Joel Bartilotta 
Welcome to the Week 10 edition of The Inside Look for the 2021 NFL season. This will be a data driven article and will go under the hood to see if the box scores tell the whole story about what transpired during the weekend. My goal here will be to either calm your nerves about a player that may have underperformed or cause you to rethink some of the spots you may have taken.
Outside of the MNF game we have a pretty good sense of what transpired this past weekend.
Let’s dig in to the data!
Wide Receiver Targets
Before we dig in to individual player performances I wanted to take a moment to talk about why we focus so heavily on Targets. Targets equal opportunities and in fantasy opportunity more often than creates production. The more targets that a player gets the better chance there is that the player will return on value.
No Big Ben, no problem for Diontae Johnson. Even though Johnson was missing his QB this weekend he was still able to lead all wide receivers this weekend 13 targets. Of those 13 targets, he was able to catch 7 for 83 yards. While the 13 targets matched his season high in targets, Johnson has now gone 4 consecutive weeks without finding the end zone. Johnson’s next opponent has me thinking his touchdown less streak will last at least 5 weeks as the Chargers have only allowed 4 receiving touchdowns all year to wide receivers.
This was the game we’ve been waiting for. Stefon Diggs hadn’t reached 100 yards receiving since week 4 against the Texans. I wouldn’t necessarily call it a slump because he has had a couple of touchdowns since then, but the productivity just hadn’t been there for Diggs.
What better slump buster than the New York Jets? None. Diggs led all receivers yesterday with 162 receiving yards. Up next is a match up against the Indianapolis Colts, a team that has shown some susceptibility to giving up big games to big time receivers.
Tyreek Hill showed again this weekend why he is one of the most dynamic, albeit most frustrating wide receivers in the game. No receiver in the league presents the upside that Hill has. He is one of the top in the league in terms are average depth of targets.
With him, it’s just a matter of ‘will he catch the ball today?’ Well last night he certainly did. Hill caught 7 of 10 targets for 83 yards and 2 touchdowns. That was his first multi touchdown game since week 4 against the Eagles. Next week will be a tough match up against a solid Cowboys team.
Running Back Targets
Guess who’s back, back again? For the first time this season Christian McCaffrey was the target leader for running backs. It was also the first time this season that he reached double digit targets. Being the dual threat running back is what has made McCaffrey into one of the premier backs in the league. This weekend had to be an encouraging sign for his fantasy owners.
With Alvin Kamara missing the game this weekend the New Orleans Saints turned to their old friend in Mark Ingram to be the lead back. Ingram was most effective this weekend catching passes as he caught 4 of 7 targets for 61 years. The 61 receiving yards were the most he’s had all season. While the weekend was great for Ingram, it will be short lived as once Kamara is back he’ll go back to his role of being the secondary back.
When your QB is on fire, you’re bound to revel in the results as well. Darrel Williams had a perfect night on Sunday. He caught all 9 of his targets and led all running backs with 101 receiving yards.
Tight End Targets
We’ve already highlighted a wide receiver and a running back in our targets section, may as well highlight a tight end too!. Travis Kelce had one of his most productive weeks in quite some time. For the first time since week 3 against the Chargers Kelce eclipsed the 100 yard mark. He caught 8 of his 10 targets this weekend and for Kelce owners that were worried about his tailing off production, this weekend hopefully calmed some nerves.
I think we can all agree that this week by Mike Gesicki was statistically one of the worst weekends we’ve seen in quite some time. Gesicki was targeted 7 times on Thursday night and didn’t catch a single one of them. Gesicki will look to get back on track next weekend against the New York Jets. We’ve already talked about them being a great slump buster. They’ll get to prove it next weekend again.
Quarterback Target Share
The combination of McCaffrey and Abdullah were at it again this weekend. Carolina threw the ball 32 times this weekend and 14 of those went to either McCaffrey or Abdullah. This is the second straight week that Carolina led the leagues in terms of using their running backs as part of the passing game.
This weekend we had 2 teams that targeted their tight ends at least 30% of the time in the passing game, Browns and Dolphins. Neither team really had much success as it only resulted in 1 touchdown for Hooper and a sub 50% completion rate between the 2 teams.
Josh Allen was the only quarterback this weekend to throw at least 80% of his passes to receivers. In fact, no other quarterback topped 70%. With the Bills up from the start, well they were probably up before the game even started to, Allen only had to throw the ball 28 times this weekend. Of those 28 passes, 13 went to Stefon Diggs. Only 4 of his passes went to either his tight end or running backs.
Running Back Touches
Jonathan Taylor continues to be a staple of this section. Taylor now has reached the 100 yard mark in 4 out of the last 5 weeks and has a touchdown in 7 straight. Over those 7 weeks he has 10 touchdowns on the ground and in the air.
Of all the backs with at least 20 carries this weekend no one had more yards per carry than Taylor. The next closest guy was Najee Harris who was a whole yard and a half behind Taylor. The guy is becoming one of the top running backs in the league. I just hope you all are taking notice.
With some questionable weather in Pittsburgh yesterday and an ineffective passing game, the Lions turned to D’Andre Swift yesterday. And boy did they turn to him. Up until this weekend Swift hadn’t carried the ball more than 14 times. This weekend he finished with 33 carries.
For the first time this year he surpassed the 100 yard rushing mark and finished with 130 yards. The only thing that could have made this weekend better for him was a touchdown because for the first time this year the Lions did not lose.
Playbook
The ‘Playbook’ as I like to call it shows a breakdown of the play splits that teams used this past weekend. Week in and week out we continue to see Philly run a predominantly run focused offense. This weekend nearly 65% of the plays they called were runs.
40 running plays vs. just 22 passes. Unfortunately for us the Eagles have as crowded of a backfield as there is with Boston Scott and Jordan Howard splitting duties. Jalen Hurts had more rushes than both Scott and Howard.
With the Buccaneers down from the start the ago and an ineffective run game Tom Brady tried his best to throw the Bucs to victory. The Buccaneers passed the ball more than 70% on the Sunday. Unfortunately they came up short as they lost to the Washington Football Team by 10 points.
Inside Look Wrap Up
The NFL returned to some normalcy this weekend. Patrick Mahomes no longer looked like Mitch Trubisky this weekend and had one of his best games of the year. The Dallas Cowboys also returned to form with an absolutely dominating performance against the Atlanta Falcons.
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