume of the team.
The Browns are passing on 45% of their team attempts according to my data from rotoviz.com, which is 12% less than 2019. That’s with a 28th ranked overall passing volume. 74% of the targets are going to the top four options – Beckham, Landry, Austin Hooper, and Kareem Hunt. That ranks about 13th overall if we do the same calculation for all teams right now.
In other words, it’s a fairly condensed target tree in Cleveland which should help all four continue to see enough volume even on a lower passing offense. But, as Beckham’s FPOE (Fantasy Points Over Expected) should indicate, they may be more dependent on efficiency, and prone to “down” weeks compared to some others operating at this level of team volume.
Jamison Crowder, WR NYJ
With two games in 2020, Crowder’s target share looks a little more real – he did drop straight down to 23% in his second game. He was returning from injury, however. If he can stay healthy I think he’ll continue to be a high target share player, but remain prone to even down weeks in fantasy because of the state of the team.
George Kittle, TE SF
In Kittle’s return, he jumped up to a 37% target share (in week one it was 16%). I’d expect him to remain closer to that 16% from week one, but his average of 27% is likely to be even closer to the truth as he is the core of the receiving game on that team.
It’s worth pointing out that Brandon Aiyuk‘s 16% target share looks like it may continue the trend of rookie wide receivers in 2020 (in that they are all impressing when on the field). However, that number is bumped by its week three high mark of 23%. I’d expect him to have a CeeDee lamb ceiling (which you have seen more of, so I’m hoping makes for a better example of what to expect) on a lower passing volume team, who will see less scoring opportunities. He may be more exciting for dynasty just at the moment than on a week-to-week basis.
Marquise Brown, WR BAL
Through four weeks, Brown is holding a 27% target share on a low-volume team, with a middling target share tree (it’s not very condensed). Brown’s “problem” in fantasy (I say that loosely since he just had a 15-point game) has been a lower floor than most players operating at this level of volume. However, as we can “kind of” make out from his EP (Expected Points), he is getting less valuable targets for fantasy. This is partly because he has a low (in fact he has no) red-zone presence in this offense so far. That’s based on data from our friends at 4for4.com, which I have just started digging into.
However, he is still operating fairly far down the field (high aDot targets) which can provide a boost to his fantasy production right now without having to rely on high variance touchdowns (particularly hard to come by without red-zone targets).
So far, he’s been inefficient overall on those targets operating with a 0.52 RACR (Receiver Air Conversion Ratio, for context 0.69 is average and 0.52 is low even for high aDot targets.) I think he could have more good games based on his last two games which were nearly twice as efficient as his current average. But it’s tough to rely on efficiency, let alone recent, small-sample efficiency to propel him forward.
I still like him a lot though.
Okay, that’s all I have for this week. If you want to dig through the data yourself, I have updated the spreadsheet I’ve been using to track 2020 stats this season, and you can find it here.
Thanks again for checking this article out.
UDFA's matter | British ex-pat | Writer of things
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