Market share update for Week 4

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 talked about the necessity of having valuable touches at the running back position each week. As we head into Week 4, I wanted 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 15+ touches/game for clarity purposes. The backs with red circles had a lower overall opportunity share than the backs with green circles.

Najee Harris emerged this week as a leader in high-value touches. A 19-target game will do that for you. Ben Roethlisberger looks like he’s complete dust at this point in his career, and Harris will continue to get these dump offs at a high rate. 

D’Andre Swift is a priority in this Lions offense, as well. He’s coming off of a 7-target game. It appeared, through two weeks, that the offense would run through the RBs and TEs primarily, but T.J. Hockenson disappeared in Week 3. I don’t think that’s necessarily a sign of things to come, but I do think that Swift will continue to be the focal point of the offense regardless of game script. 

It’s hard to imagine that Damien Harris won’t continue to climb the board here with James White set to miss time. Granted, he’s not quite as high on the High-Value Touch leaderboard because of his lack of usage in the passing game. Maybe with White missing time and a lack of warm bodies, that will change. But either way, he’ll be leaned on heavily in the Patriots offense. 

Wide receiver and tight end targets

If targets are good, targets inside the 10 are better. Let’s see which WRs and TEs are being utilized in that part of the field through the first few weeks.

There are plenty of names on this list that we would’ve guessed heading into the season. Zach Pascal might not have been your first guess, though. The duo of Keenan Allen and Mike Williams at two and three tell you everything you need to know about this Chargers offense.  We’ll wrap up with an overview of the overall target leaders among WRs and TEs.