#Trendspotting: Week 5

Photo: Imagn Images

Reader's Guide

As you read, you may run into some colors in the text. Blue text is a good matchup for that team's offensive players. Red text is a bad matchup. Some other key items are below:

• All red/blue highlighting in tables is relative to the entire NFL, even when showing a limited number of teams.
• All reference to fantasy points assumes DraftKings scoring rules unless otherwise specified.
• All stats reference the full 2018 season unless otherwise specified.
• All fantasy points rankings are on a per-game basis to account for bye weeks unless otherwise specified.

This week, we'll discuss the following topics:

• Funnel Watch
• How Will They Score?
• Looks Can Be Deceiving
• Tempo, Tempo, Tempo

Funnel Watch

This section will dissect how offenses gain their yards and how defenses allow them.

Pass Funnels

"PaYd/Gm" = passing yards per game
"RuYd/Gm" = rushing yards per game
"NYd/Att" = net yards per passing attempt; factors yards lost via sacks instead of raw yards per attempt
"PassYd%" = the percentage of a team's yards gained or allowed via the pass
"RushYd%" = the percentage of a team's yards gained or allowed via the rush

Commentary

This week's pass funnel defenses don't yield many action items because the offenses opposing them are either feeble (N.Y. Jets at Philadelphia), have a hard-to-trust quarterback (Pittsburgh vs. Baltimore), or are favored so heavily that it's hard to bet on the passing game (Philadelphia vs. N.Y. Jets). But it's worth noting the funnels for future weeks.

Reverse Funnels

"PaYd/Gm" = passing yards per game
"RuYd/Gm" = rushing yards per game
"NYd/Att" = net yards per passing attempt; factors yards lost via sacks instead of raw yards per attempt
"PassYd%" = the percentage of a team's yards gained or allowed via the pass
"RushYd%" = the percentage of a team's yards gained or allowed via the rush 

Commentary

• Carolina allows 156.8 passing yards per game, fewest in the NFL.
• Carolina allows 4.9 yards per rush, fifth-highest in the NFL.
• Carolina allows 45.5% of its total yardage via the rush, the highest ratio in the NFL.
• Green Bay allows 43.1% of its total yardage via the rush, the second-highest ratio.
• Green Bay allows 5.0 yards per rush, fourth-highest in the NFL.
• Denver allows 149.3 rushing yards per game, third-highest in the NFL.
• Denver allows 5.1 yards per rush, third-highest in the NFL.

Action Items

If only Melvin Gordon hadn't come back, we'd have another obviously Austin Ekeler week. But the backfield split in Los Angeles will be hard to predict. In Dallas, though, we know the backfield split. And we know it's not really a split.

Even if Dallas chooses to pass more after too much run-game focus on Sunday night, a more open offense should provide more scoring opportunities for Ezekiel Elliott. While more than 20% of DFS GPP players flock to Christian McCaffrey and Dalvin Cook at the high-end of the price range, consider Elliott as a GPP anchor and a cash game play in a bounce-back spot.

Leonard Fournette gets a great matchup this week, but a career day at Denver last week will drive up the number of rosters he's on. He's a GPP fade this week.

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How Will They Score?

This is a concept created by Ben Gretch at Rotoviz and now published on FantasyLabs. And it's one I wanted to share as it is an interesting way to think about how teams score and allow points and can lead to some surprise/contrarian lineup decisions. For some background, see the bullet-point summary below.

• Take each team's implied Vegas team total
• Average the percentage of points that team scores via passing touchdowns and the percentage their opponent allows via passing touchdowns
• Multiply that average percentage by the implied total
• Do the same for rushing touchdowns

Note: Passing + Rushing won't add up to the entire team total. There are kicking and defense/special teams points as well. However, those aren't as predictable, so we're focusing on offense only.

Passing Points

Commentary

• Cincinnati scores 52.6% of its total points via passing touchdowns, the sixth-highest ratio in the NFL.
• Arizona allows 52.2% of its total points via passing touchdowns, the ninth-highest ratio.
• Houston is projected by oddsmakers to score 26.75 points this week, fourth-highest in the NFL.
• Atlanta scores 68.6% of its total points via passing touchdowns, the highest ratio.

Action Items

Any passing game is in play against Arizona due to the Cardinals' lack of talent and excess of tempo. Despite Monday night's terrible showing, this even includes Cincinnati. After all, Andy Dalton is better against non-common opponents and struggles in primetime games. This week's Rent-a-Quarterback discussed Arizona's poor showings this season:

"Only one quarterback has failed to meet at least 5x his (DraftKings) price, and that player leads a team with a strong run-first preference when they control games. So don't mistake Russell Wilson's poor fantasy performance for Arizona being better on defense."

Dalton will be selected more this week than a typical week for him, but quarterback roster percentages are typical level enough that they aren't as important as other positions. Dalton is a viable GPP play in DFS and, as mentioned in Rent-a-Quarterback, he's a high-upside waiver choice this week in season-long leagues.

Rushing Points

Commentary

• Green Bay allows 43.5% of its points via rushing touchdowns, the highest ratio in the NFL.

Action Items

As mentioned above in the "Reverse Funnels" section, Green Bay is also poor in terms of rushing yards allowed (43.1%, second-highest ratio) and yards per attempt allowed (5.0, fourth-highest). Have we mentioned #ZekeWeek yet?

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Looks Can Be Deceiving

Viewing raw "defense vs. position" (DvP) stats can be misleading, as it makes no consideration for the strength of opponents. So, in this section, we're going to compare our Normalized Strength of Schedule (NSoS) over the last five weeks vs. raw DvP for the entire season and find notable deltas between the two. The idea is to find defenses to target that other DFS players might not.

This week, we're mostly introducing this section, rather than providing action items. The main goal of this section is to examine the "delta" column to show teams that are worse than they appear. But this week is the first that NSoS has appeared on the site. With more weeks, more data will present itself and lead to larger gaps between raw DvP and NSoS.

Therefore, in future weeks, we won't list a position if the data doesn't suggest any strong plays.