Last Call on Pre-Draft Stats
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Thank you to everyone who encouraged us (both directly and by way of your positive feedback on last year’s guide) to combine all of our content with our top 200 rankings into an official draft guide, which you can either purchase on Patreon for just $10 or get for free when you join our premium Discord (via either Patreon or Substack paid subscription). We know it’s last minute, but we prefer to think of it as “just in time.” Hopefully it’ll help many of you in your drafts this weekend, just like it did last year!
Best of luck as the final draft weekend is upon us - let us know what stats helped you out in the comments, Reddit, or on Twitter @FFNewsletter!
Analysis & Hype:
The WAS Commanders last year were 1st in the NFL in Rush attempts inside the 10 (per FantasyPtsData). If you take out Jayden Daniels 10 zone rushing attempts. They still would have ranked 5th Best.
Ja'Marr Chase averaged more half PPR points per game last year than 3 different team WR rooms did (Patriots, Saints, and Steelers).
Aaron Rodgers had two WR’s average 14+ PPG last year.
• Davante Adams – WR8 (17.9 PPG)
• Garrett Wilson – WR26 (14.0 PPG)
• DK Metcalf’s 2025 ADP? WR26.
Undrafted Rookies to post 8.0+ PPG and a 70+ PFF Receiving Grade:
• Doug Baldwin
• Rashid Shaheed
• Jalen Coker
The correlation between 2023 D/ST Fantasy Finish and 2024 = 0.00
Isiah Pacheco through the first 2 weeks of 2024 (pre-injury):
• 16.0 PPG (RB14)
• 18.9 expected PPG (RB8)
Rashee Rice was the WR2 in PPG through the first 3 games last year.
Rookie QB PFF Passing Grades through the Preseason:
1. Jaxson Dart: 88.5
2. Seth Henigan: 80.3
3. Conner Bazelak: 75.8
4. Dillon Gabriel: 73.3
In 2024, Bryce Young averaged more Scrambles Per Game than:
• Jalen Hurts
• Lamar Jackson
• Josh Allen
• Kyler Murray
Ollie Gordon this preseason:
• 26 attempts
• 126 rushing yards
• 4.8 YPC
• 1 TD
In Bo Nix’s final three preseason drives:
• Courtland Sutton: 100% routes, 50% targets (7)
• Marvin Mims: 100% routes
• Troy Franklin: 71% routes
• Pat Bryant: played with the backups.
Jordan Mason ranked 2nd in Explosive Run Rate among RBs with at least 100 carries last year (7.8%). Aaron Jones ranked 36th (3.5%).
Most yards per carry by a rookie RB in NFL history (min. 200 carries):
1. Adrian Peterson: 5.6
2. Clinton Portis: 5.5
3. Bucky Irving: 5.4
Top 15 WRs with the highest over/under reception totals per DKSportsbook:
1. Ja’Marr Chase: 102.5
2. CeeDee Lamb: 98.5
3. Amon-Ra St. Brown: 96.5
4. Malik Nabers: 95.5
5. Justin Jefferson: 92.5
6. Jaxon Smith-Njigba: 88.5
Four WRs had 35%+ of team total receiving yards and 50%+ of team total receiving TDs while on the field in 2024:
• Brian Thomas Jr.
• Malik Nabers
• Nico Collins
• Josh Downs
Tommy DeVito in his last game as a Giant:
• 15-of-17
• 184 passing yards
• 3 TDs, 0 INTs
• 151.3 passer rating
David Njoku averaged 18.2 PPG in the 5 games he played with Joe Flacco in 2023.
Most receiving yards through the first 28 games of a WR's career:
1. Odell Beckham (2,828)
2. Justin Jefferson (2,609)
3. Puka Nacua (2,476)
4. Ja'Marr Chase (2,415)
5. Randy Moss (2,320)
The only two players to have 7+ targets inside the 10-yard line last season and *0* touchdowns on those targets:
• Brock Bowers (8)
• George Pickens (7)
Yards after the catch over expected
• 294 - Ja'Marr Chase
• 232 - CeeDee Lamb
• 164 - George Kittle
• 159 - Tucker Kraft
• 158 - A.J. Brown
Aside from ranking top-6 in yards after contact/attempt (2.65) last season, Kenneth Walker led the league in MTF/touch (0.30) and ranks 2nd in total missed tackles forced since entering the NFL.
Travis Etienne had 1,350+ scrimmage yards in both of his healthy seasons, the first of which he had 5YPC and the following year he had a top 5 finish at the position.
Cold Water:
Worst Running backs in stuff rate:
1. Cam Akers: 55.8%
2. Nick Chubb: 54.9%
3. JK Dobbins: 53.8%
4. D’Andre Swift: 53.4%
5. Ray Davis: 52.2%
OL situations to consider (all bad):
• Bijan Robinson down two tackles
• Gibbs interior OL completely changed
• Barkley new RG and LG is hurt
• Bucky Irving missing Wirfs + others
• Achane has lost 3 OL for season + others still beat up (Jackson)
Ricky Pearsall put up 1.44 yards per route run as a rookie. That ranked as WR68 among WRs with 200+ routes.
Texans general manager Nick Caserio was noncommittal about whether Pro Bowl running back Joe Mixon will play in 2025.
Amari Cooper in 2024, he posted career lows in:
• Yards Per Route Run (1.55, 52nd/91 WRs)
• Yards Per Game (39.7)
• Targets Per Game (6.1)
• ESPN Receiver Score (106th/116 WRs)
• ESPN Open Score (97th/116 WRs)
Courtland Sutton had a career-high finish last year of WR26 PPG at Age 29.
Courtland Sutton has scored 17+ half PPR points in just 9 of 98 career games and has NEVER finished top 24 in half PPR FP/G (6 seasons).
In 9 years of play-by-play preseason stats, Shedeur Sanders is the only QB to take 5+ sacks on less than 15 dropbacks in any preseason game.
The Browns gave Deshaun Watson $230M guaranteed, signed Kareem Hunt, drafted Quinton Judkins and signed Isaiah Bond. The same organization cut Diontae Johnson after just three months.
Highest rate of incompletions due to inaccurate passes in 2024 regular season:
• 46.2% - Mac Jones
• 40.3% - Caleb Williams
• 36.3% - Drake Maye
• 36.2% - Matthew Stafford
No pass-catcher has ever hit 110 targets in a season with Arthur Smith (Steelers) as playcaller, and only A.J. Brown has ever exceeded 12.0 FPG.
Mini Draft Guide - Camaron - Running Backs
You talked me into it. I decided to compile all of the mini draft guides (updating them for changes in ADP of course) and our top 200 rankings into a single downloadable location. If you are a paid Substack Subscriber or a discord member you should have already have access but if anyone would like to purchase a direct copy they can do so on Patreon. Thank you in advance for supporting what we do.
Running backs are all over the place. When we graph every running back picked in the top 200 picks over the last four years and place them on a chart with their ADP and PPG it results in the following graph:
This leads us to several conclusions. The first being that Running backs picked in the first two rounds are generally pretty safe. If their FantasyPros ADP is less than 25 then generally speaking they're consistently able to reach their ADP’s expected PPG. There are some misses but only twice in the last 4 years has an early round RB failed to hit at least 10 PPG (a bad mark, but not kill your team bad). (2024 Etienne and 2024 Pacheco injury).
Skipping ahead a bit, late round guys (ADP > 100) are unpredictable with high highs and low lows. Everybody knows the strategies here, pick guys with pass catching ability or get lucky with handcuffs. I say get lucky because not only are we bad at predicting who will get injured but we're also pretty bad at getting the actual handcuff correct. We tend to underestimate veterans and overestimate day three RBs when they're rarely actually any good.
The Running Back Dead Zone
The RB dead zone generally starts after the first two rounds, though you can probably extend this to pick 40. And instantly we can see why it's called this. The running backs in this zone have major question marks that have caused them to fall outside the safe guys at the top. ADP is almost completely uncorrelated to PPG in this area. However, there are a few trends that we can see that will help us find the ones that can break out from here.
Split backfields
Sometimes two running backs on the same team will be drafted in the dead-zone. Since 2021 that has happened 15 times. And 11 times at least one of the running backs on those teams have emerged into a great fantasy asset. We know the offense is good enough to support a great fantasy running back, but because we don't know who it is, we get scared off and pick other guys instead. This is wrong. Take the risk and win your league. It should be mentioned that the better player could be either of the two running backs. 6 times it's been the earlier guy in ADP and 5 times it's been the later guy.
Pass catchers
If you can earn enough targets then you can create a large enough PPR PPG floor that you can emerge from the dead zone no matter how bad the situation is. Of the 30 dead-zone RBs who were able to beat their expected PPG (formula above) by 2.0 or more points, 21 averaged at least 3.0 targets per game (pace of 50 targets in a single season). This is an arbitrary number, however it's a bar that only about two dozen players get a year (including the elite guys).
The average NFL team attempts ~33 passes per game, meaning you need a guy who can earn a 9% target share per game (a very high bar for an RB). All this to say the RB Dead zone guys we like this year are:
Alvin Kamara: Always a good receiver.
Breece Hall: Averaged the 4th most targets per game last year.
Kenneth Walker III: Averaged the 3rd most targets per game last year. Arguably a split backfield guy as Charbonnet is right on the edge of the deadzone.
TreVeyon Henderson: One of the best pass catching RBs to come out of college in years.
RJ Harvey: Sean Payton's offense loves passing to the RB
Pick your favorite of the Jaguars RBs. I know as much as you do, but I am personally picking Etienne as my guy to breakout there. You should always try to get at least one of these guys if you have at least 5 bench spots.
Tony Pollard: With Spears out to start the year, Pollard should be able to build himself a solid receiving floor.
The Fun Stuff:
Meet the Kelce’s (it’s not what you think)
Tez Johnson is flipping into the regular season.
Perhaps we were too harsh on the Bengals ownership…
It was probably more expensive like everything in NY is, but Jameis Winston is still eating W’s
Holy shit Isaac Teslaa just did the worm.
Seahawks rookie Grey Zabel delivering an all-time rookie talent show performance.
Brian Daboll deliberately turned off helmet communication on the first 2 plays. He made Dart call the first play that was scripted and then yelled in a play from the sideline.
Miles Sanders: Hurt. Jaydon Blue: Hurt. Phil Mafah: Hurting other people.
Speaking of hurting other people… this is why adults with other jobs should max out at flag football.
Rajon Rondo, QB1?
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