Determining what is real, sustainable production instead of unreliable production is critical for your fantasy team. Players that have sustainable production should be anchors to your team and the type of players you seek to acquire in the trade market. Players that have unsustainable production are the types of players that you should not depend on in your lineup and sell trades.
Will Miles Sanders Continue to Struggle?
Miles Sanders signed the biggest free agent running back contract of the offseason for four years and 25 million dollars with 13 million dollars guaranteed. The contract locked him into a clear starting role for the first three weeks until he had a big-time share with Chuba Hubbard in the past two weeks. Hubbard has out-snapped Sanders over the past two weeks and led the team in carries each of the past two weeks. Sanders has stabilized his receiving work, running routes on 46% of the team’s dropbacks, but this is turning into a full-blown committee in a way that was not anticipated coming into the season. Importantly, Sanders’ performance is a likely explanation. His rushing yards versus expectation is -0.72 compared to 0.38 for Hubbard. Additionally, Sanders has been over expectation on only 23% of his carries, compared to 40% for Hubbard. Sanders entered the season with a high-level opportunity, but his poor play is turning him into a committee back, with the Panthers having a healthy dose of buyer remorse for overspending on Sanders in the offseason.
Verdict: Sanders’s struggles are real, and his poor performance is likely to keep him in a committee with Chuba Hubbard for the foreseeable future, capping his fantasy upside.
Is DJ Moore Really a Top 5 WR?
DJ Moore is a top 5 wide receiver in fantasy points through five weeks, and he averaged a robust 38 points per game in weeks 4 and 5. Moore had two receptions in week 5 over 40 yards, including a 56-yard receiving touchdown, as well as two more receptions for more than 30 yards. Moore did all this with an aDOT of 11.5 and averaged 17.8 yards after the catch. On the season, Moore is third in yards after the catch over expected (3.4) behind only Nico Collins and Jaylen Waddle through three weeks. Moore has an outlier profile in terms of production this season. On the season, Moore ranks 27th in wide receiver targets with 34 with 110.1 PPR points on the season and has scored 3.2 points per target, an unsustainable level of production. Targets are the critical part of fantasy production at the wide receiver. Since 2017, wide receivers with more than 50 targets averaged 1.83 PPR points per target. Those wide receivers with 100 over more targeted averaged 1.89 PPR points per target. This stat is highly variable from year to year, with an r-squared of only 0.07. In other words, a wide receiver’s performance candidate, in points per target, only explains 7% of the player’s performance the following year. Over time, production will regress back toward the historical mean of wide receiver scoring. The best way to think of this stat in season is that Moore is on a hot streak, but the production is unlikely to continue.
Overall, targets predict 85% of wide receiver fantasy points, and Moore ranks in the WR2 range of targets per game (6.8). Without a target production of 7.5 per game or higher, Moore is going to have a difficult time maintaining this level of production.
To maintain Moore’s top 5 at this level of production, he will need a 20% increase in targets per game or maintain a level of variance that historically has been nearly impossible to sustain. Moore is a very good wide receiver, but at some point, he will play a defense that will tackle him. In redraft formats, consider using Moore to pivot to a wide receiver with higher target expectations or for a cross-positional upgrade. Moore is the ideal pivot player in dynasty formats. He was outside the top 20 wide receivers in value in the offseason and is now in the mid-teens in public valuation. Moore is an ideal player to use to get a quarterback upgrade in Superflex dynasty formats, and dynasty GMs with Moore should reach out to the dynasty GM with Justin Jefferson. Jefferson is the best wide receiver in dynasty formats, has a much more durable production profile long-term, and may now be available because he was placed on injured reserve.
Verdict: Moore is a classic regression overperforming his target volume. He has the volume and efficiency and play in the WR2 level for the rest of the season, but if you expect top 6 production to continue, be prepared to be let down.