71 articles tagged “fantasy-football”
Travis Etienne scored 14.66 PPG in 2025 while Alvin Kamara sputtered to 9.15 PPG. Everyone knew the New Orleans Saints needed more from their backfield. Turns out, the answer was pairing the fading star with the back who just erupted.
Non-PPR drafts do not reward the prettiest player profile; they reward the back who keeps getting handed the ball near the finish line. Derrick Henry banked 307 carries, 1,595 rushing yards, and 16 rushing touchdowns in 2025 for the…
An attempted home burglary put football in its proper place: Saquon Barkley and his family are OK, and every fantasy question comes second.
Jonathan Taylor scored 21.31 PPG in 2025, well above his 17.62 PPG in 2024. The fantasy market will see the eruption. The risk is hiding inside what it took to produce it.
The deadline is gone. George Pickens is set to play for the Dallas Cowboys on a $27.3 million tag, turning a contract question into a football question: what comes after a season with 93 catches, 1,429 receiving yards, and 9 receiving…
Draft season is here. Prices are hardening. Time to stop paying for names.
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Ja'Marr Chase drew 185 targets in 2025, caught 125 passes, and still watched his fantasy scoring crater from 23.71 PPG in 2024 to 19.6 PPG in 2025. More work. Fewer points. That contradiction is the entire case for keeping the Cincinnati…
Lamar Jackson fell from 24.71 PPG in 2024 to 17.07 PPG in 2025, and any NFL discipline risk would land on a fantasy profile that already took a real hit.
Josh Allen posted 23.82 PPG in 2025, while Patrick Mahomes finished at 21.19 PPG. The old quarterback hierarchy can keep its trophies; for fantasy football, the answer has already changed.
Mike Evans went from a 2024 receiver who piled up 1,096 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns to a 2025 player with 368 receiving yards and 3 touchdowns. The name still carries weight. The recent production does not.
Cam Skattebo posted 15.96 PPG in 2025, and the problem is that fantasy managers can make that number say almost anything they want. It can sell a breakout. It can sell a workload monster. It can sell a pass-catching safety valve. The…
Puka Nacua jumped from 17.88 PPG in 2024 to 23.82 PPG in 2025, while the Arizona Cardinals went from 8 wins to 3 wins. That is the whole question hiding inside this article: can a Rams-flavored passing tree give Arizona the clean, bankable…
Brock Bowers already delivered 15.45 PPG in 2024, then still held 14.68 PPG in 2025 while the Las Vegas Raiders fell from 4 wins to 3 wins. That is the career-season case hiding in plain sight: the team around him sputtered, the passing…
The surprise cameo is fun; the fantasy story is that Drake Maye spiked from 13.32 PPG in 2024 to 20.42 PPG in 2025.
The engagement is announced, and the fantasy price is still the fantasy price. Time to separate the life news from the draft room.
Touchdowns are the easiest stat to overreact to and the hardest one to draft cleanly. One receiver scores four times and looks boring. Another scores eight times on a thinner role and suddenly gets treated like the better bet. That is how fantasy managers end…
DeVonta Smith scored 12.04 PPG in 2025 after 14.14 PPG in 2024, even while his catches, yards, and targets all moved the other way.
Colston Loveland banked 11.67 PPG in 2025, and the interesting part is not that he mattered — it is that his profile already sits between two louder Chicago Bears receivers.
Trey McBride jumped from 15.24 PPG in 2024 to 18.58 PPG in 2025 while the Arizona Cardinals cratered from 8 wins to 3 wins. Both things are true at the same time. That is the whole case.
CeeDee Lamb scored 15.45 PPG in 2025, and the panic is louder than the actual profile. Look: that is not a dead player. That is a fantasy receiver who still banked on volume, still popped for 117 targets, and still cleared 1077 rec_yds…
Jonathan Taylor just banked 21.31 PPG in 2025 after posting 17.62 PPG in 2024, and the regression question is not some fake contrarian bit.
Caleb Williams went from 14.62 PPG in 2024 to 19.42 PPG in 2025, and the Chicago Bears stopped looking like a team trying to survive its quarterback development plan.
Emeka Egbuka drew 127 targets in 2025, and that is the cleanest verified reason his preseason buzz should not be brushed off as rookie helium.
Michael Wilson jumped from 7.78 PPG in 2024 to 12.98 PPG in 2025, and the Arizona Cardinals still have a contract question sitting on the table.
The Las Vegas Raiders went 3-14 in 2025 and still had Ashton Jeanty sitting at 14.42 PPG in 2025. That is the whole argument hiding in plain sight. Bad team. Useful back. New coach bump candidate, full stop.
Zay Flowers scored 14.31 PPG in 2025, and the Baltimore Ravens still limped to 8 wins and 9 losses. Both things can be true at the same time.
TreVeyon Henderson posted 10.58 PPG in 2025, and dynasty managers are already trying to turn that into a clean yes-or-no answer.
Chris Olave jumped from 9.59 PPG in 2024 to 16.81 PPG in 2025, and that is the stat that matters before anyone gets carried away with summer-quarterback chemistry.
Jayden Daniels fell from 21.01 PPG in 2024 to 16.75 PPG in 2025. That is the whole alarm bell. Short. Loud. Not complicated.
George Pickens jumped from 12.27 PPG in 2024 to 17.17 PPG in 2025, while Brian Thomas cratered from 16.47 PPG in 2024 to 9.93 PPG in 2025. Same position. Opposite arrows. The fantasy market is about to decide which one was signal and which…
Jahmyr Gibbs scored 21.69 PPG in 2024 and 21.58 PPG in 2025, which is the kind of flatline fantasy managers should actually want from a running back training with MMA legend Rafael Cordeiro.
Bijan Robinson scored 21.81 PPG in 2025, and the Vinícius Júnior friendship angle does not change the fantasy math.
Ladd McConkey banked 110 targets, caught 69 passes, and turned them into 821 receiving yards in 2025. The calf question matters. The player matters more.
Puka Nacua just banked 2,047 rec_yds, 153 rec, and 208 targets in 2025, so the receiving-record conversation is no longer cute offseason noise.
DeVonta Smith's scoring cratered from 14.14 PPG in 2024 to 12.04 PPG in 2025, even while his receiving yardage popped from 1023 to 1078.
Travis Kelce slipped from 12.21 PPG in 2024 to 11.36 PPG in 2025, which is the fantasy part of the Taylor Swift wedding plot that actually matters.
Travis Kelce scored 12.21 PPG in 2024 and 11.36 PPG in 2025, which is the whole fantasy story hiding under the Songwriters Hall of Fame headline.
The Bears went from 5 wins in 2024 to 11 wins in 2025, and Caleb Williams went from 14.62 PPG in 2024 to 19.42 PPG in 2025. That is the leadership story. Not a quote. Not a slogan. Production dragged the room with it.
Justin Jefferson’s fantasy scoring cratered from 18.24 PPG in 2024 to 11.85 PPG in 2025. That is the whole story hiding behind Justin Jefferson calling the Minnesota Vikings starting quarterback decision a coach’s call.
Nico Collins fell from 17.78 PPG in 2024 to 14.46 PPG in 2025, and the raise still makes sense.
George Pickens jumped from 12.27 PPG in 2024 to 17.17 PPG in 2025, and now the Dallas Cowboys expect him at June minicamp.
Ja'Marr Chase went from 23.71 PPG in 2024 to 19.6 PPG in 2025, and the bigger story is that the fantasy floor still did not crater.
A.J. Brown joins a Patriots offense that already ranked top five in regular-season passing yards. The best fantasy comp is DeAndre Hopkins to Arizona: an alpha receiver, a young quarterback, and a real path to 160 targets.
A.J. Brown enters New England Patriots life with 1028 receiving yards, 81 receptions, 128 targets, and one Patriots rug that apparently never left the house.
Christian McCaffrey banked 337 rush attempts, 143 targets, and 113 receptions in 2025. The player may say the workload is coming back. The data says the San Francisco 49ers would be playing with matches if they tried it again.
Christian McCaffrey went from 11.95 PPG in 2024 to 24.13 PPG in 2025. That is the whole argument hiding in plain sight. The San Francisco 49ers can manage the practice week all they want, but the fantasy case did not crater when the games…
Puka Nacua jumped from 17.88 PPG in 2024 to 23.82 PPG in 2025, which is the whole fantasy argument before the lawsuit headline even gets a vote.
A source-locked look at the rookie notes that actually changed fantasy outlooks, from Kenyon Sadiq’s camp timeline to KC Concepcion’s manufactured-touch path.
By Glenn Dalbey · ScrimmageLab Research
Detroit Lions averaged 100.67 fantasy points per game over the three-season sample, while New England Patriots sat at 70.9. That is the whole drop conversation in one ugly screenshot: environment matters, and it is not particularly close.
Nabers had an unplanned second knee scrub to clean out scar tissue, with PUP to start the season now in play. The talent and the target profile are still there. The price has to move.
The old two-model article got the verdict backward. ScrimmageLab's empty-calories file gives Jonathan Taylor a 22.9 score, below the RB average of 27.7, while the fatigue file still flags a real workload risk.
ScrimmageLab's 2025 cumulative fatigue file flags a running back efficiency dip around 213 carries. The rewrite keeps the signal, drops fake certainty, and names the backs who need context checks.
ScrimmageLab's 2022-2024 pressure profile gives Josh Allen a 96.0 resilience score, first among 57 qualifying quarterbacks, but the fantasy lesson is about floor more than mythology.
ScrimmageLab's 2005-2021 draft ROI file puts Pittsburgh first at 0.93 and Cleveland last at 0.29, but the real lesson is how quickly the cost curve punishes missed premium picks.
ScrimmageLab tested 1090 qualifying players against top-10 and bottom-10 defenses and found wide receivers had the smallest average matchup gap at 24.4%.
ScrimmageLab matched 4938 multi-year NFL contracts to fantasy scoring and found Year 2 drops for RBs, WRs, and TEs, while QBs move differently.
ScrimmageLab ranked fantasy-position draft classes from 2000-2021. The 2008 class leads the sample with 36,577.3 total PPR fantasy points, 63 fantasy picks, 22 starters, and 7 stars.
ScrimmageLab decomposed 25,140 player-game observations from 2020-2025. Within-player weekly swings dominate total variance, and residual noise explains 90.6-98.0% of the modeled week-to-week component by position.
ScrimmageLab analyzed 27,243 red-zone plays from 2020-2024. The 1-yard line scored at 54.3%; the 2-yard line scored at 30.6%. That one-yard gap changes fantasy touchdown math.
The 2026 NFL Draft starts Thursday, April 23 in Pittsburgh. ScrimmageLab data says the Steelers board points to EDGE, DB, and OL before fantasy managers force a skill-player story.
The Williams extension is real. The Chubb Bills deal is real too, but it is a signing, not an extension. ScrimmageLab contract data says the veteran-payday story needs caution, not hype.
Across every offensive position, year 2 produces the biggest PPR jump -- not year 3. The third-year breakout is fantasy gospel that the data says is mostly wrong.
An 8,320 player-season study reveals that RB rush TDs cliff at age 22, QB stats never cliff at all, and WR production peaks at 31 -- not 26 like everyone assumes.
Carolina's real record trail is 24-60 from 2020-2024, and the model still projects only 3.2 wins for 2026 even after defensive spending.
Across 160 team-seasons, pass blocking grade correlates with wins at r=0.69 (R-squared=0.478) versus r=0.48 (R-squared=0.233) for run blocking. Buffalo leads the five-year pass blocking average at 84.4, Baltimore leads run blocking at 86.4.
ScrimmageLab's 2022-2024 coach-DNA file covers all 32 teams and shows Cincinnati at 61.3% early-down passing in close games, Detroit at 32.5% on fourth downs, and Philadelphia at 89.3% shotgun rate. Treat style as a fantasy shortcut, not a guarantee.
ScrimmageLab's injury-replacement file covers 524 events since 2018. Replacements averaged useful boosts, but only 21.2% cleared the fantasy-viable line.
ScrimmageLab's contract-year file found 1057 paired seasons and a -0.38 PPG contract-year change, not a breakout bump. The real draft tax is paying for a story the data does not support.
The average skill-position 40 time dropped from 4.62 to 4.48 over 25 years while average weight increased. The modern NFL athlete is bigger AND faster.
The contract year bump is a myth. Players who had peak seasons typically decline the following year regardless of contract status.