Fantasy Football: 3 Things We Learned From Week 9
Jarvis Landry Is Losing Fantasy Potency
Jarvis Landry has never been a metrics darling, due in large part to his role as an extreme possession receiver. In fact, numberFire had articles predicting Landry being overvalued for fantasy football heading into the 2015 and 2016 seasons.
The Landry shade was grounded in logic. Using numberFire's Net Expected Points (NEP) metric, we can determine how well Landry's performed above or below expectation using down-and-distance data from historical plays in identical scenarios. You can learn more about NEP by checking out our glossary.
| Receptions | Reception NEP | Reception NEP Rank | Reception NEP /Target | Reception NEP/Target | Success Rate | Success Rate Rank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 84 | 63.29 | 32 of 40 | 0.57 | 33 of 40 | 76.19% | 37 of 40 |
| 2015 | 111 | 82.26 | 25 of 32 | 0.49 | 32 of 32 | 72.97% | 30 of 32 |
| 2016 | 46 | 38.96 | 30 of 42 | 0.6 | 29 of 42 | 73.91% | 40 of 42 |
Landry ranked near the bottom of every important metric among receivers with at least 100 targets in both 2014 and 2015. That includes Reception NEP, Reception NEP per target, and Reception Success Rate, which is the percentage of total receptions that positively contribute to NEP.
And Landry's up to his old tricks again in 2016, where we measured him against receivers who've received at least 50 targets this season. The thing that's always sustained Landry's fantasy value, particularly in PPR leagues, is volume. And that volume's been lacking in recent weeks, culminating in a six-target game against the Jets, his fourth game in a row where he was held under 10 targets.
It's clear that Adam Gase wants to captain a run-heavy offense this season, and the emergence of Jay Ajayi should allow him to do so. Landry's woes will continue if the volume isn't there for him. And at this point, the trend of Landry as a double-digit target threat every week is fading fast.
