Hello, and welcome to the third week of the Actual Opportunity Report. If you’re unfamiliar with Actual Opportunity, you can read the in-depth explanation of this exciting new statistic here.
Essentially, we’re using a 10-season sample of play-by-play data to calculate expected fantasy points from a player’s seasonal or weekly usage. We look at each target (by distance from the end zone and depth of target) and each carry (by distance from the end zone and down and distance) and add this up to determine how valuable a player’s role was for fantasy purposes. We can contrast this with fantasy production to measure efficiency.
In layman’s terms, Actual Opportunity is “how many points a player should have scored” given his workload, based on what the average player would have scored. “Expected fantasy points” will be used interchangeably with “Actual Opportunity” throughout this article.
Through three weeks, here are top-30 players in expected fantasy points per game:
Here’s what was notable to me:
Devonta Freeman, RB, Atlanta Falcons
(AO: 15.8, PPR: 19.6)
I own Freeman in zero leagues. Out of every player commonly selected in the first round, he was the one I felt least confident about. I expected Freeman to remain stuck in a committee with Tevin Coleman, and I expected a decline in efficiency following the departure of Kyle Shanahan. While the first part is mostly true — Freeman owns just 61 percent of the team's running back snaps and 37 percent of the targets — he has remained very efficient. He’s had six carries from five yards out or less (Coleman has only one), and has scored on four of them. He’s also our third-highest-graded running back through three weeks, and is averaging +3.7 fantasy points over his expectation. Although his expectation points to a regression, I’m still far less confident in my original assessment of Freeman. The Atlanta offense hasn’t trailed for a single play all offseason, and has been much better than I had anticipated. The positive gamescript has worked in Freeman’s favor, but I’ll be avoiding Freeman for DFS in weeks I don’t foresee a blowout in Atlanta’s favor. Despite the committee situation, Freeman feels like a safe bet to remain a fantasy RB1 on the back of heavy rushing and goal-line usage.
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