Identifying players who have run particularly hot or cold in recent weeks will be the goal of this space over the 2024 NFL season.
Spotting guys who are “due” won’t always work out because my children recently lost my magic eight ball, leaving me powerless to predict the future. Nevertheless, we persist in finding NFL players who have overperformed their opportunity and those who have been on the wrong side of what we’ll call variance. Because “luck” is so crass and unsophisticated.
Here’s to hoping Brian Thomas drafters tuned into the Regression Files last week.
Positive Regression Candidates
Quarterback
Jameis Winston (CLE)
Some might say it’s an unforced error for a fantasy analyst to tout Winston after Week 15’s absolute meltdown against a Kansas City secondary that had been picked apart in recent weeks before picking off Winston thrice. It was a trio of mistakes that got Winston benched for Dorian Thompson-Robinson, one of the league’s worst quarterbacks.
But as you know, I watch games on my computer. I see only dots moving up and down the field and the corresponding stats that appear in my spreadsheets. Many call me the Terminator of fantasy football. Like the Terminator, I have trouble smiling.
This is only to tell you Winston over the past six weeks is fifth in passing yards (1,704) and 16th in touchdowns (9). He’s running a bit cold inside the ten, with four TD passes on 15 green zone attempts. Lamar Jackson has 200 fewer yards and eight more touchdowns than Winston over that span. More and more are saying life is not fair.
Winston’s season-long TD rate isn’t terribly low. At 4.4 percent, it’s tied with Patrick Mahomes (Midhomes) and a tick below Aaron Rodgers after Rodgers’ mega-giga Week 15 outing against the Jaguars. A date with the Bengals could be just the thing to help Winston’s touchdown rate bounce back upward in Week 16 — if Kevin Stefanski has the courage to do the right thing and gives Winston another shot as Cleveland’s starter. Kevin, if you’re reading, I need it. I need it badly.
Kyler Murray (ARI)
Murray has four touchdown tosses on his past 194 attempts, good for a hideous 2 percent touchdown rate since Week 9. The Cardinals offense continues scoring most of its touchdowns (55 percent) on the ground. Only four teams have seen a higher rate of TDs come via the rush this season.
Murray has mostly been terrible in 2024. Adding Marvin Harrison, Jr. to the Arizona offense has meant precisely nothing for Murray, whose adjusted yards per attempt has barely budged from previous disappointing seasons and whose touchdown rate ranks 28th out of 33 qualifying quarterbacks. He remains one of the most odious downfield passers in the NFL, completing 15 of his 45 attempts of more than 20 yards. So it goes.
The thinking here is that Murray can regress (positively) in Week 16 against a Panthers defense that last week allowed the league’s eighth highest EPA per play to the Cooper Rush-led Cowboys. Kyler is certainly due. That, as they say, is analytics.
Wide Receiver
Adam Thielen (CAR)
Thielen let down his bullish fantasy managers in Week 15 thanks to a dud of a performance from Bryce Young. Thielen, running 72 percent of his routes from the slot, caught five of his seven targets for 51 scoreless yards against the miserable Dallas secondary.
Thielen led the Panthers in targets, and over the past three weeks, has 333 air yards, the 11th most among receivers from Week 13 to Week 15. Don’t pull the plug on Thielen as a WR3 option this week against the Cardinals after his disappointing Week 15 stat line. He’s clearly a priority for Young in the improved Carolina passing attack: Thielen has been targeted on 26 percent of his routes over the past three weeks.
Thielen remains Young’s easy button pass catcher. It’s a valuable role in an offense quarterbacked by a weak-armed QB determined to get the ball out quickly.
Courtland Sutton (DEN)
You take no pleasure in being told by your seventh favorite fantasy football writer that you must keep playing Sutton in Week 16 playoff matchups. But you do. Because I said so.
Sutton salvaged his Week 15 outing against the Colts with a late touchdown grab. He came down with just three of his nine targets for 34 yards against Indy, displaying zero chemistry with Bo Nix — a rarity for those two in 2024.
The Broncos’ air yards hog kept hogging air yards though. He had 133 of those adorable little air yards, the fifth most among wideouts for Week 15. Sutton accounted for an obscene 70 percent of Denver’s air yards and remains among the league leaders in air yards. Sometimes those air yards become real yards you can feed to your family and household pets. That’s what you’re hoping for in Week 16 against the Chargers, against whom Sutton had 54 yards and a touchdown way back in Week 6.
Jauan Jennings (SF)
Jennings in last week’s disastrous Thursday night game against the Rams crushed in expected fantasy points leagues. Hardly any wideout was expected to score more points with his myriad opportunities. That he only had 31 yards on two catches is peripheral to the matter.
Jennings racked up 121 air yards against LA, the eighth most among receivers in Week 15, and his nine targets constituted a 30 percent target share. He now leads the Niners with a 38 percent air yards share over the team’s past four games. If San Francisco is going to hit on a long play, there are really only two guys who can benefit: Jennings and George Kittle.
Brock Purdy’s likely (positive) regression factors into Jennings’ Week 16-18 outlook too. Purdy has just eight touchdowns on 30 pass attempts inside the ten yard line this season. Only five quarterbacks have more inside-the-10 throws. Eventually, one would figure, Prudy will get a visit from the Regression Reaper.
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Negative Regression Candidates
Quarterback
Bo Nix (DEN)
Nix got away with it bigly in Week 15 against a Colts defense that’s been surprisingly stingy in recent weeks. Nix threw three picks — two of them qualifying as exceptionally ugly — and three touchdowns in the Broncos’ 31-13 win over Indy. That brings his touchdown total to ten over the past four games, for a TD rate of 7 percent.
That, as you surely know by now, can’t last. For context, Lamar Jackson leads the league with an eye-popping 8.4 percent touchdown rate. Nix, meanwhile, sits at 4.3 percent on the season.
Denver’s passing-to-rushing touchdown ratio has been out of whack for a while now. The Broncos have just three rushing scores to 12 passing scores over their past six games. Maybe that has something to do with the Denver running backs being some of the worst in the NFL and the Broncos being forced to turn toward the pass with their (very) experienced rookie QB.
Even so, we would expect Nix’s passing touchdown production to taper off sooner rather than later, perhaps in Week 16 against a Chargers defense giving up the NFL’s seventh lowest drop back success rate. Though Nix shouldn’t be dismissed as a Week 16 starter in 12-team leagues, I’d urge Regression Files readers to be careful with who they bench in favor of Nix.
In Week 6 against LA, Nix was 6 percent below his expected completion rate with the sixth lowest drop back success week among starting quarterbacks that week. He also had six rushes for 61 yards, an element of his game that has since vanished.
Running Back
James Cook (BUF)
Probably you don’t have the luxury of benching Cook in Week 16, unless you went ultra heavy on running backs in your August draft and now have an embarrassment of running back riches. If so, I am jealous.
Cook has run awfully hot this season where it counts the most. He has nine touchdowns on 21 inside-the-ten rushing attempts and four scores on his eight inside-the-five carries. Josh Allen’s red zone rushing involvement and the Bills’ usage of other backs could create a rug pull situation for Cook soon or later.
It’s not as if Cook is posting consistently solid yardage totals that provide a decent fantasy floor. His past six rushing yardage outputs look like this: 44, 80, 20, 107, 20, 105. The touchdown production — along with some pass game production — has kept Cook afloat in the low-output games. I only want to make you aware of Cook’s ludicrous green zone efficiency.
Wide Receiver
Jalen Coker (CAR)
Coker’s Week 15 box score looks awfully nice for the weirdos who have latched on to him this season. Returning to the Carolina starting lineup after a multi-week injury, Coker caught four of six targets for 110 yards and a touchdown.
Eighty-three of those yards and the touchdown came on a busted coverage by the Cowboys secondary. The long catch and run gave Coker an average yards after catch (YAC) of 15.5 on the day — about double his season long average.
That Coker was targeted on 19 percent of his pass routes against Dallas is certainly not a bad thing for the rookie. He’s playable in deeper formats but folks salivating over his Week 15 numbers should temper their expectations when setting Week 16 lineups.
Tight End
Chig Okonkwo (TEN)
Okonkwo’s fantasy usefulness mostly hinges on who starts at quarterback for the Titans. If it’s Will Levis, Okonkwo isn’t even usable in deep leagues. If Mason Rudolph gets the nod, Okonkwo becomes at least a little bit interesting in Week 16 against the Colts.
Okonkwo, who saw at least four targets in all three Rudolph starts earlier this season, had a Week 15 line that made your seventh favorite fantasy football podcaster do a triple take. He caught eight of ten targets for 59 yards, running 63 percent of his routes from the slot or out wide.
It was quite the target total for Okonkwo, who had not seen more than six looks in a game all season going into Week 15. On the season, Okonkwo has been targeted on 16 percent of his routes; in Week 15 that number spiked to a truly surreal 48 percent. Obviously this won’t hold — Okonkwo might not see another 48 percent targets per route run rate if he plays another 27 NFL seasons. Rudolph has been better for the tight end though. Keep that in mind headed into fantasy semifinal weeks.