Joel Bartilotta 
Welcome to the Week 12 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 playing 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.
With the Steelers getting blown out by the Bengals the majority of the game, Big Ben took to the air and threw the ball a ton. Diontae Johnson saw 14 targets for the first time this season. This was the eighth time out of 10 games he’s played in where he had double digit targets. At 95 yards he just missed getting his third 100 yard game of the year.
Jaylen Waddle had one of his best games of the season yesterday. For the first time this season he cracked the 100 yard mark as he finished with 137 yards receiving.
Prior to this week Waddle had cracked the 80 yard mark just once in week 7 vs. the Falcons. Can he keep it up next week vs. the Giants?
Welcome to LA Mr. OBJ. After an under whelming debut vs. the 49ers a couple of weeks ago, OBJ finally got into the action. For the first time this year he had double digit targets.
He was able to catch 5 passes yesterday for 81 yards and 1 touchdown. It was his first score of the year. Maybe it was Baker?
Running Back Targets
Two Sundays ago it was the Jonathan Taylor show. Yesterday, it was the Leonard Fournette show. Fournette did it through the air and on the ground yesterday. Fournette was tied with all backs yesterday with 8 targets. He was able to catch 7 of them for 31 yards and 1 receiving touchdown. We’ll get to Fournette on the ground shortly.
Austin Ekeler was another guy that had 8 targets this weekend. That’s not new to him though as it’s a number he’s hit a couple of times this season.
Ekeler finished the game with 68 yards on 6 catches and for the third straight week he found the end zone. That now makes it 7 receiving touchdowns on the year for him.
Tight End Targets
Cole Kmet reached double digit targets for the first time this year. Prior to this week he hadn’t had more than 9 and finished Sunday with 11. The 65 yards he had were also the second most he’s had all year.
If the Bears continue to have limited options, Kmet has a chance to really showcase his talents. Next up is a tough Cardinals team coming off a bye.
Rob Gronkowski had a flash back type game this weekend. His 10 targets and 123 yards were both season highs. Prior to this week he hadn’t had more than 8 targets which he had hit twice. It was also the first time he hit the 100 yard mark. Next week he gets a great match up vs. a bad Falcons team.
Quarterback Target Share
Jared Goff only threw the ball 25 times this weekend, but half off those went to either his running backs and tight end. With the Lions not having a strong group of healthy wide receivers we can expect this trend to continue.
Tom Brady threw 34 passes this weekend. 14 of those went to the duo of Rob Gronkowski and Cameron Brate. Both Godwin and Evans had very light games as the two combined for only 10 targets. Not what the DFS world was expecting to see yesterday. With Gronkowski having a solid game funneling all the passes to him made sense.
Running Back Touches
Leonard Fournette tried doing his best Jonathan Taylor imitation, in front of the man himself. Fournette had by far his best game of the season. He finished with 100 yards on the ground and 31 through the air. Between rushing and receiving he found the endzone 4 times on Sunday. Have yourself a day Mr. Fournette.
Joe Mixon is on a mission. Over the last 2 weeks he has close to 290 yards rushing. This week Mixon finished with 165 yards rushing and 2 touchdowns. He now has multiple touchdowns in 3 straight weeks and only has 3 games this season without a rushing touchdown.
Elijah Mitchell now has a couple of games this season where he has shown some serious upside. For the second time this season he had over 130 yards rushing as he finished Sunday with 133 yards rushing and 1 touchdown. It was fourth rushing touchdown this season. Up next week is a surprisingly poor Seahawks defense.
Playbook
The ‘Playbook’ as I like to call it shows a breakdown of the play splits that teams used this past weekend.
With the Steelers down big most of the game, Big Ben took to the air often on Sunday. He threw the ball more than 70% of the time. The Steelers continue to run a heavy pass offense even with one of the top backs in the league in Harris.
Nothing seemed to work for the Eagles this weekend. Up until this week they were running a mostly ground offense. This weekend they flipped the script a bit and only ran the ball about 55% of the time on Sunday. Who would have throught it would be the Giants that would make Jalen Hurts look like Mitch Trubinsky?
Inside Look Wrap Up
We had some solid individual performances this weekend. 11 different players had over 100 yards receiving and 6 running backs had over 100 yards rushing. 8 quarterbacks threw for over 300 yards also. Leonard Fournette did his best Al Bundy impersonation and matched his 4 touchdown performance.
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