Metrics that Matter: What is Fantasy Football Target Share?

What are fantasy football targets?

What exactly is target share and why is it becoming an increasingly popular term used by fantasy football experts?

To understand target share, first it helps to understand, what is a target? A target is simply the number of times a pass is directed as a specific running back, receiver, or tight end. ails. A target signifies a pass attempt by the quarterback aimed at an eligible receiver. It’s important to note that targets only account for pass attempts and are not further impacted by other outcomes of a play, such as fumbles, completions or touchdowns.

What is fantasy football target share?

Target share on the other hand is looking at the percent of total passes a player receives. These passes represent opportunities for that player to make catches and positively impact their team’s offense and therefore to accumulate sweet sweet fantasy points for fantasy managers.

Understanding a player’s target share projections are essential because it unveils their role in the team’s offensive game plan. For fantasy football managers, it’s a valuable tool to spot high-value players for their squads. This is because the number of passes a team throws can vary greatly week to week depending upon the flow of the game and if they are winning by a lot (and therefore running the ball more) or losing by a lot (and need to throw more passes out of desperation).

Because the number of passes can vary, just looking at a player’s raw number of targets can be a bit misleading about how they will perform in the future. So understanding how involved they are in the offense can help you to better predict if they will see a high or low volume of targets in games where the the team’s total passes fluctuates up or down.

How do I find target share projections?

To arrive at the target share percentage, divide the total number of targets a player received by the total pass attempts made by the quarterback. This percentage becomes the player’s target share.

For example, if a wide receiver was targeted 8 times in a game, and the quarterback made 40 pass attempts in total, the target share for that game would be 20% (8 / 40). So the math here isn’t anything too complex, buy it still gives an important indication of how involved a player is in the offense.

As you can probably guess by now, target share can have a huge impact on fantasy football and be a great tool for trying to predict player performance or identify gems on the waiver wire to pick up. A high target share signifies a player’s central role in the offense, making them a more dependable fantasy choice. Conversely, a low target share may imply a player isn’t heavily featured in the game plan, potentially leading to less impressive fantasy performance.

Hopefully this is a good primer on how to understand Target Share and apply it for both season long and daily fantasy football. Now that you know more, give it a try right here on SmashUp Fantasy Sports for free.