Week 8 fantasy football action featured all 32 teams, and we saw a fair amount of the same old, same old in terms of utilization for the usual suspects, but a few notables stood out.
Running backs Breece Hall and Rachaad White have seen inflated PPR value the last two weeks with more stable receiving roles, whereas Saquon Barkley and Bijan Robinson each saw five targets in Week 8 but produced zero yards combined. Robinson didn’t even catch a pass. That can be chalked up as an anomaly, fortunately, but it stung nonetheless.
Barkley was utilized a ridiculous 41 times in Week 8, five familiar receivers all garnered 14 or more targets, and four tight ends each drew at least 10 looks. There were several moderate displays of fireworks statistically, but only CeeDee Lamb really went bonkers (41 PPR) with his massive utilization. Seven of the top 13 fantasy receivers in terms of points scored were utilized fewer than 10 times.
A few other interesting aerial tidbits include Seattle Seahawks WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba‘s downfield target percentage nearly doubling, New England Patriots WR Demario Douglas garnering 13 total looks in the last two games, and the Dallas Cowboys‘ Brandin Cooks is finally doing something, anything, with his four targets — the exact target mark five times this year — with scores in consecutive games.
Let’s see if we can find any useful intel from player involvement among some of the less obvious situations.
