The best day of the year has came and went. I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving! A day about the four F pillars of life: Family, Friends, Football, and Food. Last week I had an abbreviated article due to illness. Let’s get back to the basics to help your fantasy football team; with the first non-bye week after several weeks of contending with teams on byes.
As a reminder, this is a matchup chart and not a team performance chart. The chart will look at matchups for each game using EPA/play data from rbsdm.com. I will attempt to look for outlier matchups according to EPA/play and substantiate them with more stats.
Week 12 Passing Game Tidbits
- The Minnesota Vikings played the second-most pressure-generating defense in New England Patriots, 29.8%, a week after facing the top pressure-generating defense last week. New England allows the lowest completion percentage to the opposing teams at 55.73% for the year. In the past three weeks that number to 47.83% but that was facing a Zach Wilson-led offense twice.
- Carolina Panthers are a victim of some very bad quarterbacking. DJ Moore leads the league in WOPR with 86.43%. WOPR is a weighted average that incorporates a player’s share of team targets and share of team air yards. But the Carolina Panther QBs rank dead last with 67.6% On Target throws. Now they face a top-3 passing defense in the Denver Broncos. The Broncos are second-lowest in yards per pass attempt allowing only 5.2 yards an attempt. Carolina is also averaging the least amount of plays per game at 5.6 plays a game.
- The Seattle Seahawks are playing the team allowing the highest completion percentage; the Las Vegas Raiders who allow 71.47% completion percentage. Geno Smith ranks third with 79.8% On Target throws. The Seahawks are the team I am targeting in any one-and-done fantasy football league. For a one-and-done league, follow #BabyBowl and @lineupsowdown on Twitter.
- The Dallas Cowboys defense leads the league in pressure-generating plays as mentioned above. The New York Giants are allowing the second-highest pressure rate with 28.5%.
Week 12 Rushing Game Tidbits
- The Kansas City Chiefs once again lead the league in passing EPA/play. They also rank first in pass attempts over the last three weeks with 45.7 pass attempts. Look for that to continue against the LA Rams who allow the fifth-least rushing attempts per game.
- The Baltimore Ravens lead the league with the fewest 21.1 rush attempts a game by opponents. That number has fallen to only 15.7 rush attempts a game in the past three weeks. This likely has to do with the second-highest time of possession. Baltimore Ravens average 32.18 minutes of possession only trailing the Washington Redskins for the year. That number jumps to 36:28 in the past three weeks. Even though Travis Etienne ranks 8, tied with Kenneth Walker, with 77 rush attempts in the past four games, I would not use them in one-and-done fantasy football leagues.
- Tony Pollard should have continued his hot streak. Dallas Cowboys faced the New York Giants whose rush defense I have maligned in almost every weekly article. Pollard has been averaging 18 touches a game in the past two games – and did so again yesterday.
- The Indianapolis Colt and Pittsburgh Steelers game pits two top-five rushing defenses in yards per rush attempt. The Colts give up 3.8 yards a rush while the Steelers allow 3.9 yards a rush attempt. Both are allowing 3.4 yards a rush attempt in the past three weeks.
Hope these tidbits help you find some gems to start this week. Be sure to check out one-and-done fantasy football leagues by following #BabyBowl and @lineupsowdown on Twitter.