Hello, and welcome to Week 16 of the Expected Fantasy Points Report. If you’re unfamiliar with expected fantasy points, you can read this in-depth explanation from the offseason. You can also read more about expected touchdowns.
Every week we’ll be using a 10-season sample of play-by-play data to calculate expected fantasy points from a player’s seasonal or weekly usage. We look at each target (by distance from the end zone and depth of target) and each carry (by distance from the end zone and down and distance) and add this up to determine how valuable a player’s role was for fantasy. We can contrast this with fantasy production to measure efficiency.
In layman’s terms, expected fantasy points measures the exact worth of a player’s volume – “how many points a player should have scored” given his workload, based on what the average player would have scored.
Through 15 weeks of action, here are the top-25 players in expected fantasy points per game:
[Note: Full-season XFP is now available for download in spreadsheet form. We’ll be releasing it each week in our PFF Elite Facebook Group. This spreadsheet will also include valuable PFF-exclusive metrics like XTD, air yards, end zone targets, and more. If you’re not already an Elite subscriber I highly recommend joining.]
A.J. Brown, WR, Tennessee Titans
(XFP: 8.9, PPR: 12.8, Diff: +3.9)
Brown, the league’s most efficient fantasy wide receiver, finally saw WR1 volume in Week 15. 30% of Brown’s fantasy points have come on efficiency (+3.9), rather than volume (8.9), which leads the league. In Week 15, Brown hit season-highs in XFP (22.7), targets (13), and air yards (184), all of which ranked top-seven on the week and were almost double his prior season-highs. Since Week 13, Brown ranks behind only Michael Thomas in fantasy points per game (22.5), despite still ranking just 35th in XFP per game (11.8).
Devin Singletary, RB, Buffalo Bills
(XFP: 11.2, PPR: 13.1, Diff: +1.9)
Singletary was stuck in a 50/50 committee alongside Frank Gore for much of the season, but that no longer seems to be the case. Singletary saw a season-high 26 opportunities in Week 14 and fell just short of that number in Week 15 (24). Now, for the fifth straight game, Singletary has eclipsed a 70% snap share, and, for the third straight game, a 70% XFP share. Although the production hasn’t quite been there, and he draws a bottom-five matchup for the third consecutive week, Singletary can be safely started as a mid-range RB2 or better.