Target and touch totals are important, but not as important as the market share. “Targets” is mostly a receiver stat (although there are some notable early exceptions). Touches are the currency of the running back.
What we’re doing is really simple. For pass-catchers, market share is targets divided by team pass attempts. For running backs, touches are divided by team plays from scrimmage (not team touches, to be clear).
Snap counts, depth of target and type of touch (running back receptions are far more valuable than carries) are also important but will generally not be discussed here. This is pure market share. Consider this a primary tool for assessing waivers and trades.
Here’s the list. Be sure to select the current week, though all the weeks of the season will be archived, so you can get a multi-week sample on a player if you so desire. Also, I put great thought into providing these stats weekly. The objective is to respond quickly to present trends. Yearly stats smooth out to a somewhat meaningless middle. As our Gene McCaffrey so wisely says, “To be very right, you have to be willing to be very wrong.”
Brashard Smith is the top pickup this week. The Chiefs seem to have made a statement by getting him involved early — it wasn’t garbage time. But his No. 17 ranking may be somewhat inflated by the score. Still, I think there is at least a slight reshuffling of the backfield, with Kareem Hunt the biggest loser. Smith almost had the 15% target share we seek from RBs, too. If I had to pick one back to roster now in PPR formats for the rest of the season, it would be Smith. The model says max bid is twice the market share over 15%, so that’d work out to about 49% for Smith. Again, that’s the highest you can reasonably justify, not the amount advocated. You know your league and how people bid, not me.
Saquon Barkley had market share. Regression was his enemy in draft season. Now it’s his friend. What I mean is that there will be positive regression. I understand the Eagles’ offensive line isn’t what it was. I get that Jalen Hurts is really not a running threat anymore from scrimmage by design, other than the tush push. This makes Barkley so much easier to defend. But he’s still at a peak age (though at the end of that range). He still has enough juice to crease a defense and score from distance. Maybe the fact that the Eagles’ passing offense was frightening last week will force teams into two-deep shells and lighter boxes. Bottom line: Better times are coming (probably).
I concede that Christian McCaffrey really ran well against the Falcons. Could George Kittle be the reason? Is his blocking at TE that good/important? McCaffrey doesn’t need to run well to be a fantasy dynamo, but it will help. I think if you believe he’s back and that the Falcons game isn’t random/an outlier, you have to believe in Kittle’s dramatically positive impact on the running game.
Jaylen Warren reasserted himself, but he has some things working against him. He’s not the goal-line back and thus the TDs will be rare (he had one called back in Week 7, to be fair). The other problem is that the Steelers, with Aaron Rodgers, play so slowly that it’s hard to get their play count above 60 — ideally, we want 67 or so.
Rhamondre Stevenson was No. 8. He has a good QB, who is showing markers of greatness. He’s the goal-line back. He’s not a passing-game zero. Is he a top-10 back rest-of-season? He’s in that bucket, at least.
Jahmyr Gibbs needs more work. The Lions’ solution is to run so much of their offense through the backs that David Montgomery still gets market share (21st in Week 7). But that’s so contrived. It’s costing them explosive passing plays. The Lions need to accept that Gibbs is getting 70% of snaps and make Montgomery live with it. Detroit is a B-minus offense with Montgomery and an A+ one with Gibbs. Play Montgomery late when the opponent is defeated and you’re just running out the clock. He can be a closer.
The Bears seem to be modeling their running game after the Lions, as we long anticipated. Game script had nothing to do with it. D’Andre Swift was 10th and Kyle Monangai 24th. I expect we’ll see this kind of split going forward with Caleb Williams and the passing game taking a big hit compared to our August expectations, volume-wise. Being a run-first team worked. The Bears had their best all-around game. This is likely to be the blueprint going forward.
With Kendre Miller out for the year (ACL), Alvin Kamara should again be a workhorse. He needs massive volume to be useful to us, but I expect him to be in the top 10 or 12 every week. He could get traded by the deadline, but that would probably be beneficial.
Rico Dowdle and Chuba Hubbard were a full-blown committee at No. 15 and 22, respectively. Dowdle has been objectively much better, but the Panthers have invested a lot of money into Hubbard. I think if we bet that the better player will get more touches, we don’t have the edge we expect. Coaches often are not rational. But we can’t bet the other way, of course.
Bam Knight isn’t good, but neither is Michael Carter, and we don’t expect Trey Benson back for a while. We’re only told that Benson will be back in 2025. The Cardinals aren’t good enough in the NFC to trade for a back. So you probably can win ugly with Knight.
DeVonta Smith is a WR you have to play every week and eat the nothing weeks because the massive week will happen three to four times in a season, and we don’t know when. There is no knowing when.
The fate of Wan’Dale Robinson is tied to Jaxson Dart, which is looking way better now than I ever anticipated. If Dart can be so productive against the Broncos, who could have the league’s best defense, he’s a proactive play against every team. Dart has been bad in two games (passing) and good in two games. But the two good games were against good defenses and are the most recent ones. I’m bullish, but this is very hard to forecast.
Tucker Kraft was the No. 2 TE, but I don’t trust the Packers. Green Bay throws the ball downfield well but is not good otherwise, so there is no real consistency in their attack. They are only good (actually great) on 3rd-and-long. Otherwise, they are below average to poor. This is such a weird team because the QB is weird in that he only seems able to make sporadic big plays.
Xavier Legette was top-10 in target share. I like Carolina’s passing game better with Andy Dalton, and you can’t argue it’s worse — Bryce Young was averaging a pathetic 5.8 yards per attempt. A lot of this was about avoiding Sauce Gardner (Tetairoa McMillan was about 50th among WRs). So Legette’s production probably was not predictive, but we have to pick up a WR who charts this high on waivers — I’d recommend only a small bid, however.
I’d rather have Alec Pierce if he’s on waivers. Josh Downs is always hurt. He should return from the concussion in Week 8, however. Still, Pierce is their guy who takes the top off the defense, so he will get his snaps, given that this threat is essential to the Indy attack.
Travis Hunter was WR9. I need to see it again to believe it. But he’s earned a start.
The Falcons’ offense seems to rise and fall with Drake London’s market share. He was down in Week 7 (WR20), and so were the Falcons, offensively. This seems an easy and obvious fix, but who knows. London needs massive volume since he’s not a playmaker.
Rashee Rice had heavy usage, not that many routes (19 of 35), and his slot percentage was down from 50% last year to 37%. I expect Rice to be around WR15 the balance of the year. However, Week 7 showed that this is a player returning from a significant injury, not just a suspension. So he may remain on a pitch count for a while.
Oronde Gadsden is still barely rostered, and I recommended him last week, but he dominated garbage time mostly. He was only TE15 in market share. So expect some major regression in his opportunities in a more typical game script. Given his WR-like athletic profile, he’s inside the TE12 cutline, though, for sure.
Tyler Warren is a great player, and his efficiency arguably diminishes his potential volume. I get that. Still, he should consistently be over the TE target of 25% and is generally below that — just 14.7% in Week 7. Even 20% would feel like 25% given how good he is.
