Prime-Time Props — Thursday Night Football, Week 1
Prop God
Each week during the season, we’ll take a look at the changing landscape of usage in the NFL and fantasy football. Whether you’re looking for a waiver-wire pickup, deciding on a tough start/sit decision or looking for a DFS play, understanding how players are being used is vital to success during the season.
Note: These numbers are pending Monday Night Football’s results.
The running back touches we want
I’ve spent every week of the season so far talking strictly about high-value touches, a combination of rush attempts inside the 10-yard line, and targets. If you were following along with the Matt’s Musings piece that went up for Week 14, then you’d know that we debuted a new way of quantifying the value of running back workloads with our RB Workload Score, which changes the equation a bit.
To start, we’ll look at the rushing component of the Workload Score. This is a weighted average of carries in different zones of the field. The heavier weight is given to higher-leverage touches for obvious reasons.
From a workload perspective, 0.8 is elite territory and there are only a few running backs hanging on up there. Jonathan Taylor, Joe Mixon, and Najee Harris are all above 0.75, but fall just short of 0.8. That trio is outpacing the rest of the field by about 0.2 points.
Wide receiver and tight end targets
Here’s a look at the wide receivers and tight ends with 120+ targets so far this season.
Key takeaways:
- Cooper Kupp has completely pulled away with the target lead. He’s in the midst of a record-setting season.
- Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews are the lone tight ends in this range.
- Justin Jefferson and Davante Adams are in second and third, respectively, but Diontae Johnson and Tyreek Hill have pushed up the board as well.
Next, we’ll take a look at the pass-catchers with 100-119 targets through Week 17.
Key Takeaways:
- Jakobi Meyers has made a late charge with 28 targets over the past three weeks.
- Meyers is joined by DK Metcalf and CeeDee Lamb at the top and will probably continue to move up after the dust settles in Week 18.
- Amon-Ra St. Brown also has ascended the leaderboard. He’s had 11+ targets in the last five games.
We’ll wrap up with a quick look at all of the pass-catchers that have between 80-99 targets.
