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What if I told you that Patrick Mahomes had still been the most valuable Quarterback to have on your team this season?
And what if I told you that there was only one player in the entire NFL who had been ‘flex-worthy’ in every game?
Do I have your attention yet? I’ve been taking a slightly different look at the numbers through the first 10 weeks of the season to look at how many points you actually need from the players on our team and how often players are actually getting to those marks.
The Principles
Lets quickly clear up the principles here. Firstly, I’m looking at the following league settings:
- 12 team
- PPR
- 1QB
- 2RB / 3 WR / 1 TE / 1 Flex
Now here’s the key principle. If you’re in a 12 team league and everyone has ‘an RB1’ then just having ‘an RB1’ isn’t going to help you. Theoretically, if you have the RB12 then there are 11 other teams who have an advantage over you at that position. There’s luck across the board in every facet of this but more logically, you need to at least be aiming to beat the ‘average’ each week. So you don’t want ‘an RB1’, you want a top 6 RB to beat the average of your league.
I know the reality is far less linear than that but its impossible to understand every different combination of team structure on every team and the permutations of who your opponent could be in any given week, so I’m going to assume that to beat the average in your league you need to be hitting the top half of each position. That said, I’m therefore looking at:
- RB6 (average RB1 spot)
- RB18 (average RB2 spot)
- WR6 (average WR1 spot)
- WR18 (average WR2 spot)
- WR30 (average WR3 spot)
- TE6 (average TE1 spot)
- QB6 (average QB1 spot)
- RB30 / WR42 (average flex spot)
I’m also going to be talking about player medians so far this season. This is through week 10 and has excluded their bye weeks. However, it doesn’t exclude injuries, these are captured as zero in the calculation and serve to bring their median down (I made this decision consciously. I know we can’t predict injuries but injuries happen and a player can’t win your matchup if he’s not suited up).
Points Required for Each Position
When a fantasy football site says a player is ‘an RB2 this week’ or is ranked at WR33, do you actually know what that means and do you actually know how many points you should be looking for from each of your players?
Looking at the points scored at each of the above positions over the first 10 weeks of the season, there’s not a huge amount of fluctuation week to week.
There are definitely some spike weeks but if we take the Median points for each position, that’s a reasonable point to measure against. That’s how many points we, on average, need from our players in this kind of format.
Running Backs
There are 69 Running Backs who have a Median PPR points greater than zero so far this season. Here’s the list, sorted by highest median and showing how many games they’ve scored higher than our benchmarks established above.
What does this tell us?
Firstly, it tells us there are ZERO Running Backs who have a median result higher than the ‘week winning’ median that we need. In other words, no Running Back is guaranteed to help us win every single week.
It also tells us that there are ZERO Running Backs who have returned flex-worthy ‘week winning’ numbers every single week. Six RBs have returned that for us eight times and many have had a bye week in there but it still means there’s at least one week where they haven’t cut the mustard.
Only Najee Harris and Jonathan Taylor have given us those ‘RB2’ numbers we need in most weeks, with Harris only hitting the ‘RB1’ number three times – one less than Taylor, Ekeler, Swift, Henry, and Mixon.
A few other players jump out at me here. D’Andre Swift is hitting those heights as much as anyone but with a lower floor, Lombardi Lenny is steady but unspectacular, and there a number of ‘handcuff’ performances that have won weeks (Darrel Williams, Alexander Mattison, D’Ernest Johnson).
Wide Receivers
There are 108 Wide Receivers who have a Median PPR points greater than zero so far this season. Here’s the list, sorted by highest median and showing how many games they’ve scored higher than our benchmarks established above.
What does this tell us?
As with Running Backs, it tells us there are ZERO Wide Receivers who have a median result higher than the WR1 ‘week winning’ median. In fact, there aren’t even any that hit the WR2 number. In other words, no Wide Receiver is guaranteed to be a ‘week winning’ WR2 every single week.
Cooper Kupp is special though. He’s the only player in this entire exercise who has hit the flex-worthy number every single week of the season so far. Congratulations if you guessed that one!
There’s a lot of red in that first column. Only Tyreek Hill and Cooper Kupp have had multiple weeks as a top half WR1, and they haven’t exactly done it on a regular basis. Six players have had three WR2 ‘week winning’ scores with only Hill and Kupp topping that number.
The takeaway: There aren’t actually many wide receivers who are winning us weeks on a regular basis and even the ‘elite’ ones are falling short more often than not. The position is volatile to say the least.
A few other names of note: Davante Adams has only hit the WR2 number twice; Cole Beasley, Robert Woods and Hunter Renfrow have been solid floor / low ceiling (unsurprisingly); and Tim Patrick has been a helpful piece but he’s never going to win you your matchup.
Tight Ends
There are 46 Tight Ends who have a Median PPR points greater than zero so far this season. Here’s the list, sorted by highest median and showing how many games they’ve scored higher than our benchmarks established above. For Tight Ends I’ve also added the TE12 benchmark so we can say how many times they’re at least not destroying us.
What does this tell us?
Again, ZERO Tight Ends with a Median result higher than the required Median. No Tight End is winning weeks for us every single week. And no Tight End is hitting the TE12 mark either, not even Kelce.
Kelce does clearly have the safest floor but he’s ‘winning’ weeks for us at the same rate as T.J. Hockenson, Noah Fant, Rob Gronkowski and (double-checks the notes) C.J. Uzomah!
We really need to re-think what we’re looking for at Tight End when we draft. Are we looking for a player who can win us weeks or just one that won’t destroy us? If it’s the former, it doesn’t look worth the price and if it’s the latter, I’m not sure we should be paying that price for a floor.
Quarterbacks
For Quarterbacks, I’ve taken the top 30 Median results so far this season. Here’s the list, sorted by highest median and showing how many games they’ve scored higher than our benchmarks established above. I’ve also added the QB12 benchmark so we can say how many times they’re at least not destroying us.
What does this tell us?
Well we finally have a player whose median performance is higher than the median required. Well done Mr Brady. But I would argue he’s still not the most valuable QB to winning weeks as he’s only hit that top 6 number five times, one less than Mr Mahomes: and Mahomes has maintained a higher floor on more occasions than every other Quarterback in the league too.
There are only four QBs who have produced those week winning numbers on four or more occasions, that’s not great returns. But there are 10 with five or more ‘floor’ performances and the median’s are much closer with Quarterbacks so losing out to a better QB might not always destroy your matchup.
Overall Takeaways
- Don’t tilt when players don’t have week-winning performances, they don’t manage it more often than they do manage it
- Wide Receivers are even more volatile than I realised and there really aren’t many elite ones that give you an advantage every single week
- The top Running Backs have much more of a solid base but aren’t going to be RB1 week-winners at least half the time. However, they are far more likely too than their WR peers
- Patrick Mahomes is still as safe as you can get no matter how it has felt recently
And don’t forget, when you’re setting lineups don’t worry so much about what a player ranking of WR34 or ‘an RB2’ means, these are the PPR points you’re aiming for from each position:
