Weekly Values in Fantasy Football After Week Five

In fantasy football, too many players concentrate on total points, which can deceive us of the actual value of players in fake football. One huge week can vault someone into the top 10 at a position, especially early in the season. My goal with my statistical tools is to show the weekly value of a player by comparing their best games against their fellow players. While year-end points can tell us where we have been, my tools attempt to tell us where we might be going shortly and become more heavily weighted for the current season every week. Let’s take a look at this week’s data.

Defining Terms Used

Weekly Value- Weekly Value is a statistical tool that I created that attempts to combine the “Big Points Game” ability with “Consistency.” Using a two-year data window, the goal is to compare each player’s best games against the other players in Fantasy Football. This is not meant to be a “Points Per Game” rating but can be considered the upside potential for each player.

Consistency Rating- Many say consistency doesn’t matter in Fantasy Football because the point totals are wildly inconsistent from one week to the next. Those people do not understand how to rate consistency in FF. My consistency rating is the percentage of games over 10 PPR points versus the total full games played. A complete game is defined as 30 or more offensive snaps in a game.

Fantasy MVP Index- Big Games, Average Games, and Horrible Games are the three possible outcomes each week that can affect our team's win/loss record in any format. Combining “Games 20 or More” with “Games Over 10” and “Games Under 5” plus using a little secret sauce math gives us another number to compare among players.

Value- The drop-off in points in Fantasy Football is not linear. A simple computation from the leader at each position to the rest of the field at the position can show a percentage drop in value. This data can be helpful when making trades to understand how much value you gain or drop at a position in any deal.

QB Weekly Value

Back-to-back excellent games have let Josh Allen pull away over second-place Patrick Mahomes, with the top two in the fake football game after five weeks. Joe Burrow’s fantasy football death was greatly exaggerated, and his great game surges him to the top of that second tier. Among the rookies, Richardson made it to the 8th best before his latest injury, with CJ Stroud part of the third tier at the position of QB14. Field's big game moves him back into that 3rd tier at QB16.

RB Weekly Value

Rookie De’Von Achane is re-writing the record books, but a knee injury could slow him down going forward. While it is hard to believe he is better than Christian McCaffrey right now, that’s what the math says after week five. Austin Ekeler should return to action this week; those top three are in their tier. Breece Hall and Travis Etienne made nice jumps to RB5 and RB7, respectively, with another strong game. Both are getting the volume needed to be solid. Top 5 guys in fake football.

WR Weekly Value

The big mystery heading into week five was how the return of Cooper Kupp would affect the fantasy football value of rookie phenom Puka Nacua. Nacua and Kupp worked well together, and both had big games and ranked WR5 and WR6 this week. Tyreek Hill is a cheat code in that incredible Dolphins offense and continues to lead the way in the five WR top tier. Massive games by Ja’Marr Chase and DJ Moore increased considerably this week's rankings to WR4 and WR15, respectively. Don’t look now, but the super-consistent Adam Thielen is in the top 20.

TE Weekly Value

Travis Kelce played angrily after an ankle sprain and had a big game, which moved him back to the top spot this week, with Mark Andrews the only other TE qualifying for elite status. George Kittle had as many points in week five as he had in total in the first four weeks, again showing how deceiving total points can be during the season. There were intense games by Dallas Goedert, Dalton Schultz, and Darren Waller in that fourth tier at the position from TE5 to TE8. While Logan Thomas hasn’t reached the top 25 yet, this new and improved Commanders’ offense could have him rising fast.

Conclusion

This week, we could see injury replacements due to injuries, and those ratings will be added to this report next week. Adding the MVP Index for beta testing this season gives us some clues as to which players might have a more significant effect on us winning our weekly matchups than might be evident from just the weekly values themselves. This tool will benefit lineup decisions as we head through the bye weeks.