In this weekly article, Bjorn Yang-Vaernet uses the Advanced Stat Explorer and other RotoViz tools to dive deep into wide receiver usage trends. Usage is key for making waiver wire adds, start/sit decisions, and finding the next blow-up WR in DFS.

It is finally championship weekend for most leagues! Congratulations on those who made it to the final round and for those who didn’t, let’s blame it on being unlucky.

The end of the fantasy season is bittersweet. On the one hand, playing for bragging rights or a handful of money is amazing. On the other hand, it means that fantasy football is nearly at its furthest point from starting again. Regardless of how you feel, let’s enjoy this last weekend and hope that all we need to happen comes to fruition.

Let’s get right into the statistics heading into Week 17.

Routes Run and Targets per Route

Routes run is the first key statistic I’ll focus on because WRs need to be on the field to produce. The second statistic is routes per target. Unlike RBs usage, targets are earned as a WR and routes per target is a helpful measure in figuring out which players are good (or which players coaches want to get the ball to).