Spike and Dud Performances from the 2021 and 2022 NFL seasons
We wanted to be a little different than the standard boom and bust article. We looked at the last two years of data and pulled out “spike weeks” and “dud weeks” performances based on ½ point per reception (PPR). We used fantasypros.com to look at the weekly outcome for each player, not including playoffs.
When playing best ball fantasy, you want spike weeks from your players. You want your players scoring in the top 5 at their position as often as they can, especially for Weekly Winners, which is a new variation of the game from Underdog Fantasy. In regular best ball, average fantasy points per game are critical to getting, no questions there. You want your players to score the most points possible, beating out their peers week in and week out. Those big weeks we like to call spike weeks, where they are scoring in the top 5 range. Because you have roster depth in best ball, it’s okay if your top player gets a few dud weeks as long as someone else on your roster can cover for them that week. Dud weeks are the weeks where your player scores so low their points won’t even get used in your best ball lineup. Unless all of your players had a dud week ☹.
When playing in redraft leagues, you want players to have high floors and spike weeks are more of a bonus. You don’t want players that fluctuate with too many highs and lows since you’re playing head-to-head each week. A zero from a top player could cost you the match-up. So you want to avoid dud weeks. You want consistency. In this article, we will share some stats that will shed some light on some of the more consistent players based on their percentage of dud weeks over the last two years of data.
Two years is what we decided to go with instead of more because we wanted to see what players have been doing recently, not several years ago. More of a “what have you done for me lately” approach. We’re sure if we went looked at more years, we could see some trends but for what we were using this data for, this was great for what we needed.
Keep in mind this isn’t predictive. This just shows what has happened over the last two years. You can see some players jump or decline heavily from year to year. We did this just to look for anything that stands out for best ball, but the info can be useful for our types of contests. If we see someone with a higher ceiling, or who fluctuates less, we may go with them in a redraft league if we’re debating between them and someone else. So basically we would use this info as a potential tiebreaker during your draft if you’re debating between two players, but nothing more.
We’ll break down what we took away from our findings. If you want to see it all for yourself, have at it. You can view the entire spreadsheet here. We are just sharing our notes here and didn’t intend to do anything major with this information, which is why there aren’t any fancy graphs or charts.
Note, we didn’t determine if the players started each game or not, only if they played.
Quarterback Spike Weeks
QB spike week is considered more than 25 points
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Josh Allen had a spike game rate of 47% (16 total games combined from both seasons)
Jalen Hurts 43% (13)
Patrick Mahomes II 38% (13)
Dak Prescott 32% (9)
Tom Brady 29% (10)
Kyler Murray 28% (7)
Joe Burrow 27% (9)
Lamar Jackson 21% (5)
Justin Herbert 20% (7)
Tidbits about the leaders
Herbert went from 6 spike weeks (35%) in ’21 to 1 in ’22. Prescott had 7 (44%) in ’21 and 2 in ’22. Allen, Hurts, and Mahomes had the most consistent spike weeks from year to year. Note, Jackson only played 12 games in ’21, and the same in ’22. This is an issue in itself but his spike rates were decent.
’22 Rookies with spike weeks
None
Bottom-of-the-barrel
The players with NO SPIKE WEEKS who played over 10 games in both seasons were Derek Carr, Mac Jones, and Baker Mayfield.
Other items that stood out
What surprised us was Kirk Cousins, Justin Herbert, and Geno Smith only had 1 spike week in 2022. Aaron Rodgers, Ryan Tannehill, Matt Stafford, and Brock Purdy had no spike weeks in ’22. Jared Goff went from 1 spike week in ’21 to 4 (24%) in ’22. Trevor Lawrence went from 0 in ’21 to 3 (18%) in ’22.
Quarterback Dud Weeks
A dud week is considered less than 15 points, which is roughly the average fantasy points per game for the top 40 QBs from the 2022 season. The lower the rate, the better for this category since it’s the opposite of spike weeks.
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Josh Allen had a dud game rate of 12% (4 total games combined between both seasons)
Patrick Mahomes II 12% (4)
Jalen Hurts 13% (4)
Kyler Murray 20% (5)
Lamar Jackson 21% (5)
Joe Burrow 21% (7)
Dak Prescott 29% (8)
Justin Herbert 29% (10)
Tidbits about the leaders
It’s no surprise these are the same QBs from the spike list, except for Brady. He had 8 dud weeks (47%) in ’22. This was the type of outlier we were looking for but he retired so not much we can do with that info. Every QB on the dud leader list improved their duds from ’21 to ’22 by at least one game. Mahomes had 4 dud games (24%) in ’21 and ZERO in ’22. What an incredible year. Hurts only had 1 in ’22.
The Big Duds
Players who played an average of 8 games in ’21 and ’22 who had a dud rate of 50% or worse:
Baker Mayfield 69% (18 total games combined between both seasons)
Jacoby Brissett 64% (16)
Taylor Heinicke 60% (15)
Mac Jones 58% (18)
Ryan Tannehill 52% (15)
Jared Goff 52% (16)
Other items that stood out
Aaron Rodgers went from a nice low of 3 (19%) in ’21 to 7 (41%) in ’22. Ouch.
Matt Stafford was on the same trajectory as Rodgers with 2 (12%) in ’21 to 7 (78%) in ’22.
Justin Herbert was identical to Rodgers with a sweet low of 3 (19%) in ’21 to 7 (41%) in ’22.
Trevor Lawrence improved from 11 (65%) in ’21 to 6 (35%) in ’22.
Summary of QBs
G. Smith and Purdy had good 2022 seasons, but it was because they had a low dud rate, not a high spike rate. Goff was lower on the spike rate list and higher on the dud list than we anticipated, so we moved him down a bit in our rankings. Prescott could be in store for a bounce-back season based on his 7 spike weeks in ’21. He has it in him to put up the big games, as does Herbert. If Lawrence keeps improving, he could have a breakout season in ’23. While Garoppolo isn’t anything to write home about, he had 1 spike week in both seasons and put up decent dud week numbers. Could be a sleeper if he stays healthy.
Running Back Spike Weeks
RB spike week is considered more than 20 points
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Derrick Henry had a spike game rate of 46% (11 total games combined between both seasons)
Christian McCaffrey 42% (10)
Austin Ekeler 36% (12)
Jonathan Taylor 36% (9)
Nick Chubb 29% (9)
Joe Mixon 26% (8)
Tiidbits about the leaders
Taylor (41% in ’21 to 24% in ’22) and Mixon (44% in ’21 to 7% in ’22) dropped off from ’21 to ’22. Henry, McCaffrey, and Ekeler were the clear consistent elite players.
’22 Rookies with spike weeks
Etienne Jr. (3 – we’re counting as a rookie), Walker III (2), Allgeier (1), Pierce (1), Hall (1)
Bottom-of-the-barrel
Players with 0 or 1 spike weeks who averaged over 10 games in both seasons
Zack Moss (0 games)
Joshua Kelley (0)
Kenneth Gainwell (0)
Chubba Hubbard (0)
Samaje Perine (1)
Khalil Herbert (1)
Jeff Wilson (1)
Other items that stood out
You’ll have to check out the spreadsheets for more details because there are a lot of players, but the items we noted were Saquon Barkley and Tony Pollard both went from 1 spike game in ’21 to 5 in ’22. Pollard could really take off this year given the full-time role. Barkley has a tougher schedule than last year. We also saw Josh Jacobs for from 1 (7%) to 4 (24%), but we thought he had more than 4 in ’22 based on how good of a season he had. Antonio Gibson went from 4 to 0. Khalil Herbert only had 1 spike game over the 2 years. We are a big fan of his and he was sharing time often, but still something to watch.
Running Back Dud Weeks
A dud week is considered less than 10 points, which is roughly the average fantasy points per game for the top 60 RBs from the 2022 season. The lower the rate, the better for this category since it’s the opposite of spike weeks.
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Breece Hall had a dud game rate of 14% (Only had 1 dud game in the 7 total games he played)
Christian McCaffrey 17% (4 out of 24 games)
Austin Ekeler 18% (6)
Jonathan Taylor 24% (7)
Derrick Henry 25% (6)
Josh Jacobs 28% (9)
Dameon Pierce 31% (4 out of 13 games)
James Conner 32% (9)
Najee Harris 32% (11)
Tidbits about the leaders
Taylor went from a great 12% (2) in ’21 to 42 % (5) in ’22. Pierce was a rookie in ’22, and close behind him for rookies was Kenneth Walker who only had a respectible 5 dud games for 33%.
The Big Duds
Players who played in both the ’21 and ’22 seasons with an average of 8 games played per year who had a dud rate of 65% or worse were:
Joshua Kelley 95% (19)
Zack Moss 81% (21)
Samaje Perine 81% (25)
Rashaad Penny 80% (16 out of 19 total games)
Alexander Mattison 79% (26)
Jerick McKinnon 77% (20)
Khalil Herbert 76% (19)
Other items that stood out
Saquon Barkley improved from a mediocre 64% (9) in ’21 to a great 19% (3) duds in ‘22
Rhomandre Stevenson improved from 67% (8) to 29% (5)
Tony Pollard improved from 60% (9) to 31% (5)
Summary of RBs
What we took away from this was Henry is a beast. We already knew that but we didn’t realize he’d be popping off at the top of almost all categories. We thought he had more dud weeks than he actually did. Breece Hall is interesting because he has a low floor, but only had 1 spike week out of his 7 games for 14%. It’s unfortunate his season got cut short because we don’t have enough info to come to a conclusion. Khalil Herbert is who disappointed us the most. Even though he was in a timeshare, there were weeks he got a decent workload and he was bottom of the spike weeks and high on the dud weeks. Some other names on the list that seem boom or bust according to the numbers are Rashaad Penny, Clyde Edwards-Hilaire, and Jerick McKinnon. Someone who stuck out as having a standout year was Miles Sanders. He had 3 spike weeks in ’22 (0 in ’21) and only had 8 dud weeks (47%) in ’22, he was at 75% in ‘21.
Wide Receiver Spike Weeks
WR spike week is considered more than 20 points
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Cooper Kupp had a spike game rate of 54% (14 total games combined from both seasons)
Davante Adams 39% (13)
Justin Jefferson 35% (12)
Tyreek Hill 32% (11)
Ja’Marr Chase 30% (9)
Deebo Samuel 28% (8)
Tidbits about the leaders
Michael Thomas only played in 3 games in ’22 but had 1 spike week, which was 33% but we didn’t include him. Jefferson went from 18% (3) to 53% (9) in ’22. Wow! Deebo had 7 (44%) in ’21 and only 1 (8%) in ’22. We think he’ll finish ’23 somewhere in between.
’22 Rookies with spike weeks
Wilson (3), Watson (2), London (1)
Bottom-of-the-barrel
Players with 0 or 1 spike weeks who averaged over 10 games in both seasons are listed in this chart:
| Player | # of Spike Weeks | % of Spike Weeks |
| Kadarius Toney | 1 | 6% |
| JuJu Smith-Schuster | 1 | 5% |
| Rondale Moore | 1 | 5% |
| DeVante Parker | 1 | 4% |
| Mecole Hardman Jr. | 1 | 4% |
| Robert Woods | 1 | 4% |
| Keenan Allen | 1 | 4% |
| Marquez Valdes-Scantling | 1 | 4% |
| Darnell Mooney | 1 | 4% |
| Diontae Johnson | 1 | 3% |
| Brandin Cooks | 1 | 3% |
| Allen Lazard | 1 | 3% |
| Jakobi Meyers | 1 | 3% |
| Tyler Boyd | 1 | 3% |
| Donovan Peoples-Jones | 1 | 3% |
| Joshua Palmer | 1 | 3% |
| Chase Claypool | 1 | 3% |
| DJ Chark Jr. | 0 | 0% |
| Van Jefferson | 0 | 0% |
| Josh Reynolds | 0 | 0% |
| Rashod Bateman (18 total games) | 0 | 0% |
| Marvin Jones Jr. | 0 | 0% |
| Darius Slayton | 0 | 0% |
| Michael Gallup | 0 | 0% |
| Allen Robinson II | 0 | 0% |
| Nico Collins | 0 | 0% |
Other items that stood out
Amari Cooper went from 2 (13%) in ’21 to 4 (24%) in ’22. Good things could be on the horizon.
Tee Higgins sits at a respectable and consistent 21% spike rate.
Stefon Diggs surprisingly only had a combined 5 spike weeks between the two seasons for a 15% spike rate.
Gabe Davis, who many say is a boom-or-bust player, only had 1 spike week each season for a total of 2.
Players with more than a 5% spike rate, but less than 10%, so they were just okay. A. Thielen, D. Moore, C. Kirk, J. Jeudy, E. Moore, G. Davis, Z. Jones, C. Sutton, M. Pittman, D. London, B. Aiyuk, and K. Toney.
Wide Receiver Dud Weeks
A dud week is considered less than 10 points, which is roughly the average points per game for the top 80 WRs from the 2022 season. The lower the rate, the better for this category since it’s the opposite of spike weeks.
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Cooper Kupp had a dud game rate of 8% (2 total games out of 26). Unreal!
Justin Jefferson 21% (7)
Deebo Samuel 24% (7)
Stefon Diggs 26% (9)
Davante Adams 30% (10)
Keenan Allen 31% (8)
Ja’Marr Chase 33% (10)
Tyler Lockett 34% (11)
Tyreek Hill 35% (12)
Tidbits about the leaders
Calvin Ridley only played 5 games in 2021 but only 1 of those was a dud. Deebo went from 13% (2) to 38% (5) in ’22. Hill improved drastically from 53% (9) in ’21 to only 18% (3) in ’22. He likes South Beach.
The Big Duds
Players who played in both the ’21 and ’22 seasons with an average of 10 games played per year who had a dud rate of 65% or worse were:
| Player | % of dud games from ‘21 & ‘22 | Player | % of dud games from ‘21 & ‘22 | |
| JuJu Smith-Schuster | 67% | Zay Jones | 77% | |
| Mecole Hardman Jr. | 68% | Elijah Moore | 78% | |
| DeVante Parker | 70% | Kadarius Toney | 78% | |
| Josh Reynolds | 70% | Michael Gallup | 78% | |
| Donovan Peoples-Jones | 71% | Kalif Raymond | 82% | |
| Courtland Sutton | 72% | Parris Campbell | 83% | |
| Rashod Bateman | 72% | Mack Hollins | 85% | |
| Rondale Moore | 73% | Quez Watkins | 85% | |
| Joshua Palmer | 74% | Allen Robinson II | 86% | |
| Marquez Valdes-Scantling | 75% | Nico Collins | 88% | |
| Marvin Jones Jr. | 76% | Braxton Berrios | 88% | |
| Chase Claypool | 77% | Terrace Marshall Jr. | 92% | |
| Darius Slayton | 77% |
Other items that stood out
DeVonta Smith went from 65% (11) to 29% (5) in ’22.
Dionte Johnson went the opposite way with 25% (4) in ’21 to a high 76% (13) in ’22.
Hunter Renfrow went from 35% to 80% in 10 games played in ’22.
Jerry Jeudy improved a lot under R Wilson. He went from 90% (9) in ’21 to 47% (7) in ’22.
Mecole Hardman stood out to us because he went from 76% (13) to 50% (4) in ’22. We didn’t realize he raised his floor that much.
Summary of WRs
K. Allen was hurt and all, but he was on the Big Duds list with one spike week over two years. This may be the most surprising to us out of this entire project. There were some other big names on the Big Duds list, such as B. Cooks, D. Johnson, and J. Smith-Schuster. While Allen and Diggs didn’t have a lot of spike weeks, they were in the leaders of not having a ton of dud games, so they have pretty high floors. The WR rookies were a little less productive than we thought, especially Olave and Pickens. Skyy Moore was AWFUL. 100% of his games were under 10 points and he played the entire season.
Tight End Spike Weeks
TE spike week is considered more than 15 points
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Travis Kelce had a spike game rate of 45% (15 total games combined from both seasons)
Mark Andrews 31% (10)
George Kittle 28% (8)
Dalton Schultz 19% (6)
Dawson Knox 17% (5)
Tidbits about the leaders
Kelce improved from 38% in ’21 to a whopping 53% in ’22. Knox went from 24% in ’21 to 13% in ’22, so a little fall off. Aside from Kittle, Andrews, and Kelce, no one has more than 2 spike games in ’22. In ’21 only Henry, Knox, Schultz, Kittle, Andrews, and Kelce had more than 2 spike games.
’22 Rookies with spike weeks
McBride (1), Likely (1), Okonkwo (1), Otton (1)
Bottom-of-the-barrel
Notable players with 0 or 1 spike weeks who averaged over 9 games in both seasons are listed in this chart:
| Player | # of Spike Weeks | % of Spike Weeks |
| Gerald Everett | 0 | 0% |
| Logan Thomas | 0 | 0% |
| Foster Moreau | 0 | 0% |
| Hayden Hurst | 0 | 0% |
| Will Dissly | 0 | 0% |
| Adam Trautman | 0 | 0% |
| Durham Smythe | 0 | 0% |
| Zach Ertz | 1 | 4% |
| Pat Freiermuth | 1 | 3% |
| Evan Engram | 1 | 3% |
| Austin Hooper | 1 | 3% |
Other items that stood out
Darren Waller had 2 spike games in ’21 (18%) and 0 in ’22. Hunter Henry had 3 spike games in ’21 (19%) and 0 in ’22. Ertz, Freiermuth, and Engram are all on the bottom-of-the-barrel list is surprising!
Tight End Dud Weeks
A dud week is considered less than 7 points. This is a unique position due to the fact that some are blocking tight ends, some are receiving, and some can do both fairly well. The top 40 Tight Ends averaged 6.67 points per game in 2022.
Results from combining stats from 2021 and 2022 weekly performances:
Top Performers
Travis Kelce had a dud game rate of 18% (6 total dud games)
Mark Andrews 28% (9)
Dallas Goedert 30% (8)
Zach Ertz 37% (10)
Some tidbits from the leaders
Both Ertz and Goedert improved their dud game rate by 2x from ’21 to ’22.
Other items that stood out
Noah Fant went from a fantastic 20% dud rate in ’21 to 77% in ’22. Taysom Hill wasn’t a qualifying TE in ’21 but in ’22 had a decent dud rate of 38% (6). Better than we thought.
The Big Duds
Players who played in both the ’21 and ’22 seasons with an average of 10 games played per year who had a dud rate of 70% or worse were:
| Player | % of dud games from ‘21 & ‘22 |
| Foster Moreau | 72% |
| Hayden Hurst | 73% |
| Cole Kmet | 74% |
| Austin Hooper | 78% |
| Will Dissly | 86% |
| Adam Trautman | 88% |
| Durham Smythe | 92% |
Summary of TEs
Kelce is the Kupp of TEs. There are some promising rookies at the TE position from ’22, and the new class in ’23 doesn’t look so bad either. It’ll be interesting to see how this data looks next year. Or does the TE position continue to have the disparity between the top and bottom? Goedert had a better dud week rate than we expected to see, especially in ’22, which means he’s a solid performer but doesn’t really spike. Pitts has been a disappointment but we didn’t need these stats to tell us that. Another surprising was is Gerald Everett did not have any spike weeks over the last two years, even though he’s been in a high-powered offense. There was a coaching change this year but we wouldn’t hold our breath. Ertz, Freiermuth, and Engram only having one spike week over the last two years is surprising.
Article written by Ryan Baker aka Primetime Playaz
