Welcome to Statistically (in)Significant, the place to find great stats that probably only matter at the water cooler (or bar). Each week I'll dig through the stats of the week gone by and deliver you some choice conversation starters. All fantasy stats are standard Yahoo scoring unless otherwise noted.
2 TDs in 21 Seconds
Derrick Henry sure loves to play against the Jaguars. In 8 career games against them, his team is 6-2, and he has 857 yards from scrimmage and 10 total touchdowns. He especially loves to play against them at home – he has 397 rush yards and 6 TDs in the last 2 Jaguars/Titans games in Nashville. On Sunday, he even was able to score 2 TDs in just a 21 second span, accounting for 100% of the Titans offense on two consecutive drives. With 10:51 left in the 3rd quarter, the Titans started a drive from their own 26 and Henry promptly took the first snap 74 yards for a score. On the ensuing kickoff, the Jaguars fumbled and the Titans recovered on the 7-yard line. The next snap, Henry took it right in to the end zone, to give him 20.1 fantasy points over the course of 21 seconds of game time – not bad! Hell, the rest of the team got involved in the fun on their very next possession just a couple of minutes later. Ryan Tannehill connected with A.J. Brown on a short pass and Brown did the rest of the work, scoring a 65-yard TD, completing a run by the Titans that saw them score 28 points in just over 6 minutes of game time.
2 of the Top 8 QBs
In our drinkfive.com league, only 2 of the top 8 QBs so far in Week 12 are owned by teams. This is a 10-team league, so admittedly Baker Mayfield should be owned, but I dropped him over a month ago and he’s been a FA ever since. But I digress – I was amazed to find the average ownership of the top 8 QBs to be only 47.5%. This is the kind of stat that you find early in the season while everyone is getting used to a new year, not in Week 12 when we’re all fighting for playoff spots. Leading the way was Ryan Tannehill, the only QB to break 30 points (so far) this week. He had 2 touchdowns through the air and added 2 more on the ground. Following him was Sam Darnold who also had 2 through the air and found the end zone via his feet as well. Raise your hand if you thought Tannehill and Darnold would be the QB1 and QB2 of this week. If your hand is up, you’re a damn liar, or you can see the future.
3 Games Over 150 Yards Receiving
Chris Godwin was the highest scoring positional player (non-QB) of the bunch on Sunday, putting up 184 yards and 2 scores via some of the most impressive catches of the week. Godwin is the only player other than Tannehill to break the 30-point mark in standard scoring, and he’s now got 3 games with at least 150 receiving yards this season. If you combine this with Mike Evans’ 3 games of at least 180 yards this year, you have the first pair of Bucs teammates to break 1000 yards in a season, as well as the first teammates anywhere to each have 3 games of 150+ yards in a season. In a down year at the position, these two have absolutely dominated, constantly remaining in the top 3 – they’re currently WR1 (Godwin) and WR3 (Evans).
104 Receptions in 11 Games
One wide receiver who is not experiencing a down year is Michael Thomas, who already has a stat line that anyone would be proud of for an entire season. He’s currently sitting at 104 receptions, 1,242 yards and 6 TDs, and he still has 5 games to go! The receptions and yards are both leading the NFL, and it’s not really close. He has 23 receptions more than the 2nd highest total (DeAndre Hopkins) and 171 receiving yards more than Chris Godwin, who comes in 2nd there. Thomas is still on pace to hit 150 receptions on the season, which is probably a record that can stand for quite some time. He is averaging over 100 catches per year now in his first 4 seasons, and has topped 1130+ yards in each of those seasons as well. We’re watching the very beginning of what can certainly be a hall-of-fame career, and damn is it exciting. I suspect he will be the first WR off the board for years to come in fantasy drafts.
21 Fantasy Points for the D/ST
Congrats to the Washington Redskins for managing to score 19 points and win a game without an offensive or defensive TD. They did manage one score on a kickoff return in a play that looked like it could have been a disaster but turned into a touchdown, all credit to Steven Sims for that run. The Redskins now have 2 wins, all but ensuring the Bengals the first pick in the 2020 draft, up 2 games with just 5 left to play. Meanwhile, the Detroit Lions are trying to figure out how to win. The team is 3-7-1 this year and they have had a lead in every single game this season. It’s hard to find things to be encouraged by on both teams. The Lions are trotting out Jeff Driskel and Bo Scarbrough, who had an OK day but his fantasy numbers were marred by a fumble. Meanwhile, the Dwayne Haskins finally got a win, but he was too busy celebrating with fans to realize the game hadn’t actually ended and was nowhere to be found to take a knee to actually end it. The reactions at the end of the game to this were basically what I’d expect from a 2-9 team that had to fire their coach this year.
