Spotting guys 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 — can help us with waiver wire additions, start-sits, and sneaky DFS plays, if you’re into that sort of thing.
That’s my goal with the Regression Files: Pinpointing players seemingly due for regression to the mean, for better or worse.
We’ll start with players who have run cold of late, and who might be due for something of a bounceback in Week 7 and beyond.
Regression Candidates (The Good Kind)
Quarterback
Geno Smith (SEA)
Geno is running ice cold in the red zone this season. Probably DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett drafters are aware of this frigid trend.
Geno has the fifth most red zone pass attempts (29) and just five red zone touchdowns through Week 6. His 41.4 percent completion rate inside the 20 is the third lowest among qualifying quarterbacks thanks to some near misses in recent weeks.
Seattle continues to be on the pass heavy side of things; they’re over their expected drop back rate in four of five contests this season. That should continue fueling pass attempts in high-leverage situations for Smith and the team’s pass catchers. Overall, Geno is due for high-level regression: His 0.38 fantasy points per drop back is well behind his 2022 rate of 0.49. A little more red (and green) zone fortune could be enough to get back to that 2022 efficiency. My suggestion to the Seahawks would be to target Metcalf more than three times in the end zone, as they’ve done through five games. Hope this helps, Petey.
A Week 7 date with an Arizona defense allowing the fourth highest EPA per drop back could do the trick for Geno.
Matthew Stafford (LAR)
Stafford’s regression still hasn’t hit despite me trying to will it into existence by jamming him into this space week after week.
Stafford’s touchdown rate still sits at an impossibly low 2.6 percent, well short of his career mark of 4.6 percent. This is the same guy who had a 6.8 percent TD rate in Sean McVay’s offense two years ago. Cooper Kupp returning to the lineup should eventually -- one day -- normalize Stafford’s touchdown rate. Now we wait.
Derek Carr (NO)
The Saints are 14th in pass rate over expected this season, a nice little change from the stodgy ways of their 2021 and 2022 offenses. In fact, the Saints have been over their expected drop back rate in each of their past four games.
Carr now has 25 red zone pass attempts, good for ninth among all quarterbacks. It hasn’t come to much though: Carr has completed 44 percent of those throws for just four touchdowns. That is begging for normalization. All you have to do is listen (and hope Carr isn’t actually bad).
Carr is playing in a decidedly volatile way. He leads the NFL in downfield passing rate and ranks third in air yards per attempt. His fantasy profile screams boom or bust. A Week 7 matchup against the pass-funnel Jaguars should at least keep the Saints offense dropping back at a good clip.
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Wide Receiver
Marquise Brown (ARI)
Brown led all pass catchers in air yards last week against the Rams with 190. We like that. He ended up with 34 measly yards. We like that less than the first thing.
A 50 percent air yards share is worth our attention, and perhaps it shouldn’t come as a stunner seeing that Brown has more than 40 percent of Arizona’s air yards since Week 2. Hollywood should continue seeing air yards — please don’t call them prayer yards, it’s hurting my feelings -- with Josh Dobbs passing downfield at the eighth highest rate in the NFL this season (that Dobbs is only completing 34.3 percent of those throws is another story — one I’d rather not talk about).
After coming awfully daggone close to a couple long grabs against the Rams in Week 6, the process tells us to keep rolling out Brown — who has a deep ball rate of 25 percent — as a high-upside WR2/3 option. A 27 percent target per route run rate over the past three games doesn’t hurt Brown’s cause as a (good) regression candidate.
Jordan Addison (MIN)
Addison and the rest of the fantasy-relevant Vikings were victims of wonky game script in Week 6 against the Bears. The Justin Fields-less Bears had no chance of pushing Kirk Cousins and the Minnesota offense and the Vikings -- with Justin Jefferson sidelined -- were perfectly content to sit on the ball and eke out a hideous victory. So it goes.
Addison’s utilization in his first game without Jefferson was everything we could have wanted. The rookie ran a route on 89 percent of Cousins’ drop backs — a marked increase over his pre-Week 6 route rate — and led Minnesota with a 39.5 percent air yards share. He caught three of five targets for 28 yards and a touchdown on the team’s lone end zone target.
The Vikings, desperate to save their season, are going to take the air out of the ball when they can. That, obviously, will be quite bad for Addison’s fantasy upside. In Week 7 against the heavily favored 49ers, the Vikings should be pushed to throw and throw and throw some more. Don’t fret about Addison, who, I think, will assert himself as Minnesota’s clearcut No. 1 receiver while Jefferson recovers from his hamstring injury.
Trey Palmer (TB)
Seeing slightly more playing time in three-wideout sets for Tampa, Palmer was brutally unlucky in Week 6 against Detroit. The rookie totaled 47 receiving yards on 154 air yards. Only the aforementioned Hollywood Brown and Chris Olave had more air yards on the week.
With an average depth of target north of 16, Palmer profiles as a high-variance fantasy play in deeper formats. That’s another way of saying Palmer will be maddening to start. Forty percent of Palmer’s targets have been more than 20 yards downfield, the seventh highest rate in the NFL this season.
It’s tough to see where Palmer’s routes will come from in a Bucs offense that has run the 15th highest rate of three-receiver sets. But he is seeing the kind of looks that could determine fantasy matchups, for better or worse.
Tight End
Logan Thomas (WAS)
The converted quarterback was not, it turns out, in the Travis Kelce role in Eric Bieniemy’s offense. It sorta kinda looked that way in Week 5, with Thomas leading the Commanders with 11 targets, catching nine passes for 77 yards and a score.
Week 6 was slightly less productive for Thomas: He caught his lone target for two yards against the Falcons. The good news: Thomas ran a route on a halfway decent 68 percent of the team’s drop backs and no other Washington tight end logged more than three routes. Those who rostered Thomas a couple weeks ago — after it became apparent he would be a Thing in Bieniemy’s offense — shouldn’t panic … yet.
Washington targets the tight end position at the league’s fourth highest rate (27 percent) and Dallas Goedert and Darren Waller are the only tight ends with more routes run over the past three weeks, since Thomas returned from a brain injury. He should be OK in a massively pass-heavy Commanders offense.
Kylen Granson (IND)
Granson is a tertiary part of a Colts offense primed to generate the sort of pass volume fantasy players, well, fantasize about. We love our fantasies, don’t we folks.
Granson in Week 6 against the Jaguars ran the sixth most pass routes among tight ends can ended up catching all three of his targets for 67 yards — most of that in garbage time. I have news for the folks: The Anthony Richardson-less Colts are going to see an ocean of garbage time over the next two months. Many are saying so.
Michael Pittman and Josh Downs, along with the Colts running backs — who combined for 13 targets in Week 6 — will be the primary beneficiaries of Gardner Minshew dropping back 700 times a game. But don’t forget about Granson in deeper formats or during bye weeks. His 55 percent route rate this season is by far the highest among Indy tight ends. So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Regression Candidates (The Bad Kind)
Quarterback
C.J. Stroud (HOU)
It’s being reported just now that Stroud had lunch with Tom Brady this offseason. It’s information that would have been useful in August. Beat writers need to be more diligent about these lunch situations.
Anyway, Stroud is in this unfortunate space because six of his nine red zone completions have gone for touchdowns. The rookie is 19th in red zone attempts in large part because Houston wants to be as run heavy as humanly possible. The Texans have the league’s seventh lowest pass rate over expected, and over the past three games they are 5 percent under their expected drop back rate. The Texans, in other words, are establishing the run when game script is neutral or positive.
That will likely limit Stroud’s high-value opportunities in the red zone green zones. He has a mere 11 inside-the-10 pass attempts through Week 6. And the mainstream media won’t tell you Stroud has the NFL’s second lowest completion rate over expected since Week 4. Consider him a floor option more than a ceiling play unless game script breaks just right.
Wide Receiver
Jahan Dotson (WAS)
This is admittedly an awkward spot to put a receiver who has done close to nothing for those who drafted him in August. I only wanted to ensure the folks — especially those considering dropping Dotson to the waiver wire — that things are not going to get better for the second-year wideout.
His 2022 receiving profile was not good by measure. Dotson’s targets per route run (17 percent) betrayed a total inability to command targets in a Washington offense that isn’t exactly stacked with all-pro pass catchers. And 2022 his weighted opportunity rating (or WOPR, a blend of air yards and targets) was on par with pass-catching luminaries such as Chase Claypool and Marvin Jones. This year Dotson’s WOPR is the 18th lowest among receivers who have logged at least 100 routes. Terry McLaurin, meanwhile, is dominating air yards (29 percent to Dotson’s 16 percent) and Curtis Samuel is establishing himself as the team’s WR2.
What I’m saying is that it’s never been more Joever for Dotson in a Commanders offense targeting wideouts at the league’s 12th lowest rate.
George Pickens (PIT)
Pickens has taken full advantage of Diontae Johnson’s absence, working as the alpha wideout we had hoped he would be in 2022. The dream of Alpha Pickens might be over, however.
Johnson could return in Week 7 from his apparently catastrophic hamstring injury, and while he won’t see the same kind of targets Pickens sees, his ability to get open underneath and command targets is unquestioned. That he does very little with his short area receptions is another conversation entirely.
Since Week 2 (and excluding Week 6, the Steelers’ bye), Pickens is tenth among all pass catchers in air yards. Only Brandon Aiyuk has more thoroughly dominated his team’s air yards. Here’s where things get tricky for Pickens: With Johnson sidelined, he was targeted on 24 percent of his pass routes. That’s a galaxy removed from his 15 percent targets per route run rate last season. Pickens, with Johnson out, was seeing a decent number of shorter, less volatile targets — as indicated by his drop in aDOT — that helped smooth over his production on days when he didn’t come down with a long ball or two.
Probably you have no choice but to start Pickens in 12-team leagues. Maybe you have a superior option in 10-teamers if you went heavy at receiver to start your draft. But in a soul-crushingly low-octane Pittsburgh passing offense, Johnson’s return likely means Pickens reverts to his boom-bust ways of 2022.
Tight End
Kyle Pitts (ATL)
Pitts drafters finally got a touchdown out of their guy in Week 6, they threw an all-night rager, and now they have to read some nerd in his mom’s basement write about how this production probably can’t keep up. The universe is cruel and impersonal. So am I.
All of Pitts’ peripheral stats over the past two weeks are in line with his career marks except one: He’s not running a ton of routes. Pitts’ route rate over the past two games (64 percent) is below his season-long rate of 80 percent. Pitts and Jonnu Smith are largely splitting tight end routes in a Falcons offense deploying two tight end sets at the NFL’s sixth highest rate. An elite tight end profile usually includes a route rate well north of 80 percent.
There is, however, a mitigating factor that could help stabilize pass-catching production for Pitts, Drake London, Jonnu Smith, and Bijan Robinson: The Falcons are being forced — at long last — to ease off the monstrously run-heavy approach they abided by in 2022. The team’s drop back rate over expected over their past three games (-3 percent) is well above their 2022 rate of -23 percent. Atlanta did not have a single game in 2022 with a drop back rate over expected over higher than -4 percent. They were, in short, getting away with it.
It appears Arthur Smith is conceding that he can’t pretend to want to win with three yards and a cloud of dust, as opponents adjust and do anything and everything to junk up running lanes for Robinson and Tyler Allgeier.
Atlanta is facing eight defenders in the box at the league’s second highest rate this season and, suffice it to say, Falcons rushers are not finding much (any) success against those stacked fronts. Though it would have seemed an impossibility a mere month ago, it looks like the Falcons are going to at least try to be more balanced on offense. That very well could fuel enough pass volume for Pitts and London and Smith to be reliable fantasy plays — unless, of course, the Falcons get out to a big lead, in which case it’s very much Joever for those pass catchers.
