Fantasy Football Market Share Update

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.

The Running Back Touches We Want

I always talk about the necessity of having valuable touches at the running back position each week. As we head into Week 5, I want to take a look at the running backs who saw valuable opportunities. A valuable opportunity, in this context, can be either of the following:

Rush inside the 10
Target (Anywhere)

Note: This is filtered out to 20+ carries & 10+ HVT for clarity purposes. The backs with red circles had a lower overall opportunity share than the backs with green circles.

Najee Harris is still riding high off of his 19-target game. He’ll likely continue to pop in high-value touches for the Steelers as long as Ben Roethlisberger checks it down. Spoiler: that will likely be the case all year. D’Andre Swift is also popping up in this with a significant portion of his touches being HVTs. In fact, he has accounted for 22% of the Lions’ high-value touches, which is second only to Alvin Kamara and Harris.

David Montgomery had seen his fair share of opportunities for the Bears. Through Week 4, he has the 9th most total opportunities among RBs. With Montgomery set to miss some time with a sprained knee, Damien Williams is set to be the next man up. The offense doesn’t look like one we’re necessarily going out of our way to target, but if Williams is the only game in town he’ll be somebody to watch while Montgomery is out.

Joe Mixon and Derrick Henry are in another stratosphere as far as total opportunities are concerned. It’s worth noting that Mixon is day-to-day with an ankle injury.

Wide Receiver and Tight End targets

Let’s see which WRs and TEs are being targeted the most through the first four weeks of the season.

These are all of the wide receivers and tight ends with at least 24 total targets so far this season. Key takeaways:

DK Metcalf looks like a casualty of the Seahawks’ passing volume
Deebo Samuel seems to be in a similar situation with the 49ers
Davante Adams continues to see insane volume and be the main look for Aaron Rodgers and the Packers’ passing game
Cooper Kupp is fully emerging as an alpha WR1 and giving the Rams serious production
Marvin Jones should continue to grow in his role as long as the Jaguars’ ship doesn’t completely sink (despite Urban Meyer’s apparent best efforts)

We’ll wrap up with a quick look at the receivers with 15-23 targets through Week 4.