Joel Bartilotta 
Welcome to the Week 8 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.
Every single player in the top targets for Wide Receivers this week outperformed their previous 4 week target average. One of the biggest outperformers was Michael Pittman. After failing to get more than 10 targets every week since week 3, Pittman led all receivers this week with 15 targets. That was 3 more than his previous season high of 12. Pittman was able to convert on 10 of his targets for 86 yards and 2 TD. Should Hilton miss Thursday’s night game against the Jets, Pittman would be come a must play in showdowns.
Cole Beasley may be back. After poor weeks 4 and 5, Beasley has now seen targets of 9 and 13 in back to back weeks and for the first time this season cracked the 100 yard mark. Beasley was a big favorite of Josh Allen at the start of the year so Beasley fantasy owners have to be extremely encouraged by this uptick in targets.
No Russell Wilson, no problem. After pretty poor weeks in weeks 6 and 7 where Tyler Lockett had a combined 10 targets, we saw the return of the Lockett we have grown to love with 12 catches on 13 targets and a whopping 142 yards receiving. While he didn’t find the end zone, Lockett owners had to be happy with the production yesterday after a slow couple of weeks.
The “What could have been” award goes to Jaylen Waddle. The normally sure handed Waddle had a pretty rough day, failing to convert on 8 of his 12 targets. Waddle finished the day with just 4 receptions for 29 yards. The volume is still there for him so we have to hope this was just a rough week against an extremely solid Bills defense.
Running Back Targets
It’s Michael Carter’s world and we’re all just living in it. At least that’s what it felt like yesterday. What a day from the rookie running back. Just in the last 2 weeks Carter has been targeted 23 times and has caught 17 of them for 162 yards. With Zach Wilson sidelined, this tandem of Mike White and Michael Carter has been extremely fun to watch. It’s not going to last forever, so let’s take advantage of it while it lasts.
Aaron Rodgers had to throw the ball the to someone on Thursday night right? He was without Adams, Lazard, and then Tunyan. Aaron Jones stepped up big time with double digit targets for the first time this year. Up until this past week Jones hadn’t had more than 6 targets. Jones corralled 7 of his targets for 51 yards. With Adams and Lazard both expected back this coming up Jones his receiving prowess should come back down to earth.
J.D. McKissic is on a nice little roll. He now has weeks of 10, 6, and 8 targets over the last 3 weeks. This week he was able to catch all 8 targets and finished with 83 receiving yards. That was the most he’s had since week 2 against the New York Giants where he also finished with 83 yards. The only thing that can slow down McKissic at this point is a bye and that’s what is on the calendar for Washington this upcoming week.
Tight End Targets
One of these is not like the other. That would be Kyle Pitts. When Calvin Ridley was ruled out many people pivoted right to Kyle Pitts, myself included. What a letdown that was for anyone that made that move. Coming into the week Pitts was playing as well as, if not better than all tight ends in the league. Week 8 was Pitts worst week of the season, statistically speaking. He finished with just 6 targets, just 2 receptions, and 13 yards. Let’s just hope he forgot to eat his Wheaties this weekend and returns to form against the Saints next weekend.
Hock! While Pitts had his worst week of the season, T.J. Hockenson had one of his best. Hock is on a roll now with weeks of 11, 9, and 11 targets. His 89 receiving yards were the most he’s had since opening weekend vs. the Niners. Up next week for the Lions is probably 18 holes, or just a relaxing weekend on the couch as they have a bye. When they return in week 10 they get a match up vs. the Steelers. Hopefully Hock continues his stellar play.
With Ertz out of the picture, it’s now Dallas Goedert’s time to shine. And boy did he shine this weekend. The only thing that Goedert didn’t do this weekend was find the end zone. He saw season highs in targets with 7, receptions with 6, and receiving yards with 72.
Quarterback Target Share
Two guys that really stand out are Matt Ryan and Jared Goff. Both guys were extremely reliant on their backs and tight ends over the weekend. Ryan threw nearly 75% of his passes to either his running backs or tight ends. Tajae Sharpe was his only receiver this weekend with multiple targets. With Calvin Ridley out for the foreseeable future, we have to think that this make up of his passing scheme won’t change. The one thing that we do hope is that Pitts returns to form after a disastrous week 8.
If we turn to Jared Goff, we also see a QB that relied heavily on his backs and tight ends. Of Goff’s 32 passes, only 9 went to wide receivers and 5 of those went to Amon-Ra St. Brown and St. Brown was the only wide receiver to actually catch a pass. One doesn’t need to look at the final box score to see that yesterday was a struggle for the Lions. Having your wide receivers only catch 3 passes is not a recipe for success, regardless of who your running backs and tight ends are.
It doesn’t matter who the QB is in Seattle, all passes will funnel to Lockett and Metcalf. That’s exactly what happened this weekend. Geno Smith only threw the ball 22 times, but 19 of the attempts went to that combo. If you can cover those two, you can be successful against the Seahawks. While the recipe for that is clear, the 2 of them are some of the toughest receivers to cover in the game.
Running Back Touches
Do we have a case of tired legs? Is there an injury that we don’t know about? We now have 2 consecutive weeks where, although the full load was there for Derrick Henry, his yards per carry were under 3. If we look at his weeks 4-7, he had an average of more than 4.5 yards per carry. That’s a significant drop and with it happening 2 weeks in a row it’s getting closer to a trend than it is an anomaly. It’s something we’ll want to keep an eye on and see if there are any injury designations this week.
Conversely, hello Elijah Mitchell! We now have back to back really solid weeks for Mitchell. Two straight weeks of 18 carries, 100+ rushing yards, and a rushing touchdown. While he isn’t a receiving threat, he’s someone that is becoming a must play with his volume and ability to find open spaces.
Playbook
The ‘Playbook’ as I like to call it shows a breakdown of the play splits that teams used this past weekend. With Eagles up big the majority of the game they had a very simple game plan. Run, run, run, and then run some more. Nearly 75% of their plays on Sunday were for the run and it was a pretty even split between many of their backs. Scott, Howard, and Gainwell all had at least 12 rushing attempts. Scott and Howard were the most successful as they each had at least 57 yards rushing and 2 rushing touchdowns.
Tom Brady on the other hand threw the ball, and he threw it often as he had 40 pass attempts. That marked the sixth time this season he threw the ball at least 40 times. This weekend almost marked the fourth time he threw for at least 300 yards. The 4 touchdown passes were also the fifth time he’s had at least 4 touchdown passes this season. When all is said and done, this Brady fellow will have had a pretty decent career. Maybe a super bowl championship or two.
Inside Look Wrap Up
This was as crazy of a week as we’ve seen this season. The New York Jets, those same Jets that have been absolutely awful all season, defeated the first place Cincinnati Bengals. A week after the Bengals dominated the Baltimore Ravens. Jets beating the Bengals is all you need to know about this weekend. Well, we also had 8 receivers crack 100 yards receiving this weekend and only one running back to have 100 yards rushing. There was one other guy that broke the 100 yard rushing mark and it was Justin Fields. Missing from the Fields equation this weekend was Coach Nagy. I’m not saying it was addition by subtraction, but maybe Trubisky wasn’t all that bad…
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