Week 13 Consistency Reports - Start/Sit Decisions

Ben Rolfe analyzes the first 12 weeks of NFL player data, measuring fantasy football performance using consistency data to help make start/sit lineup decisions.

Week 13 is here with a bang! We are past all the byes and we are back to just having the one game on a Thursday. Unfortunately the Saints high flying offense was somewhat lost to the week against a very good Dallas defense. The good news is that other high flying offenses in the Chiefs and Rams face mediocre opponents. The Chargers and Steelers face each other in a could be shootout on Sunday Night Football and the Vikings should be able to have a successful day against a Patriots defense. Cold weather does tend to wreak havoc with players consistency ratings as teams tend to like to run the ball more in the cold weather and pass more out of necessity than desire. It will be interesting to see in the Chargers Steelers and Vikings Patriots game how the marquee players do there as a preview for what we might see in these cold weather games going forward.

The information I am going to use in this articles comes from FFstatistics.com, founded by the person who used to write this article, Addison Hayes. Here are the links to the main articles last year where Addison introduced his key terms. The three main elements are standard deviation (explained here), calculations of players floors and ceiling (explained here) and then finally the use of the Coefficient of Variation to calculate Consistency Ratings or COR (explained here). This paragraph is going to be present a lot this year for those of you interested in the math behind the numbers below.

A final note for this article is that although this article will be published following Thursday Night Football, the numbers from those games will not be included. I will also be unlikely to touch on those players unless they stand out as major players you should be targeting on the following week's waiver wires. Therefore, do not be surprised to not see much mention of those players below.

Quarterbacks

The table above (and each table in the article) is sorted by players 2018 COR through three games from largest to smallest. As always there is not really much to say about the quarterback position. The top-12 guys are all solid and players you only bench when they have a tough matchup.

At #14 we have Baker Mayfield who has looked really solid recently. I am not to the must-start point yet but if he can have success against a good Texans defense this week it will go a long way towards putting him close to that category. Jameis Winston is another guy to watch down the stretch as he very likely is aware that his career is on the line. Generally guys with his talent can have success in these spots and this week he faces a bad pass defense in Carolina.

Running Backs

Running back is fairly self explanatory in its top-20 when you ignore the injured guys. Alex Collins is a name to highlight for a couple of reason. Firstly, there is a chance he has been supplanted by Gus Edwards as the number one in that run game. However, Edwards is a little banged up after two big weeks so if Collins is active he could get a chance to prove himself in Week 13.

Aaron Jones is slowly climbing up this board and yet we do not trust him because of the weird way the Packers have used him this season. Jones is a quality running back and has become a reliable rusher when he is given the opportunity. Theo Riddick could see a decrease in his value and consistency the next few weeks if Kerryon Johnson is healthy and running well. This Rams offense can be run on so the Blount, Johnson, Riddick combo could have a solid day.

Nick Chubb's ranking here is a very misleading number. Since becoming the leading rusher in that backfield he has been superb. This is a tough matchup but Chubb is a legitimate top running back who I welcomed to the RB1 club a few weeks ago.

Wide Receivers

I know Trey Quinn (#22) only has two games against him but I have reason to think what he is doing is going to be important down the stretch. In the last two weeks he has seen 10 targets and found the end zone. He will not be spectacular but in deeper leagues I think he can provide value as a solid part of a very different looking offense in Washington.

Do not sleep on Dontrelle Inman either. Over the last four games he has 21 targets, at least three receptions per game and a touchdown in the last game against the Jaguars. With a lot of attention on Hilton and the tight ends Inman is extremely interesting. A similar message comes with Adam Humphries who often gets missed in the shuffle by defenses opposing the Buccaneers. Humphries has four touchdowns in the last five weeks and averages five receptions per game in that time. He seems to be a fairly big part of the game plan and Winston clearly has some faith in him.

Final name I want to highlight is not actually on this list. Josh Reynolds has had an up-and-down season with some injuries and playing as the fourth wide receiver. However, we saw against Kansas City what he can do and if we only included games in which Kupp is injured I would expect him to rank fairly nicely.

Tight Ends

The loss of Jack Doyle to the tight end position is a huge blow. His injury sounds grim and I hope he gets well soon. Doyle may not have brought the highest upside at the position but he brought a solid floor week-in week-out when he was healthy. He will be sorely missed.

Evan Engram once again has an injury issue, this time his hamstring. It is frustrating for a player who had been building momentum in that offense. Njoku is another guy with injury issues and has had a weird pattern the last few weeks. Since Week 7 he has alternated four or more catches in a game with either zero or one. It must just be a case of game script as he has also seen his targets drop off in those two weeks where he struggled. If he is active Sunday then if the pattern were to hold he would be in line for another bad week.

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