During the 1980s, the late, great actor John Ritter hosted a series of educational videos for children and young adults (“Where There’s A Will, There’s An A”), offering various methods (or tricks) for retaining sizable nuggets of important information.
Among the key lessons, young minds should condense the material into shorter periods of processing, creating more opportunities to recall the first and last bits of information.
So, taking a cue from Where There’s A Will … There’s An A, we’ve reduced the number of weekly Fun Facts to an easily digestible five items.
In other words, we’re taking a Less Is More approach to gleaning top-shelf insight for your fantasy league.
Enjoy!
FUN FACT #1
Amari Cooper has only been with the Cowboys for a full calendar year, but his impact against non-divisional foes has already been gold-certified.
Charting his seven career meetings with the NFC East — as a Dallas wideout — Cooper owns stellar averages of 6.2 catches, 107 yards and one TD; and this includes a five-catch, 31-yard clunker against the Giants last December … after the Cowboys had clinched a playoff berth.
FUN FACT #2
Don’t fall asleep on Buccaneers QB Jameis Winston as an elite-level option this week.
**The Seahawks (Sunday opponent) rank in the bottom five for attempts, completions and passing yards from opposing quarterbacks.
**Winston has amassed multiple touchdowns in his last five outings; and the one, uh, clunker entailed 400 yards passing and one TD (vs. Carolina).
**Citing his eight career meetings with the NFC West, Winston has enjoyed robust per-game tallies of 299 yards passing and 2.2 touchdowns.
**As stated in this week’s PPR Spectacular, the Bucs’ 1-2 punch of Chris Godwin (47 catches, 705 yards, 6 TDs) and Mike Evans (20 catches, 29 targets, 294 yards, 2 TDs in his last two outings) should be fantasy football’s best receiving tandem in the second half.
FUN FACT #3
The hot-and-cold Eagles have been respectable in one regard with opposing receivers, holding that position to a workable catch-to-target rate of 61 percent.
But it’s a mess in other crucial categories.
Through eight weeks, the Philly defenders own bottom-10 tallies with catches, targets, receiving yards (29th overall) and receiving TDs (31st) surrendered to opposing wideouts.
This all bodes well for receiver Allen Robinson, despite the Bears currently ranking 27th in scoring.
Robinson has collected seven-plus targets in 12 straight games (including the playoffs).
For this productive stretch, the Penn State alum holds rock-solid averages of 6.3 catches, 9.3 targets, 77.4 yards and 0.3 TDs.
FUN FACT #4
For BATSBY Sports’ midseason PPP Spectacular, we pointed out how the Jaguars receivers have the most advantageous schedule for Weeks 13-16, traditionally the playoff periods for fantasy football.
However, there’s no need in waiting for the Jacksonville trio of rookie DJ Chark (five games of seven catches, 95 yards and/or one TD), Dede Westbrook (6 catches, 103 yards in Week 7) and Chris Conley (averaging 3.5 catches, 7.5 targets, 93 yards, 0.5 TDs in his last two games) to emerge as fantasy gold.
This week’s juicy matchup involves the Texans, who unfortunately possess bottom-6 tallies with targets, catches, receiving yards and receiving scores allowed to opposing wideouts.
And last but not least …
FUN FACT #5
With the Bengals on bye this week, the Chiefs shall assume the short-term mantle of being the fantasy world’s worst defense versus opposing tailbacks.
**Through eight games, Kansas City has yielded 4.9 yards per carry.
**Opposing tailbacks sport a strong catch-to-target rate of 75 percent.
**This same positional group has collected 10 total touchdowns versus the Chiefs (six rushing, four receiving).
**Check this out: Of the Chiefs’ last five opponents, that team’s leading tailback (Kerryon Johnson, Marlon Mack, Carlos Hyde, Phillip Lindsay, Aaron Jones) notched staggering averages of 139 yards and 0.6 TDs.
**Vikings tailback Dalvin Cook (Sunday’s opponent) has reached the elite-level threshold of 130 total yards and/or one touchdown in all eight games this season.