Five Stats to Know: 2025 Week 9

Week 9 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: The Colston Loveland Breakout Is Here…Right?

We had to wait half the season for it, but Colston Loveland’s 118 receiving yards in Week 9 were the 2nd-most by a Bears receiver in any game this season. Included within his stat line was the game-winning 58-yard touchdown, as well as more targets (7) than both DJ Moore and Rome Odunze. So is it wheels up?

First, a pair of caveats. The first and less significant is that Cole Kmet left this game in the first half with a concussion. Loveland and the Bears’ passing game hadn’t done a whole lot to that point, but especially after this explosion, I’m not sure Kmet is a concerning obstacle anymore; it would be a surprising coaching decision to cap Loveland’s routes again after he’s performed so well in a full-time role. And Loveland will very likely get one more “free” week to separate even further from Kmet, assuming he’s indeed in concussion protocol.

The second and much more significant caveat is that almost every TE has done this to the Bengals.

All that said, I am genuinely optimistic and believe Loveland will at worst be in the TE streaming discussion for the remainder of the season. Since the Bears’ Week 5 bye, Loveland and Tyler Warren are responsible for the exact same percentage of their teams’ receiving yards (18.9%). Loveland had the same number of first-read targets (10) from Weeks 6 through 8 as Jake Ferguson and Dallas Goedert. The Bears want to be run-heavy, but this defense should force them to drop back at least semi-often, as it did in Week 9.

I’ll be digging into Loveland’s route and personnel usage rates alongside Kmet from the first half, but absent any shocking revelations there, I expect to remain high on him.

Stat #2: The Backfields That Will Drive Us Insane

Woody Marks was one of the few rookie RBs I expressed optimism could take over his backfield in the second half of the year in last week’s Everything Report. I was most excited that he’d started seeing rushing work inside the 10-yard line, on top of the receiving work he’d consolidated.

So in Week 9, of course, the Texans gave the ball to fullback British Brooks on two of the backfield’s three attempts at the 1-yard line. The third was immediately beforehand, with Nick Chubb similarly getting stuffed. The team ultimately had to kick a field goal after a false start penalty.

Marks’ fantasy appeal rested on the idea that he would continue seeing most or all of the backfield’s high-value touches, as he was never getting the job done via efficiency on the ground (nor should we expect any back to behind this offensive line). But if “British Brooks” is even an option now, I lose a lot of interest.

Stat #3: My Brock Bowers Mea Culpa

Even if we’re extra punishing by counting the Raiders’ single overtime drive as a quarter, Brock Bowers has essentially played 8 quarters of healthy football this year. With that in mind, his “per four quarters” averages would be 10.5 targets, 115.0 receiving yards, and 29.3 fantasy points. All of those numbers would rank at least top-3 at the WR position this year.

I was pretty vocal about believing the opportunity cost of Bowers and his early-TE compatriots was too high this year, as most of the RBs and WRs in Round 2 easily outprojected him. I still stand behind the reasoning I laid out here for taking a late-round TE approach in redraft this season, as it’s largely proven correct with massive hits from that range like Jake Ferguson, Oronde Gadsden, and Tyler Warren. And I would still take RBs you probably drafted over Bowers in Round 2, like Jonathan Taylor and De’Von Achane, over any TE rest-of-season.

That said, Bowers totally dunked on me in Week 9, scoring the most fantasy points (43.3) of any player in a single game this season. In a universe in which he didn’t suffer a Week 1 knee injury, play in a diminished state while wearing a knee brace, and then get shut down for a month, it seems like he could have proven my thesis from the above article — that it was too unlikely he’d reach the mid-range WR1 bar the historical data suggested he must reach in order to be worth his draft slot — completely wrong. I’m treating these final weeks as a “free look” at whether I’ll consider him an exception to the rule next offseason.

Stat #4: So, is Chase Brown back?

This might come off as an odd detail to focus on from the Bengals’ Week 9 loss to the Bears, but Chase Brown received 14 targets in this game. That ties Christian McCaffrey’s Week 3 for the most by any RB in a game this season. Brown’s 28.6 weighted opportunities (largely driven by that receiving work) were the 5th-most by any RB this year.

Brown didn’t do much on the ground (37 scoreless yards on 11 carries), but that workload did mean he saw 85% of the backfield’s carries today. For context, Brown was at 85-100% over the first month of the season, but was below a 67% carry share in each of his last four games, losing work to Samaje Perine as the Bengals tried *anything* to make their doomed run game do something. But Perine injured his ankle early in this game, and RB3 Tahj Brooks received just one carry behind Brown.

If Perine is out for any extended period, this backfield will likely revert back to Brown playing nearly every snap, as it was at the beginning of 2025 and the end of 2024. If Joe Flacco can keep this offense productive (as I suspect he will, at least against weak pass defenses like the Steelers and Patriots on the upcoming schedule), Brown could be back in the low-end RB1 discussion. He’s still the only Bengals RB to receive a carry inside the 5 this year, and the Bengals are somehow favored in 4 of their next 7 games. We need to wait on news regarding Perine, but I’m pretty shocked to even be considering this possibility.

Stat #5: Rico Dowdle Is A Top-15 RB Rest-Of-Season

We had a heads-up that Rico Dowdle would likely get more work in Week 9, and I took the chance to complement Panthers HC Dave Canales in last week’s Everything Report for caring about winning football games. That’s exactly what his team did against the Packers in Week 9, and Dowdle was a massive part of and beneficiary of it.

After the roughly 60/40 split in Chuba Hubbard’s favor we’d seen over the past few weeks since he returned from injury, we instead saw Dowdle receive an 83% carry share, a 15% target share, and both of the backfield’s attempts inside the 5-yard line in Week 9. This was a bona fide bellcow role on the team that entered the week with the most run-heavy PROE in the NFL (-5.0%). This is easily a top-6 RB workload in any game the Panthers are competitive and moving the ball.

That last part is key, but the schedule gives Dowdle a major hand here: he gets to play the Saints in two of his final seven games, and based on current lookahead lines, there’s only one game for the rest of the season in which the Panthers are more than 3.5-point underdogs. The weekly upside is really massive for Dowdle whenever his team isn’t getting blown out; he’s now averaging 173.0 rushing YPG and 31.5 FPG across his three games with 20+ touches this year. He’s at least a top-15 RB going forward, and I honestly suspect I’ll be challenged to name 12 RBs I’d rather have than him once I dig into every other backfield for The Everything Report.