The biggest fantasy football one-game wonders of 2019

The easy shorthand in fantasy football is to offer up season-long numbers, either as a total or per-game average. Generally speaking, it works, because it’s rare for a player to, for example, put up 10 points a game over 15 games but have a 50-point 16th game that throws his numbers out of whack.

Rare, though, does not mean impossible. Every year, there are a handful of players with single-game performances that throw their season-long totals so far off that it’s worth stepping back and acknowledging the outlier games.

As an example: In 2018, Derrick Henry was the No. 16 PPR running back. That year, if you recall, 47.8 of his season-long 201.4 PPR points (23.7%) came in that one ridiculous Jaguars game. Take that game out and pro-rate the rest of his season over 16 games, and Henry would have dropped to the season-long RB26. That’s a 10-spot difference.

Yes, every game counts. But in fantasy, the season-long totals don’t help nearly as much as the weekly ones, and if an outsized portion of a player’s production falls in just one game, it can give a misleading picture of his total contribution. So today, I’m looking at the biggest one-game wonders of the 2019 fantasy season. Among the top-20 QBs and TEs and top 30 RBs and WRs, these were the players with the highest percentage of their season-long totals coming in just one game:

Quarterback

Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers

Biggest game: Week 7, 43.8 points (15.7%)

In Week 7, Rodgers threw for 429 yards and 5 touchdowns and added a rushing touchdown. It was his only rushing score of the year, one of only two games he topped 323 passing yards, and one of only three where he had more than two touchdown passes. It was a huge performance, the kind of game Rodgers always has in his back pocket. But it’s also becoming increasingly uncommon as he ages. Rodgers was the No. 9 QB last year. Take out that game, and he would only have fallen to QB11, but given that he only had four games of 20-plus fantasy points last year, and his high other than that game was 28.1, and we have to be more careful with him than we once had to be.

Ryan Fitzpatrick, Miami Dolphins

Biggest game: Week 16, 31.7 points (13.1%)

Fitzpatrick is the boom-or-bust-iest fantasy quarterback we’ve maybe ever seen. When the Dolphins acquired him a year ago, I tracked his best and worst fantasy starts each year of his career. He’s had at least one start of under 9 fantasy points in all but two (out of 13) years of his career (pretty awful for a quarterback), but a start of 25-plus in eight years. As a best-ball option, he’s exciting; as a No. 2 or superflex quarterback, he’s intriguing; as a full-season rely-on guy, he’s absolutely terrifying. We don’t know if Fitzpatrick will be the Dolphins’ starter in 2020 yet or not, but I have little reason to expect that profile will change if he is.

Running back

Latavius Murray, New Orleans Saints

Biggest game: Week 8, 36.7 points (23.3%)

This one’s a bit misleading, because Murray barely sneaked into the season-long top-30 (he was RB28) and this game came when he was relieving an injured Alvin Kamara. It counts, though. Without this one game, he’d have fallen to RB40. Really though, this is more a positive indicator for Kamara than anything. Some people might notice Murray’s relatively decent finish as the team’s backup and worry about Kamara’s ceiling, but Murray didn’t have more than 12.4 points in any game Kamara played last year. He’s not a worry.

James White, New England Patriots

Biggest game: Week 13, 37.7 points (18.8%)

I wrote a “players you can drop” piece for PFF last year, and entering Week 13, I wrote that White was droppable. Not that he was a must-drop by any means, but that you could excuse it if you needed the roster spot, because while he still had a fine floor, he wasn’t offering much of anything in the way of ceiling, and entering the fantasy playoffs ceiling was what you needed. So of course he went out and had 177 yards and 2 scores in that game, made me look dumb … and then went right back to what he had been, averaging 11.3 points over the season’s final four weeks and never topping 15.2. I was right, dammit, and just had crap timing.

(White was RB18 for the full season. Extrapolate his non-Week 13 games and he was RB24.)

Kenyan Drake, Miami Dolphins/Arizona Cardinals

Biggest game: Week 15, 39.6 points (18.5%)

As a Dolphin, Drake averaged 9.1 PPR points per game. As a Cardinal, he averaged 19.9, and that average only got better down the stretch as he fully supplanted David Johnson. With Drake set up to be the definite Cardinals starter in 2020, he might not have quite that Week 15 weekly ceiling (because no one does), but he definitely has top-12 RB potential.

Wide receiver

Marvin Jones, Detroit Lions

Biggest game: Week 7, 43.3 points (22.3%)

Through Week 9, the Lions averaged exactly one receiver per game putting up a 20-point fantasy outing. Danny Amendola Week 1, Kenny Golladay Week 2, Jones Week 3, Golladay Week 4, Jones Week 7, Golladay Week 8, Jones and Golladay Week 9. If you could pick “best Lions receiver” each week, you were in good shape. Jones missed the season’s final three games, and any time you have fewer games it’s that much easier for one single game to have an outsized influence. Ultimately, he had one game of 40-plus points, two more at 20-plus, and five games (out of 13 total) under 10 points. Jones is 30 now, and if we assume T.J. Hockenson takes a step forward, we can assume more of the down and less of the up from Jones going forward.

Stefon Diggs, Minnesota Vikings (now Buffalo Bills)

Biggest game: Week 6, 43.5 points (20.5%)

Diggs scored six touchdowns all of last year. Half of them came in that Week 6 game against (unsurprisingly) the Eagles, the most generous pass defense to outside receivers for approximately the billion-and-seventh year in a row. Diggs had seven catches and 140-plus yards in three straight games Weeks 6-8, but that Week 6 game was his only one of those with a score, and two of his other three touchdowns on the year came in games with under 60 yards. Diggs was fantasy’s WR24 last year (disappointing considering how much time Adam Thielen missed), and if you prorate his non-Week 6 games, he’s have been WR34, just behind new teammate Cole Beasley.

Mike Evans, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Biggest game: Week 3, 45.0 points (19.3%)

I’m gonna spend this entire offseason with Evans and Chris Godwin popping up in various research pieces, and then try to spin it forward with Tom Brady as their quarterback instead of Jameis Winston, and every time I’m just gonna end up at “Hell, man, I dunno.” The Brady pairing could be amazing. And it could crash and burn. And if someone says they can confidently say which it will be … well, they’re wrong. So here, I’ll just say that Evans was WR15 last year (he missed the season’s last three games), and adjusting for his monster Week 3 would have bumped him to WR25, right near Odell Beckham Jr. Will that carry over to 2020? No idea!

Tight end

Evan Engram, New York Giants

Biggest game: Week 1, 28.6 points (26.1%)

Engram is now three years into his career. He missed one game as a rookie, five games in his second year, and eight games last year. He was the TE18 last year primarily because there were only about 12 tight ends worth anything. Still, take out that big Week 1 and adjust, and he’d have dropped to TE24. That fact isn’t nearly as relevant, though, as that first one, the one about his missed games. If Engram can stay healthy, he can be a monster. If he can’t, he’s the new Jordan Reed, the new Tyler Eifert. Good luck.

Darren Fells, Houston Texans

Biggest game: Week 8, 23.8 points (21.6%)

There was a brief period last year where it looked like Fells was going to force his way into serious TE1 conversation. Over a six-week span Week 3-8 (a not-insignificant portion of the season), he had 75.5 PPR points, the fourth-best total in the league behind Austin Hooper, Darren Waller, and Travis Kelce. The rest of the way, nine more weeks, he had 32.8 points and only topped 7.1 once, a paltry 10.3 in Week 13. Fells has some marginal touchdown upside if you’re desperate, but that’s about it.

Greg Olsen, Carolina Panthers (now Seattle Seahawks)

Biggest game: Week 3, 25.5 points (20.6%)

Olsen’s biggest calling card over his career until the last few years has been his incredible consistency. He was rarely going to give you those 30-point games, but you could count on 10-15 most weeks and a solid total at a not-solid position. Lately, he’s flipped that — he had only four games with double-digit PPR points last year, and six games of under 6.0 points (plus two games missed to injury). Now in Seattle, Olsen is far more of a wild card than he ever was before.