Fantasy Football: What we learned from Week 12, including why Odell Beckham is poised for a strong finish
Fantasy expert Jacob Gibbs dug into every game from the 12th week of the NFL season and found several interesting takeaways.
Each week, SportsLine's Fantasy expert Jacob Gibbs will provide a data-driven deep-dive into the usage for every team's running backs and pass-catchers. You can find full team-by-team data on snap counts, target share, routes run, red-zone usage and more for every Fantasy relevant running back, wide receiver and tight end.
Below, Gibbs covers the 10 most important storylines from Week 12 to help provide a better understanding of what we learned and how it will impact the Fantasy outlook of specific teams and players.
If you have questions about any stats, players, or situations covered or not covered in this article, feel free to reach out to Gibbs on Twitter.
Important Week 12 metrics
Running back snap rate
No stat correlates more closely with Fantasy scoring at the RB position than snap rate.
Running back route involvement
A player's route involvement rate simply represents the percentage of the team's total dropbacks on which that player ran a route. So, the running backs listed above all have run a route on at least 59 percent of their team's dropbacks. Running routes is the first step towards drawing targets, which is key to unlocking Fantasy upside at the RB position.
30% target share, 30% air yard share
These receivers have shown a unique ability to dominate both the target and air yardage share.
Target per route run rate
Target per route run (TPRR) rate is one of the most important stats available for evaluating pass-catchers in Fantasy. I wrote about it in more detail here, if you are unfamiliar with the stat.
Air yards
Tight end target per route run rate
These tight ends are being targeted at the highest rate when allowed to run routes, but that's only part of the equation when evaluating tight ends for Fantasy purposes. Understanding how often each tight end's offense allows them to actually run routes is another important piece of the puzzle.
Tight end route involvement
So which RB saw a surprising role in Week 12? And which top tight end could be impacted by a breakthrough rookie campaign? ... Join SportsLine here to see Jacob Gibbs' What We Learned from Week 12 feature, all from one of the nation's most accurate experts as graded by FantasyPros!