Joel Bartilotta 
Welcome to the Week 11 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.
Darnell Mooney is slowly becoming the guy in Chicago. For the first time this season Mooney saw double digit targets. Mooney’s 16 targets led all wide receivers in week 11. While he had a ton of targets yesterday, if it wasn’t for his 60 yard touchdown reception late in the fourth quarter we’d be talking about a very different day for him. The Mooney show gets to continue next weekend against a very poor Lions D. Can he keep up the production?
While Mooney led the show in targets, it was Justin Jefferson who was second to none on Sunday. Well, receiving wise because it was the Jonathan Taylor show yesterday. We’ll get to that later. Jefferson led all receivers with 169 yards receiving yesterday and 2 touchdowns.
Over the last 2 weeks he now has over 300 yards receiving. The man is on a mission. Next week he gets to see if he can continue the insane momentum against a suspect 49ers secondary.
Any other Sunday we’d be talking about Elijah Moore as the top receiver. He caught 8 balls off of 11 targets and finished with 141 yards receiving and 1 touchdown. His targets, catches, and yards were all season highs. He now has touchdowns in 3 straight and is really coming into his own in his rookie season.
Running Back Targets
The “Sometimes life isn’t fair” award goes to Dontrell Hilliard. Up until this week Hilliard had been living on the practice squad. Thanks to a concussed McNichols, Hilliard was thrust into action this week. He led all backs in targets with 10. He will most likely go back to the practice squad next week when McNichols is back
With Alvin Kamara missing a second straight game this weekend the New Orleans Saints turned to their old friend in Mark Ingram again. Over the last two weeks Ingram has been targeted 15 times and has caught 10 of the passes for 86 yards. While he wasn’t as effective as he was last week, he still had over 100 all purpose yards.
It took until week 11, but Christian McCaffrey finally has his first receiving touchdown. McCaffrey was targeted 8 times this weekend and finished with 7 receptions, 60 yards, and 1 touchdown. He now has 18 targets over the last 2 weeks and 17 receptions. He’s back folks.
Tight End Targets
Darren Waller was a popular choice at tight end this weekend and he did not disappoint. He was the only tight end this weekend to hit the century mark. Waller finished with 116 yards on 8 targets and 7 receptions. This was the first time that Waller had reached the 100 yard mark since week 1 against the Ravens. He’ll face a Cowboys team in week 12 that essentially kept Kelce in check last night.
This was the type of game the Cardinals were hoping for when they traded for Zach Ertz. Ertz had his best game of the year on Sunday. He finished with 88 yards receiving and found the end zone twice. It was his first multi touchdown game of the season and his 88 yards were also a season best.
Quarterback Target Share
Derek Carr had a clear plan this weekend and that was to avoid passing to his wide receivers. His two top targets this weekend were Darren Waller and Josh Jacobs. Of his 25 passes, 15 went to those two. Only 6 pass attempts went to his wide receivers this weekend.
On the opposite side of that story we had Trevor Lawrence. Lawrence threw more than 80% of his 24 passes to his team of wide receivers. It was all pretty spread out as he threw to 6 different wide receivers on Sunday. No receiver had more than 6 targets and 4 had at least 3 targets.
Running Back Touches
I’m just going to name this the Jonathan Taylor section because Taylor just continues to ball out. Taylor finished Sunday with just insane stat line. He had 32 carries for 185 yards and 4 rushing touchdowns. To top it off he also had 3 receptions for 19 yards and a receiving touchdown.
All in all he had over 200 all purpose yards and 5 touchdowns. He was the Indianapolis Colts offense yesterday. This is now 8 straight weeks with at least 1 touchdown for Taylor. During that span he’s also had 4 multi-touchdown games.
Nick Chubb returned from a bout with Covid to have a monster game. He finished with 130 rushing yards on 22 carries. While he didn’t find the end zone on the ground, he did have a touchdown reception. This was his first reception for a touchdown all year. He’ll look to continue his roll in an important divisional match up against the Ravens next weekend.
Joe Mixon had his first 100 yard rushing game since week 1. If it wasn’t for a guy named Taylor, we’d be talking about Mixon as the top back in week 11. Mixon matched a season high with 2 rushing touchdowns. The only negative for Mixon this weekend was that it was his only the second time this year where he wasn’t targeted at all. I guess who needs targets when you rush for 123 yards right?
Playbook
The ‘Playbook’ as I like to call it shows a breakdown of the play splits that teams used this past weekend. In what should come as a surprise to no one, Philly ran almost 70% run plays this weekend. Of the 73 plays that the Eagles called on Sunday, 50 were runs. Miles Sanders, Jalen Hurts, and Jordan Howard all had double digit rushes.
Buffalo was behind from the start of the game and all game long thanks to Jonathan Taylor. Josh Allen threw the ball 39 times compared to just 13 runs for his team. His 209 yards passing were the lowest he’s had since week 2 against the Dolphins. Allen and the Dolphins will look to get back on track against the Saints on Thanksgiving.
Inside Look Wrap Up
We had some monster individual performances this weekend. 12 different players had over 100 yards receiving and 4 running backs had over 100 yards rushing. Taylor had 5 touchdowns in what will be a performance that many people will be comparing to Al Bundy’s 4 touchdown performance for Polk High. We also saw some people struggle this weekend. Dak Prescott did his best Mitch Trubinsky impression this weekend in a game he was supposed to do extremely well.
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