Strength in Numbers: Actionable Week 4 Stats

We’re going to get a lot of stuff wrong, but sifting through usage metrics can help us work through what matters and what doesn’t. That’s the goal of this article: to break down the most actionable takeaways from each week in a concise, numbers-filled format and work through what’s important. Let’s get right to it.

1. Ezekiel Elliott‘s small Week 3 role continued in Week 4, as Zeke played just 10 snaps and got five carries vs. Rico Dowdle‘s 25 and 11, respectively. Hunter Luepke remained the passing-down back for Dallas and out-routed Dowdle 13-9. This is generally an ugly backfield, even though we expect it to be a good offense, and Dalvin Cook could make it even uglier at some point. Zeke should be dropped everywhere and Dowdle is a desperation starter.

2. Wan’Dale Robinson and Malik Nabers combined for 72.5% of Daniel Jones‘ targets on Thursday. Nabers got concussed late and will be questionable for Week 5, though the 10-day break between games certainly helps. Robinson’s seasonal aDOT is just 4.8, so he needs massive target volume to be fantasy-relevant, but he’s getting it right now. He’s a PPR flex option who would ascend into near must-start status if Nabers misses.

3. Chris Olave hurt his hamstring in practice on Friday and, while he grimaced a couple of times after making plays, his playing time didn’t change. Olave had 10 targets on 36 attempts and ran 35 routes on 39 dropbacks. He should be good to go for Week 5, but we’ll watch the injury report. Alvin Kamara was similarly on the injury report, with what we now know as broken ribs, but he played 82% of snaps, got 19 carries, and caught seven of nine targets in his usual role. Playing through broken ribs has to lower his value somewhat — he could be less efficient or the NO staff could ease off him at some point — but there’s no reason to be overly worried since he still was in his normal role on Sunday.