Five Stats to Know: 2025 Week 7

Week 7 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: Rashee Rice Came For Travis Kelce’s Soul

It was a long wait. But if you drafted Rashee Rice and held on for the first six weeks of the season, you’re now in an incredible position.

In his first game back, Rice produced 7 catches for 42 yards and 2 TDs on a team-leading 28.6% target share. The Chiefs’ passing offense was much-improved by his presence, with Patrick Mahomes posting 9.50 adjusted net yards per attempt (ANY/A) and a 126.6 passer rating in a thorough drubbing of the Raiders. Those were the 2nd-best and 3rd-best marks (respectively) that Mahomes has produced in a game since Rice went down in Week 4 of last season.

Rice averages 9.5 targets, 84.8 receiving YPG, and 20.0 FPG over his last 10 healthy regular-season games. Those marks would rank 5th-best, 8th-best, and 5th-best among all WRs this year. Rice hasn’t dipped below a 20.7% target share in any of them, and has been over 27% in half of them. He’s at worst a top-6 WR rest-of-season, and I wouldn’t even consider trading him for any WR not named Puka Nacua, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Ja’Marr Chase, or CeeDee Lamb.

Another notable trend is that Travis Kelce averages just 8.7 FPG on 5.4 targets per game in his last 10 regular-season games alongside a healthy Rice. He hit a season-low 8.6% target share in Week 7. I wouldn’t consider Kelce that far above the streaming tier at the position for the rest of the year.

Stat #2: The Backfields That Will Drive Us Insane

I think the Jets’ backfield has earned its place in this section.

Over the past three games since Braelon Allen’s injury, Breece Hall has received 90% of the backfield’s rush attempts and every carry inside the red zone. But that’s about the only area in which I don’t have complaints.

The Jets’ complete inability to move the ball has resulted in just 12.0 weighted opportunities per game (~RB25) for Hall over this period despite the robust rushing workload. Even worse, Hall’s target share has fallen from 15.0% (~RB4) before Allen’s injury to just 7.2% (~RB35) since. Isaiah Davis is up from 4.7% to 9.3% when comparing the same split.

However, if Hall isn’t on his way out of New York (and if he is traded, it would very likely be to a better fantasy situation), I do think there’s a bit more reason for optimism than the Week 7 box score would indicate.

3 of Davis’s 4 targets in this game came on the remainder of the Jets’ final drive before halftime after Hall left with an ankle injury. Hall returned after the half and received all 3 RB opportunities the rest of the way.

From that, you can probably deduce that the team abandoned the run in the 2nd half. But the team moving to Tyrod Taylor could actually be great for Hall in the long run; he gets the Bengals next week, and then this offense could look closer to competent if Taylor and Garrett Wilson are both in the lineup after the bye.

Either way, I’d send out some buy-low feelers on Hall this week. You can win big by sending a FLEX or low-end RB2-level piece for him now if he’s traded, with the additional out of the offense potentially improving sans Fields, should he stay put.

Stat #3: The Tucker Kraft Injury Angle

Tucker Kraft is a special player. Entering this week, he ranked 2nd among TEs and top-20 among WRs in YPRR on the season (2.27). Last year, he ranked behind only George Kittle at the position in yards per target (10.9) and ahead of players like Justin Jefferson and Nico Collins. He’s very Kittle-esque in that it’s always felt like he’d break fantasy football if he were ever a top-2 target on a high-volume passing offense.

So what if I told you that whenever he hasn’t been on the injury report in 2025, that’s exactly what he’s done?

Kraft was listed with a knee injury ahead of Week 3, which lingered through the team’s bye. He also picked up an elbow injury the following week, which wasn’t removed from the team’s official report until before this week’s game. Outside of those potentially injury-affected games, Kraft’s utilization has been elite.

Over his next two games, Kraft plays the Steelers and Panthers, the two softest schedule-adjusted matchups for opposing TEs this season. Then, the Packers’ schedule gets significantly tougher from a real-life perspective as they play the Eagles and the bulk of their divisional games to end the season, meaning they should have to drop back somewhat frequently. That’s helped even more by a defense that’s now ranked 3rd-worst in EPA/play allowed over their past three games, after ranking 3rd-best over the first three weeks.

Kraft is a top-5 TE to me over the rest of the season. I’d prefer him to anyone not named Trey McBride, Tyler Warren, George Kittle, or Brock Bowers.

Stat #4: Andy Dalton Is Back To Save Us

Andy Dalton played the entire 4th quarter after Bryce Young left Week 7 with an ankle injury. We don’t have many details, but Young sounds legitimately questionable for Week 8.

This is especially noteworthy because in his very limited action this year, Dalton is averaging 9.21 ANY/A (would rank ~QB2) and a 123.2 passer rating (~QB2), compared to Young’s 5.07 (QB26) and 84.4 (QB26), respectively. In fairness, all of Dalton’s action has come in 4th quarters, but he has a history of supporting a high-end fantasy WR in Dave Canales’ offense; he fed Diontae Johnson 17.8 XFP/G and 8 end zone targets across his five starts in 2024, resulting in 15.2 FPG.

This notably came right before Johnson began his rapid descent out of the league. If Dalton could do that for him, surely he can engineer a Tetairoa McMillan breakout for however long he remains in the lineup.

The only small caveat is that Dalton actually targeted Xavier Legette on 5 of his 7 attempts this game. However, that’s a relatively small sample, and Sauce Gardner may have influenced this (though he left the game with a concussion later in the 4th quarter). Refer to Chris Wecht’s shadow report on Tuesday for an update on that front.

Stat #5: Sell-High On D’Andre Swift

Now that he’s averaged 20.8 FPG over his last three games, I’d explore selling high on D’Andre Swift.

The reasoning is fairly simple. Kyle Monangai has siphoned off a 38% backfield carry share and 2 of 5 touches inside the 10 since the bye. Over that time, Swift is averaging just 14.5 weighted opportunities per game (~RB17) despite the offense largely moving the ball in neutral or positive game scripts. Monangai could continue to become more involved, or Swift could naturally become less productive as the Bears get into more obvious passing situations.

According to lookahead lines, the Bears are favored in only three of their ten remaining games this fantasy season. And Swift has always been game script-sensitive; he’s averaging 16.7 FPG in games the Bears have won since the start of last season, compared to just 9.4 FPG in losses. This year, that split is 16.8 to 8.7.

The immediate upcoming schedule (@ BAL, @ CIN, NYG) is actually fairly appealing, but it gets noticeably tougher from Week 11 on (@ MIN, PIT, @ PHI, @ GB, CLE, GB, @ SF). I would leverage this point in trade negotiations to attempt to offload Swift to a team desperate for short-term RB production.