Key Fantasy Football Data from Week 12

December 1, 2021

Jon Anderson provides key fantasy football data, stats and charts from Week 12. Analyze the snaps, touches, target shares, and other key NFL metrics for fantasy.

Welcome back to my weekly fantasy football data dump! I missed Week 11 and I apologize for that. I'm sure you were all just starved for the missing data tables, but I hope you can all climb out of the pit and have hope again in life.

This year continues to be a really strange one. We saw a few landscape-altering injuries in Week 12, and more smash-spot-busts that have been so common this year. Every fantasy football analyst has been wrong a lot this year, but we hope you're navigating the waters with success anyways!

Here's the data for Week 12! First up: team plays breakdown.

Situational Data

The Rams played from being against the Cowboys and ended up running 92 plays while throwing the ball 53% of the time. Washington also ran a huge number of plays as the Seahawks just cannot keep hold of the ball these days. The Chargers, Seahawks, Steelers, and Colts the way in pass rate, while the Titans, Bengals, and 49ers were the most rush-heavy offenses.

This data is largely influenced by game environment, and we saw quite a few games that weren't very competitive this week, which really commands what teams have to do.

Let's move on to snaps data.

Another 100% for Cooper Kupp and Tyler Higbee, we have seen those names at the top of this list nearly every week. Odell Beckham played 61 snaps for the Rams, which is pretty crazy considering that Van Jefferson was right there with him at 61 himself. The Rams went three-wide all game long, and all three of those names are fantasy-worthy starts moving forward.

Diontae Johnson and Chase Claypool also had a heavy workload as the Steelers fell behind big right away and had to play aggressively the entire game.

This table is best used by searching for a team abbreviation or player name you're most interested in to see how their snaps broke down. Now on to passers data.

Quarterbacks Data for Fantasy Football

Mac Jones continues to play better and better as the Patriots look like a legitimate contender, he posted a slate-leading 9.7 yards per attempt and notched a 300-yard game through the air. Derek Carr and Josh Allen were also wildly successful throwing the ball right up at the top of the list there in yards per attempt. The ADoT leader was Matthew Stafford who averaged 10.7 air yards on his 39 attempts, with Trevor Lawrence right behind him - once again throwing the ball deep a lot without having much success.

The worst quarterbacks of the week were Jalen Hurts (4.2 yards per attempt on 31 throws), Cam Newton, and Ryan Tannehill (both of them went for 4.4 yards per attempt on 21 throws). Lamar Jackson also struggled with just a 5.2 yards per attempt mark on his 32 throws. Check out the rest of the data!

Touches Data for Fantasy Football

J.D. McKissic went down late in the game, and appears set to miss some time. Antonio Gibson saw a season-high 37 touches in this game as Washington led the Seahawks for most of the game. Elijah Mitchell also saw another huge vote of confidence from the 49ers, posting a massive fantasy game on his 32 touches. Most encouragingly, he grabbed five catches - something that we haven't seen from him much this year.

Joe Mixon took advantage of the Bengals' big lead over the Steelers and posted another big workload day with 28 carries and four catches. The other name at the top of the list was AJ Dillon, who the Packers leaned on heavily despite activating Aaron Jones for the game. That should have been mostly expected since Jones' return was much quicker than initially thought and Green Bay having a bye next week.

Receivers/Tight Ends Data for Fantasy Football

No surprise at the top as Diontae Johnson led the way in targets and catches while the Steelers (unsuccessfully) played catch-up in Cincinnati. Cole Kmet also had himself a game on Thanksgiving seeing eleven looks with Allen Robinson on the shelf. Another surprising name near the top was Marquez Valdes-Scantling who saw a season-high 10 targets but didn't do much with them catching just four of his targets for 50 yards.

Jaylen Waddle was the most successful on a per-target basis, hauling in nine of his 10 targets for a massive 137 yards and a touchdown. D.J. Moore earned ten targets, but targets from Cam Newton haven't been worth that much as he's been erratic throwing the ball. Moore did salvage his day with a long catch in the first quarter, which helped him get over the century mark on just four catches.

Three different Rams earned more than nine targets, with none of them going over 100 yards. You can feel pretty good about knowing where the ball is going when this team is playing from behind, which we've seen more of lately as Stafford's play has diminished, possibly due to some lurking injuries. Check out the rest of the table yourself!

Target Share Progressions for Fantasy Football

We'll finish up with the target share progression table, we're just looking at the last five weeks for save-spacing purposes.

We finish this post up with the updated target share progression table, looking at team target share over the last five weeks. I'm only showing pass catchers that have averaged at least 5% over the last weeks, so you might not see some names you're looking for here. The target share winners of the week were D.J. Moore (38.5%), Elijah Moore (38.1%), Tee Higgins (36.4%), and Diontae Johnson (35.9%). Despite the mixed results, those names should be considered must-start moving forward in leagues of any significant size.

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