Each week, I’ll use my OPPO metric (OPportunity POints) to analyze player performances and identify players who had the most valuable looks the week, those who scored less than their opportunities would suggest, and others who overperformed with the opportunities they were given. This season’s data can be found here.
Highest OPPO
This advice is for anyone worried about Kyren Williams‘ workload post-IR stint: don’t be. His 26 opportunities were the 2nd most in football this week, and were the most valuable for a running back. Those opportunities consisted of 21 carries and 5 targets this week, and were good for 20.2 points on 26.3 OPPO. He was expected to earn 4.1 catches, 111.1 yards, and 1.9 touchdowns, based on where and how he got them. Williams has been one of the pleasant surprises of this season, and he looks primed to carry fantasy teams to deep playoff runs.
CeeDee Lamb is back to transcending the wide receiver position. He took two weeks to compose himself, and then put up a Top-5 OPPO week of the year. His 17 targets (plus 2 carries for good measure) returned 32.6 points on 34.8 OPPO. Yes, I’m implying that his 30+ points were an underperformance, with those opportunities expected to yield 11.2 catches, 124.8 yards, and 1.9 touchdowns. Lamb has proven himself as an elite-tier wide receiver and is absolutely in the conversation for the best receiver in football (non-Tyreek Hill division).
Trey McBride led all tight ends in OPPO again this week, putting up 22.9 points on 19.1 OPPO. He’s now established himself as the primary option in Arizona’s passing game, and this week he had 9 targets which were good for 6.1 expected catches, 60.9 expected yards, and 1.2 expected touchdowns. McBride has been a tight end savior for anyone streaming the position who picked him up, or any poor soul that drafted Kyle Pitts (not that I’d know anything about that…sigh). Good luck to anyone trying to replace McBride on his bye this week.
OPPO Underperformers
To anyone with Austin Ekeler on their teams: stay strong. He’s seen some pretty rough underperformance in all stats, but his most egregious is his touchdown scoring. He’s been seeing high-value looks each week over the last month and should have 2.5+ more touchdowns than he’s scored. That’s a huge swing on its own, and when combined with mild underperformance in receptions and yardage, points to a running back who should be faring much better than he has been. I’m fully expecting Ekeler to get back to his RB1 ways and put up mid-teens point totals, hopefully starting this week against the Broncos.
I’m expecting to see more from Elijah Moore. In the barren wasteland that is Cleveland’s offense, Moore has been able to find the scant opportunities that are there. He’s seen almost 9 targets per game over the last four weeks but has most importantly seen nearly three expected touchdowns in that same time. He has a lock on high-value targets for the Browns but hasn’t capitalized like he should (only 1 touchdown). It may be simplistic, but the quarterback situation is a mess in Cleveland, and that will lead to general underperformance. Moore should still do better, even after factoring that in, and I’d expect his weekly point totals to approach his mid-teens OPPO going forward.
I am begging David Njoku (and the rest of the Browns offense, based on the blurb above) to perform up to his expectations. He’s been TE3 overall by OPPO over the last month, but he’s been outscored by everyone else in the top 7. He’s averaged nearly 10 targets per game over that time, and has relatively little to show for it: he’s seen 6.7 fewer catches than expected, 51.7 fewer yards, and 1.6 fewer touchdowns. If someone was impatient/crazy enough to drop Njoku after his rough Week 13, I would be doing everything I could to pick him up (unless I had a bonafide elite option like Travis Kelce or T.J Hockenson).
OPPO Overperformers
David Montgomery has crushing it since he returned from injury. He’s seen nearly 6 yards per carry and is getting a ton of high-value red zone looks on the ground. That 6 yards per carry is way outside of anything he’s done in his NFL (or college!) career and should be expected to fall, both because of those past results and because of the expectations of the carries he’s seen recently. With his yardage regressing, we would likely see his scoring rate regress toward his 2.9 expected touchdowns over the last 4 weeks (instead of his 4 actual touchdowns). He still gets plenty of touches in Detroit, but I’d expect him to put up point totals in the low double-digits, instead of the 15+ points he’s been scoring.
49ers players have been heavily featured in this section this season (there were 2 last week!), but that won’t stop me from highlighting Deebo Samuel. He has doubled his OPPO, which is a pretty impressive feat: he is the only player (with 5+ points per game) to do that over the past month. The reason for that is pretty straightforward: he has been unstoppable on the ground. He has 3 touchdowns on 11 carries (and 0.5 expected touchdowns). He’s also been impressive at converting his targets into touchdowns (2 receiving touchdowns vs. 0.4 expected). That’s an incredible scoring rate and I expect both to regress significantly. Any slight underperformance will tank his value since he’s only seeing 5 targets and 2 carries a week. I’d be very wary of counting on Samuel to continue his touchdown-scoring rate and would expect him to average close to his 10.2 OPPO going forward.
Sam LaPorta‘s impressive rookie season may be starting to peter out. He’s still putting up TE1 points (14.4 per game over the last month), but his OPPO has been slowly fading and is now down to 11.7. That’s still good enough to be TE7 overall over that timeframe, but it is down from what he’s done all season. It’s late enough in the season that you can’t consider trading him, but it’s still important to be aware of the upside and downside of your players. That 11.7 OPPO is absolutely playable for a tight end, but I would caution against expecting upper-echelon results, based on his recent usage.
Quick Hits
Here’s where I call out players who didn’t earn a write-up but are still worth mentioning because of notable OPPO over the last four weeks:
RB: Alvin Kamara (18.1 OPPO per game; RB3), Rachaad White (15.5; RB8), James Cook (14.9; RB11), Josh Jacobs (13.9; RB17), Derrick Henry (10.8; RB29)
WR: Mike Evans (22.1; WR3), Michael Pittman (21.6; WR4), Puka Nacua (15.0; WR19), Rashee Rice (12.4; WR32), Brandon Cooks (10.2; WR45)
TE: Evan Engram (12.4; TE4), Jake Ferguson (11.3; TE7), Tyler Conklin (9.9; TE9), Kyle Pitts (7.8; TE18)
Don’t agree? Think someone else has been even luckier/unluckier this season? Let me know at @blandalytics!
(Photo by Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire)