Week 9 Fantasy Football Market Share Report: Assessing Kareem Hunt

Receiving Market Shares

1. Julio Jones' Usage is Huge

For years and years now, we've begged for the Atlanta Falcons to get Julio Jones looks in and around the end zone. They finally obliged!

All happiness is fleeting, and your dreams are pointless.

While this is going to be the lasting image from Jones in Week 9, we really shouldn't overlook his usage of late. He's finally getting fed the way we were promised.

If we look just at the seven injury-free games Jones has played this year, his target market share is up to 29.0%, which is a pretty massive number. He adds 43.1% of their targets at least 16 yards downfield and 19.4% of the red-zone looks, so from a usage perspective, Julio is beasting out.

This has been even more apparent the past three games. There, Jones has 32.3% of the overall targets, 53.3% of the deep targets, and 33.3% of the red-zone targets. If those were his full-season numbers, he'd rank third, first, and fifth, respectively, among wide receivers in those categories. Head coach Dan Quinn said they needed to get Jones more touches, and they have followed through.

Jones' game logs aren't great with just one game of more than 15 FanDuel points, and he's now dealing with a lower leg injury. But if he winds up being healthy, he could return to his 2016 levels of production. That will make him hard to pass up at a price of $8,000.

2. DeAndre Hopkins Still Has a Floor

Whenever a player goes from catching passes from Deshaun Watson to Tom Savage, their DFS appeal is going to shoot into the gutter. That's what we have now with DeAndre Hopkins. But even with the downgrade at quarterback, Hopkins' floor is still going to be something we should covet.

Savage has started two games for the Houston Texans this year; Hopkins has finished both of those with 16 targets. His target market share is 35.7% with 42.5% of the Texans' deep targets and 44.0% of their red-zone looks. Those targets -- especially the deep ones -- lose a ton of juice when they're coming from Savage. But he's going to have to catch some of them.

Let's say the Texans throw 35 times next week as heavy underdogs against the Los Angeles Rams. That would give Hopkins 12.5 targets in the game at his current market share. If Hopkins catches 45.6% of those (Savage's current completion percentage), then he's at 5.7 catches on the day. There's a floor in that from just sheer volume, and Hopkins' talent means there's a ceiling, too. When you throw in that his price is down to $7,600, you can see why we're still interested in this guy.

Clearly, Hopkins' ceiling takes a major hit due to a decrease in expected touchdown drives for the offense, and nobody else on the team is desirable with Savage as the signal caller. But it might be misguided to avoid Hopkins entirely. He's going to continue to get looks, and volume is the most valuable currency in fantasy football, so we can still plug him in for the right matchups and scenarios.

3. We Can Go Back to Using DeVante Parker

Jay Cutler may not be as bad as Savage, but he hasn't exactly led the most fantasy-friendly offense this year. Despite those shortcomings, DeVante Parker has been a decent asset when healthy.

In all four of Parker's healthy games, he has had at least 4 catches for 69 yards. He has 23.6% of the team's targets, and a lot of them are of the high-leverage variety.

Even though Parker missed most of four games due to an ankle injury, he still has 26.5% of their deep targets this year. If we look at just his four complete games, that number jumps to 44.8%. As mentioned with Hopkins, you can be fantasy-relevant in a bad offense as long as you're getting volume, and that's what we get (to a less extreme extent) with Parker.

So far, he's managed to have a floor in one of the league's worst offenses. If Cutler can connect with him on some of those deep passes, Parker could unlock his ceiling. That allows us to start investing while the pricing is reasonable at $6,300 for Week 10.