Five Stats to Know: 2025 Week 2

Week 2 is (mostly) in the books! In case you aren’t an insane person like me who likes to spend his Sunday night digging through usage data, I’ve curated five stats that will help you make better decisions in all fantasy football formats for the coming weeks.

I’ll also do my best to provide buy, sell, and waiver recommendations for managed leagues where applicable based on my findings. For a broader (if slightly less detailed) overview of usage across the league, I recommend this Twitter thread.

Stat #1: Jake Browning Is A Top-15 QB For The Next Three Months

Joe Burrow was knocked out of the Bengals’ Week 2 game in the 2nd quarter with a turf toe injury. Initial reports indicate he could miss up to three months.

Despite not entering the game until about halfway through the 2nd quarter, Jake Browning amassed 20.7 fantasy points in what remained a shootout against a Jaguars’ defense that Bryce Young notably couldn’t penetrate in Week 1. It wasn’t always pretty — Browning tossed 3 interceptions — but outside of the turnovers, he largely kept things moving.

And perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising, based on how good he was for fantasy as a rookie. Across 7 starts in 2023, he averaged 20.5 FPG and 0.55 FP/DB; both those marks would have ranked as the QB7 last year. While it’s true that the team ran hot by housing a lot of screens for TDs, he still averaged a respectable 17.6 FPG with all screen passes removed (~QB12). And remember, this was a version of the Bengals that still had a defense, having allowed only the 13th-most points per game (22.6) that season.

If Browning has improved at all since his rookie year, he should have no trouble at all posting low-end QB1 numbers, even accounting for some regression. Over the next three months, the Bengals’ Week 6 matchup against the Packers is the only one I’d worry much about avoiding. Browning is worth ~10% of your FAAB in single-quarterback leagues, or up to 40% in Superflex formats.

This is a disaster for the Bengals and their season from a real-life perspective, but I wouldn’t be so quick to declare major downgrades for all of their skill players in fantasy football. Here’s how the volume (expected fantasy points) and actual fantasy points looked for Joe Mixon, Ja’Marr Chase, and Tee Higgins across Browning’s 2024 stint as a starter:

In other words, Mixon was still a solid RB1, while Higgins remained a WR2 (on WR3-level volume), and Chase fell into the WR3 mix despite superior volume. I think this slightly understates what we can expect from Chase and Higgins — as this offense is now more consolidated around those two WRs than it was in 2023 (after the departure of Tyler Boyd) — but this paints a useful picture to work from.

The most notable thing about the 2023 Browning offense is that it was especially screen-heavy. The Bengals threw a screen or designed target on 19.6% of their pass attempts over that stretch, which compares to just 6.3% in 2024 (the lowest rate in the NFL). In Browning’s stint, 53% of those screens went to RBs (mostly Joe Mixon and Chase Brown, who was in the midst of flashing late in his rookie season).

But if the Bengals were to bring that screen-heavy offense back, I’d expect it to benefit Ja’Marr Chase more than anyone else. Since Mixon left, Chase has taken over screen duties, receiving 53% of the Bengals’ designed targets in 2024. Chase Brown saw 25%, and no other player saw more than 10%.

We also can’t discount what we saw through the two-and-a-half quarters we got from Browning this past weekend. Once he entered the game, Chase commanded a 34.4% target share (resulting in 22.8 fantasy points). For perspective, he had just a 26.4% target share last year, when he won the triple crown and finished as the overall fantasy WR1. With all of this considered, Chase remains a mid-range WR1 to me; I’m only certain I’d rather have Puka Nacua, CeeDee Lamb, and Malik Nabers for the rest of the season. Justin Jefferson, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, and Nico Collins (pending MNF usage and results) are the only other receivers in the conversation for me.

Based on 2023, I also wouldn’t be surprised to see a moderate uptick in Chase Brown’s usage both on the ground and in the receiving game. We know a Browning offense can support a fantasy RB1, and there were whispers this offseason that Brown would be more involved in the screen game. We’ve yet to see that through two weeks, but with a full week to gameplan, I expect the Bengals to conclude that the offense would benefit from involving the backfield more. This will naturally come with a decline in scoring opportunities from not playing next to Joe Burrow, but I only see this as a slight downgrade for Brown on balance. He remains on the high-end RB2/low-end RB1 borderline.

If anybody is screwed, I’d guess it’s Higgins. He’s never seen much screen usage, and he commanded just a 15.6% target share after Browning entered the game (not unlike the 15.5% he had across four full games with Browning in 2023). He’s now scored a TD in four of five full games with Browning, but that’s not something we can bank on continuing. He’s more of a low-end WR2 to me moving forward.

Stat #2: The Backfields That Will Drive Us Insane

That’s right: this recurring segment is returning to 5 Stats To Know this year.

First up — somewhat surprisingly — are the Rams. While this backfield in Week 1 was almost exactly what we grew used to throughout 2023 and 2024, we saw a major departure in Week 2.

While Kyren Williams still maintained the lion’s share of the touches (77% of backfield carries and both backfield targets), he crucially ceded red zone work to Blake Corum. Corum received the only carry from inside the five-yard line during this game, 2 of 3 from inside the 10, and an additional touch from the 11-yard line. He was noticeably in the game in the red zone on multiple different drives, so I don’t think this was a product of drive sequencing or coincidence.

We’ll know more when we have exact snap counts by mid-day on Monday. But this is just the second time Corum has ever out-carried Williams inside the 10-yard line; the first was in Week 11, when Corum saw the backfield’s sole touch there.

So there’s a chance this is a false alarm, but if it’s not, this would be catastrophic for Williams. 5.2 of his 17.0 FPG in 2024 was scored from inside the five-yard line. In other words, he is massively dependent on his red zone work and would only project as a weekly FLEX option without it. I would see what I can get for him.

Stat #3: Checking In On Rookie RBs

In Week 2, Day 3 rookies Cam Skattebo and Bhayshul Tuten captured larger shares of their backfields than Round 2 rookies TreVeyon Henderson and RJ Harvey. Meanwhile, Kaleb Johnson muffed a kick and didn’t even attempt to recover it. It’s going well.

Though I was quite encouraged by Tuten’s usage in the screen game and this backfield’s overall productivity in the face of another up-and-down day from Trevor Lawrence, the real winner of the day was undoubtedly Skattebo. After playing on only 7 snaps in Week 1, he led the Giants in backfield carry share (65%) in Week 2. He’s also the only RB on the team to have received a carry inside the 10-yard line this season, having amassed 3 of 3.

Russell Wilson isn’t going to throw for 450 yards and appear in the winning lineup of the DraftKings Millionaire Maker in most weeks. I’d expect the Giants to struggle to move the ball at all against the Chiefs in Week 3. But still, this usage is enough to immediately put Skattebo in weekly FLEX consideration, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him continue to consolidate even more of this backfield as the season goes on. In that sense, he is a “buy-high” candidate.

I also want to say that I fully expect all of the rookies mentioned at the top of this section (except for Kaleb Johnson, honestly) to eventually win the lead roles in their respective backfields this year. Skattebo should serve as a reminder that any of them could only be a week away from your lineup. Be patient.

Stat #4: Elic Ayomanor Is A Matthew Stafford Away From Being Rookie Puka Nacua

After Titans Day 3 rookie WR Elic Ayomanor ranked top-10 in first-read target share during Week 1, Scott Barrett proclaimed him the most likely to be this year’s version of rookie Puka Nacua. That performance happened within the context of Broncos CB Pat Surtain shadowing Calvin Ridley, so I could have entertained arguments that this was “irresponsible” or “jumping the gun.” But after Week 2, I will no longer entertain such arguments.

Ayomanor has only one fewer target than Ridley through two games. This week, he led the Titans in receiving yards (48) and fantasy points (13.8) thanks to an excellent one-handed sideline catch (below) and a subsequent TD reception that came after Cam Ward extended a play and threw back across his body.

Indulge me in making a fun comparison that controls for the effects of playing with a rookie QB instead of Matthew Stafford. Over his first two NFL games, Puka Nacua had amassed 39.6% of his team’s receiving yards, with Tutu Atwell as his primary target competition. Ayomanor is currently at 31.9% while competing with Ridley, a real NFL WR with multiple 1,000-yard seasons in his career. Ja’Marr Chase was at 35.2% through his first two games.

Ayomanor was only rostered in 8% of Yahoo! leagues and 28% of Sleeper leagues as of Sunday night. I implore you to spend up to 15% of your FAAB on him if he’s available in yours.

Stat #5: Trey Benson Is A Dynasty Buy

My hesitancy with Trey Benson as both a James Conner handcuff and a dynasty asset has always been that I was unsure whether he’d have any pass-catching role even in a post-Conner world. Throughout his rookie season, we saw players like Emari Demercado play over him in long down-and-distance situations, with Benson only commanding six targets through all of 2024. If his role could never include receiving work, his upside would always have been capped at that of a low-end RB2.

But in Week 2, Benson commanded six targets — again, the same number he saw all of last season — and the Cardinals once again used only two RBs. Assuming I don’t learn that he did this on fewer than 10 routes run once we have charted data on Monday afternoon (and perhaps even then), I’m now of the mindset that Benson is one of the highest-upside handcuffs in all of fantasy football, and a bargain at the ~Round 2 rookie pick prices he was going for in dynasty leagues last week (and all offseason).

Whenever and however Benson takes over, a true every-down bellcow role now appears in his range of outcomes. I’ll be offering 2026 2nds for him everywhere this week.