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.
Positive Regression Candidates
Quarterback
Jayden Daniels (WAS)
The days of Daniels being locked in for double digit rushes are long gone (for now). The rookie is clearly dinged up and under strict instructions to preserve his health as the Commanders continue their unlikely run toward the postseason. So it goes.
Daniels’ lack of rushing and his sudden shortage of passing scores has left Daniels drafters wondering if they can continue starting him in 12-team leagues. I think it’s a fair question. It’s one I’m grappling with in a couple leagues. In Week 11, I did not have the courage to do the right thing and play Jameis Winston over Daniels.
Daniels over the season’s first seven weeks logged a rush on 33 percent of his drop backs over the season’s first month. That rate has fallen to 16 percent over his past three games. Daniels is clearly not healthy. Until he is, I suspect we’re going to get more of the latter and not the former.
Then there’s Daniel’s passing touchdown production. Headed into Week 12, he has a humble 3.4 percent touchdown rate, 26th among 34 qualifying QBs. He has just four touchdown passes over his past four complete games, and his adjusted yards per attempt has plummeted to below 5 in each of his past two outings. Daniels is suddenly taking a lot of sacks — six over the past two weeks — after largely avoiding sacks in the season’s first two months (outside of a five-sack performance in Week 2). In every way, Daniels is regressing.
Washington has quietly turned into the run heaviest offense in the NFL, limiting the drop back volume Daniels had in the season’s first four weeks. The Commanders since Week 7 are 14 percent below their expected pass rate; the next closest team is the Giants, with a PROE of -7 percent. Washington’s 51 percent neutral pass rate since Week 7 is the fourth lowest in the league.
It won’t be an easy call to bench Daniels in Week 12 against the Cowboys and their almost comically inept defense. Daniels should, at worst, be a safe option with the Commanders coming into the week as 10-point favorites. A Week 13 matchup against a quietly tough Titans defense might be the starting point in agonizing over whether Daniels is a must-start.
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Running Back
Najee Harris (PIT)
Still somehow the Steelers’ lead back, Harris is running ice cold on rushing attempts near the end zone this season. He has just two touchdowns on 19 inside-the-ten carries in 2024. Only four running backs have more green zone rushes this season.
Harris’ workload remains a strong one. He has at least 18 carries in every one of his past four outings in a Pittsburgh offense with a 51 percent drop back rate, 9 percent below expected. The Steelers are among the run heaviest teams inside the 20 yard line this year, and Harris has benefited bigly: Only Joe Mixon, David Montgomery, and Derrick Henry have more red zone rushing attempts than Harris on the season. Still, he has just two inside-the-20 scores.
Harris should remain in lineups in Week 12 against a deteriorating Cleveland defense that has not shown much interest in tackling over the past few weeks. Jaylen Warren, who has all of three inside-the-ten carries this season, poses little threat to Harris’ high value touches.
Wide Receiver
Quentin Johnston (LAC)
Johnston has bounced around between the positive and negative side of this column over the past month. Though it’s tough to label Johnston a WR3 or WR4, it’s worth noting the Chargers — outside of a Week 10 run-heavy blip — have been a pass-first offense since Week 6. Greg Roman’s offense now has the NFL’s ninth highest pass rate over expected (PROE). It feels wrong to write or say aloud.
Johnston came awfully close to a big Week 11 against the Bengals. He led all pass catchers last week with 183 air yards and wound up with just two catches for 48 yards. Only ten wideouts have more air yards over the past three weeks as the Bolts ramp up the PROE machine. In Week 11, they were almost 7 percent over their expected pass rate. Only three teams were pass heavier.
Johnston’s high variance fantasy profile — he’s averaging 34 air yards per reception since Week 9 — will make him somewhat frustrating for the rest of the season. The Chargers’ newfound commitment to establishing the pass should keep him relevant as a flex option with more upside than most flexes.
Rome Odunze (CHI)
Odunze continues pouring on the air yards, which you love because your fantasy league awards points for unconverted air yards.
Odunze in Week 11 against Green Bay had 108 air yards, the 12th most among receivers on the week. He now has the ninth most air yards since Week 9 and the 13th most targets among wideouts. The rookie is dominating air yards on a team level: He’s seen 41 percent of the Bears’ air yards since Week 9 and has a team-leading nine receptions of at least ten yards over that span.
Caleb Williams is hardly helping matters for Odunze (and DJ Moore and Keenan Allen and Cole Kmet and the city of Chicago). He ranks 31st out of 25 qualifying QBs in accuracy on throws between 10-19 yards. On attempts of more than 20 yards, Williams’ completion rate over expected (-17 percent) is worse than every quarterback not named Jacoby Brissett. The rookie has been atrocious.
Odunze, however, is seeing the kind of looks that could, conceivably, turn into chunks of fantasy points if Williams can ever stop airmailing downfield throws. Don’t quit on Odunze in deeper leagues.
Jakobi Meyers (LV)
The Raiders’ first game with the Turner family in charge of the offense saw Vegas do what the Turners always do: Pass and pass and pass some more. The Raiders in Week 11 against Miami led the league in pass rate over expected (10 percent), leading to 50 Gardner Minshew drop backs, the second most on the week. The Raiders posted a hearty drop back rate of 77 percent.
An absurd 41 percent target share for Brock Bowers meant no one else was all that much involved in the Vegas passing offense. Jakobi Meyers was second on the team with six targets, or a 15 percent target share.
A sustained pass-heavy attack by the Scott and Norv Turner-led Raiders offense could be just the thing that fuels target volume for Bowers — who now has a clear path to being the TE1 overall — and Meyers, the team’s clear No. 1 receiver. Meyers in 2024 has seen a target on 20 percent of his routes, not a terribly high rate but not bad either. From Week 4-9, after Davante Adams owned himself by forcing a trade to the Jets, Meyers saw a target on 26 percent of his pass routes.
The Raiders having the worst backfield options in the NFL might leave them no choice but to let it rip with a pass-heavy attack during the final month and a half of Antonio Pierce’s first and last season as an NFL head coach.
I’d be cautious not to write off Meyers as a legit WR3 option in Week 12 against the Broncos after his quiet Week 11 outing.
Negative Regression Candidates
Quarterback
Bo Nix (DEN)
Federal law says I must include Nix in this space after he threw for four touchdowns in Week 11 against the lifeless Atlanta defense. Nix came into the game with just ten touchdown passes in ten games, good for a touchdown rate of just 3 percent. He was due, as the zoomers say. It’s why Nix has been featured in the positive regression part of this column a couple times in 2024.
Obviously he’s not going to throw for four TDs every week, or even multiple touchdowns, for that matter. Denver remains stubbornly run heavy in the red zone, and they’re well below their expected pass rate in two of their past three games. There is, however, reason to believe Nix has grown as a passer.
Nix, as you might recall, was miserably inaccurate on so-called easy throws — the short stuff, the stuff Caleb Williams has struggled to convert so far in his rookie campaign. The numbers tell an interesting story for Nix: From Week 1-5 he ranked 30th out of 32 qualifying quarterbacks in completion rate over expected on pass attempts between 0-10 yards; over the past three weeks he’s the league’s seventh most accurate QB on such throws. Happy, as they say, learned how to putt.
This has naturally stripped away Nix’s rushing appeal. There’s no real reason to take off after a read or two if one can simply complete a short pass. Nix has just five rushes for zero yards over his past two outings after averaging 6.6 rushing attempts per game over the season’s first nine weeks. Maybe Nix will get back to rushing when (or if) game script goes haywire and the Broncos are forced into obvious passing situations, or when he plays a legit defense.
Overall Nix’s development as a passer has been and will continue to be good for everyone in the Denver offense. He has the league’s fourth highest completion rate over expected since Week 8 after tanking in that category during the season’s first couple months. Nix will regress from Week 11’s inflated stat line, but maybe not by much.
Tight End
Taysom Hill (NO)
A tight end scores 40-plus fantasy points and he must be featured in this space. I have no choice, though I am Rotoworld’s resident Taysom truther and regularly do battle on the Rotoworld Football Show with Taysom skeptic Patrick Daugherty, who is both coping and crying following Hill’s Week 11 outburst.
Hill had 138 yards and three touchdowns on seven carries in Week 11 against the Browns. To add a heaping of salt to RotoPat’s wound, Hill also functioned as a PPR cheat code, catching eight of ten targets for 50 yards. The whole plane is made of Taysom and it flies just fine.
Let’s just get this out of the way now: The 34-year-old Hill had a career game in Week 11. It’s all downhill from here, though how far downhill is an open and fair question. A lot had to transpire for Hill to become the centerpiece of the New Orleans offense: Jamaal Williams and Kendre Miller had to get hurt, along with Chris Olave and Rashid Shaheed. However we got here with Hill, we’re here, and there’s probably no going back. Asked at halftime of the Saints’ game against Cleveland if the team had overused Taysom in the first half, interim head coach Darren “The Rizzler” Rizzi said no, they had not used him enough. Rizzi added that he sees Taysom as one of the best players in the NFL. So it goes.
Hill now has at least five rushing attempts in four of his seven games in 2024. He’s being targeted on nearly 28 percent of his pass routes on the season. Over the past two games, that number is a ludicrous 34 percent. He is a focal point of an NFL offense, whether we like it or not (I can report that announcers doing Saints games absolutely hate it).
The Saints offense has gotten back to the cool, creative stuff they were doing in the first couple weeks of the regular season. Since Dennis Allen was dispatched, New Orleans OC Klint Kubiak has dialed up play action and pre-snap motion after an inexplicable lull in both categories from Week 3-8. Against the Browns, the Saints used play action on 53 percent of their drop backs, their second highest rate of 2024. This should benefit everyone in the Saints offense, including Hill, who had four receptions in Week 11 on play action drop backs.
Fifteen touches is likely not happening again for Hill this season. Something around ten touches per game is well within the range of outcomes, and that should include high-value touches in the red zone — even the green zone (inside the ten). This, I think, makes Hill a must play in all formats. I don’t want to get caught up with rankings since fantasy managers will have panic attacks about playing this or that tight end over Hill. All I’ll say is that Hill is going to get the ball in high leverage spots far more than the guy you’re currently playing in the flex spot.
Fantasy football is a game within a game, and your valuation of Hill is the ultimate test of whether you can embrace that reality.
Running Back
Roschon Johnson (CHI)
The Bears, in hopes of protecting their flailing rookie quarterback, went massively run heavy in Week 11 against the Packers with a -11 percent pass rate over expected. Only the down-bad Jets had a lower PROE on the week.
This helped fuel rushing opportunities for Johnson and D’Andre Swift. Johnson saw a season-high 10 carries (for 33 yards and a TD) while the more efficient Swift had 13 rushes for 71 yards and a score.
Johnson, to put it mildly, has made the most of his high-value opportunities in 2024. He has five touchdowns on a mere eight inside-the-10 rushes. Johnson has done a lot while seeing 31 percent of Chicago’s green zone carries. For now, he profiles as a game script-sensitive fantasy option in a Bears offense that wants to be run-first but might not always have that luxury, especially as heavy underdogs against the Vikings in Week 12.
Wide Receiver
Marques Valdes-Scantling (NO)
Saints players keep Getting Away With It harder than anyone has ever Gotten Away With It. That includes Valdes-Scantling, who turned four Week 11 targets into 87 yards and a touchdown (almost all of this coming on a 71-yard catch-and-run score).
MVS, operating as the Saints No. 1 wideout with Chris Olave sidelined with a brain injury, now 196 yards and three touchdowns over his past two games. The Regression Reaper cometh.
While Valdes-Scantling will continue to be a big play threat in a New Orleans offense hurting for pass game production, he’s not exactly proving to be a target commander. MVS has seen a target from Derek Carr on a meager 16 percent of his pass routes over his past two games. I suppose, as long as Olave is out, Valdes-Scantling has some appeal in deeper formats as a high variance flex option. You’re likely never going to get a normal game from the maddeningly effective MVS though.
