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.
By proxy, we’re also carving out more time for joyous things outside of the fantasy realm … like the mind-blowing gaming experiences at Activision Blizzard. Enjoy!
FUN FACT #1
Nobody’s perfect … but Ezekiel Elliott has certainly flirted with invincibility, when pondering the following nuggets:
**The eminently bankable Elliott (three straight
**Elliott has a similarly sublime track record versus the NFC North.
Citing his six career outings against the Bears, Lions, Vikings and Packers (this week’s opponent), Elliott owns all-world averages of 142 total yards and 0.7 touchdowns.
FUN FACT #2
Everyone in NFL Nation saw Adam Thielen’s passive-aggressive rant toward Kirk Cousins last week, even though the Vikings star didn’t specifically name his quarterback when harshly addressing the media.
No one would dispute that Cousins had a pedestrian showing against the Bears (zero TDs, just 6.47 yards per attempt) … just like few would place the Giants’ shaky defense in the same category with Chicago.
Which brings us to this week’s juicy matchup: Thielen’s a virtual lock for big numbers against the Giants, citing their porous defense (fourth-worst in surrendering TDs to opposing wideouts) and recent history.
Charting his last eight regular-season road outings against non-divisional foes, Thielen boasts superb averages of 6.8 catches, 104 yards and 0.9 touchdowns.
FUN FACT #3
History implores us to forget about Odell Beckham’s two-catch, seven-target, 20-yard clunker from last week.
Charting his last 14 games in October, dating back to 2015, Beckham has collected eight-plus targets 13 times; and for his last nine October outings (all with the Giants), Beckham stealthily averaged 6.7 catches, 103 yards and 0.7 touchdowns.
FUN FACT #4
This might be the most attractive week of Tyler Eifert’s career, or at least before the injuries started hindering his physical prowess:
**The Cardinals defense owns bottom-3 tallies in all four major categories against opposing tight ends, including dead-last with receiving yards and touchdowns allowed (six in four games — double the rest of the NFL!).
**Covering the last three seasons (2016-18), Eifert has an impressive catch-to-target rate of 74 percent.
**Cincinnati’s battered offensive line hasn’t granted quarterback Andy Dalton much extra time for targeting wide receivers. As such, this could be/should be a big week for Eifert (Arizona can’t stop anyone right now) and tailback Joe Mixon.
FUN FACT #5
Sure, Drew Brees won’t be hurling the passes on Sunday, but there’s still plenty to love with Michael Thomas at the Superdome.
Charting his five career outings against the Buccaneers, Thomas holds elite-level averages of 9.4 catches, 11.4 targets, 107 yards and 0.2 TDs.
In fact, for last year’s two-game run versus Tampa Bay, Thomas posted an absurd catch-to-target ratio of 90 percent (27 of 30 receptions).