Five Stats to Know: 2025 Week 8

Week 8 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: Devastating Rookie RB Injury Number One

Quinshon Judkins left the 3rd quarter of the Browns’ Week 8 game with a shoulder injury. As of Sunday night, we’ve received no update on its severity. And we may not for a while; the team won’t have to publish another injury report until Wednesday, November 5th, as they have their bye next week.

But if we get anything on the spectrum from no news to actively concerning news, I want to be sure to add fellow Browns rookie RB Dylan Sampson this week. After Judkins left the game, Sampson received all 3 of the backfield’s remaining carries and commanded a whopping 6 targets (30% target share) the rest of the way.

For much of the season, we’ve seen Jerome Ford monopolize long down-and-distance snaps and obvious passing situations. But he received just one target (and on a 1st and 10, to boot) after Judkins left. That’s a potential signal that Sampson could take over as both the Browns’ primary early-down rusher and as the primary backfield pass-catcher should Judkins miss time.

Remember, the Browns fed Sampson to the tune of 17.8 XFP (the 8th-most of any RB that week) in his first career game in Week 1. The overarching theme of their season has been giving their young players every possible opportunity to prove their worth. I’d expect Sampson to project as a top-15 RB in any game that Judkins misses.

I can’t in good conscience provide an exact recommended FAAB bid until we’re through the Tuesday morning news cycle, but I’ll put it this way: if we were to hypothetically learn Judkins were out for the season, I would happily empty all my remaining FAAB on Sampson.

Stat #2: The Backfields That Will Drive Us Insane

As many of the NFL’s backfields have now stabilized from a usage perspective, going forward, I’ll probably just be highlighting whichever backfield made me the most angry in a given week here. That was definitely the Falcons in Week 8.

That said, there were still a few oddities in this backfield’s usage this week. Excluding Nate Carter’s two “surrender carries” at the end of the game, Bijan Robinson received a 69% carry share and a 9.7% target share. That’s actually a slightly higher carry share than he saw over the first 7 weeks (60%), but this was his first time below a 14% target share all season. Even more tilting, Tyler Allgeier received both carries inside the 10-yard line (though he’d seen 8 of 12 previously).

But the real reason Robinson wasn’t productive was that the team simply didn’t move the ball with Kirk Cousins; the Falcons gained a first down on only one of their first 5 drives, and then Robinson himself fumbled on the 6th. And most astoundingly, this happened against the Miami Dolphins of all teams, who had previously allowed 100+ scrimmage yards or 26.0+ fantasy points to each of the last six RBs they’d faced.

That said, I don’t want to be too reactive in rest-of-season rankings to a game where the Falcons just didn’t show up with both their QB1 and WR1 out. Robinson remains my overall RB3. This is just a venting space.

Stat #3: Devastating Rookie RB Injury Number 2

Like fellow rookie Quinshon Judkins, Cam Skattebo suffered an injury on Sunday. Unlike Judkins, we already know that Skattebo is out for the season.

After he left the game, Tyrone Tracy received 7 of the backfield’s 9 carries — including the only one inside the 10-yard line — as well as an 11.8% target share. You could convincingly argue that Tracy is a better add than Dylan Sampson this week; both players project for similar shares of their respective backfields, their teams combine for just one game in which they’re favored over the entire rest of the season, and we at least know that Skattebo won’t return in Week 10 as if nothing happened, as Judkins very well could.

So the reason why I’m more excited about Sampson than Tracy (at least in theory, before having gotten any real Judkins news) largely comes down to perceived upside. Last season, Tracy played the 3rd-most snaps (607), ran the 5th-most routes (254), and amassed the 7th-most volume as measured by total XFP (188.3) among all rookie RBs since 2021. That amounted to just 13.3 FPG (~RB22) from Week 5 on after he took over the backfield. Jaxson Dart by himself makes the current offensive environment better than that one, but I don’t think the difference is so large that we should expect much beyond low-end RB2 production from Tracy.

Of course, that definitely still makes him worth a waiver claim or ~20-30% of your FAAB, or perhaps more, depending on how desperate you are at the position. But I can’t shake the thought that Sampson possesses more upside; he entered the week having averaged nearly the same yards after contact per touch (2.43) as Judkins (2.45).

Stat #4: Seriously, This Is Your Last Chance To Buy Low on Zay Flowers

Two weeks ago in The Everything Report, I made the case for Zay Flowers as a buy-low. After Lamar Jackson surprisingly didn’t return in Week 8, everything I wrote there remains the case as the Ravens gear up for Thursday Night Football in Week 9.

Flowers has now commanded at least a 24% target share in 6 of his 7 games (86%), compared to having done so in just 65% of his games last year. He’s at 29.2% (~WR7) on the season. Flowers was notoriously up-and-down on a weekly basis in 2024, but the improved target share and the increased likelihood of shootouts due to the Ravens’ struggling defense could even that out over the back half of 2025 once Jackson returns.

This season, across the Ravens’ three losses with Jackson in the lineup, Flowers averages 97.3 receiving YPG (would rank ~WR3) on 9.0 targets/game (WR7) and 16.3 XFP/G (WR9). There’s a real chance he scores as a WR1 the rest of the way.

Stat #5: …But You Should Also Be Buying The Rookie WRs

As a reminder, rookie WRs often see a massive increase in production in the second half of the season. An average of ~1.5 per year has averaged at least 16.0 FPG from Week 9 on since 2010.

I still think Emeka Egbuka is very likely to do so after his early-season success. But it’s worth considering that Egbuka, Tetairoa McMillan, and Travis Hunter have commanded practically identical target shares over their past three games. On a team with the appropriate depth, I would happily exchange an RB2 like Chase Brown or D’Andre Swift for either.

I wrote a detailed bull case for Hunter in last week’s Everything Report. I’m less confident in the Panthers’ offense than the Jaguars’, but McMillan has done nearly everything you’d want to see out of him over the first eight weeks, including almost hauling in an amazing one-handed TD catch in Week 8. Even though that play didn’t hit, he set season-highs in target share (41.7%) and team receiving yards market share (56.6%) on Sunday, and has now gone over 16.0 fantasy points in two of his last three games. I am quite optimistic.