While players will inherently disappoint us from time to time (they are human after all), I, for one, am quick to recognize that I am the one who drafted my team and is running it. Generally speaking, it is not a player’s responsibility to get me 100 yards and two touchdowns in a given week, it is my responsibility to make sure a fantasy win or loss doesn’t hinge on a player performing at that level – especially when it happens on a regular basis.

With that said, owners can quickly get disenchanted when players – especially those on poor or struggling teams – suffer in fantasy because of bad football decisions or awful play-calling. I was reminded of this phenomenon once again during the Monday Night Football game between the Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Bucs. At its very core, football (and any team-oriented sport for that matter) is often about getting the ball to a team’s best player and putting him in a position to make plays. So when Vincent Jackson became an afterthought in the Bucs’ offense after the first drive, it got me thinking once again about consistency. Part of the reason bad teams lose is because they are so afraid of what might happen, they are unwilling to making something happen. In other words, the play-calling tends to get conservative because they start to consider the worst-case scenario rather than recognize that one more smart yet aggressive play could put the touchdown on the scoreboard that effectively ends the game.

The point, however, is not to rant about Jackson’s lack of involvement – he did see three consecutive targets late in the third quarter, the last of which was intercepted – but to find a way to avoid as many of the rollercoaster games as possible before and during a fantasy season. It should go without saying that disappointing fantasy performances will happen – after all, the Minnesota Vikings tend to forget to give Adrian Peterson his 20 touches every game despite average (at best) quarterback play.

My goal each week in my PPR leagues is to get double-digit performances from every one of my running backs, receivers and tight ends and 20+ points out of my quarterback position. I have set these standards in part because they are easy to remember and in part because my experience has suggested teams that get double-digit efforts from each of running backs, receivers and tight ends, win their fantasy weeks on a pretty consistent basis. Another reason I have set these benchmarks is because I don’t feel as if they should be all that difficult for my players to achieve at least 8-10 times during the fantasy season, particularly since so many of them are the first or second options in their respective offenses.

Let’s take a quick look at my “goals” and a sample line of what it takes to accomplish them in a PPR format:

Quarterbacks (20 points) – 250 passing yards and two touchdowns/225 passing yards and two touchdowns, 10 rushing yards
Running backs (10 points) – 65 rushing yards, two catches for 15 yards
Wide receivers/tight ends (10 points) – four catches for 60 yards/five catches for 50 yards

Admittedly, the goal may be a bit high for most tight ends, but it is one I expect to hit more than half the time since I typically end up with at least one of 6-8 top tight ends on each of my teams.

This week, I’d like to bring the level of mediocrity fantasy owners are dealing with this season under the microscope and share some general thoughts. Just as importantly, I encourage each of you to put just as much emphasis on the positional charts. Keep the above benchmarks in mind as you review each table.

Quick notes:
* The yellow highlight represents each time the player fell below the assigned fantasy-point benchmark above.

* “DNP” not only represents “did not play”, but also any game in which a fantasy owner could not have realistically expected the player to contribute in a meaningful way that week. As such, I did not apply a yellow highlight to players such as Zac Stacy in Week 1 or Nick Foles in Week 4 because their contributions came in relief. Please understand some of my judgments are subjective when it comes to this process, so keep that in mind.

* I intentionally skipped some players at running back and wide receiver due to the combination of their fantasy “relevance” and/or current depth chart status and/or an injury. Including the likes of Ahmad Bradshaw, Justin Blackmon or Daryl Richardson doesn’t make a lot of sense when conducting a study about consistency. Players such as Julio Jones or Reggie Wayne were left in because of what it potentially means for their replacements.

The problem arises after the top 3-4 quarterbacks and how often they are failing to reach a benchmark they should be able to achieve roughly about 8-10 times during the 16 weeks of the fantasy season. Of the regular starting quarterbacks that are currently healthy, only Andrew Luck (three) hasn’t fallen below the 20-point level at least four times. In short, there are only four healthy quarterbacks that are regular starters who have been able to deliver 20 points five of out nine (or six out of 10 for those quarterbacks who haven’t had a bye week yet). In other words, a lot of fantasy owners are hoping their quarterbacks score 20 points or more in a given week, but the chances of that happening – at least through 10 weeks – are no greater than 55-60%.

Some of the more egregious violators on this list:

Andy Dalton (scored 30 or more fantasy points in Weeks 6-8, but a total of 21.2 points in Weeks 4, 5 and 9), who is seventh overall in fantasy scoring thanks in large part to his three-week explosion.

Robert Griffin III (scored 16.1 fantasy points or fewer in five games and 28.9 or more in three of his nine games), who ranks 12th overall in fantasy scoring. However, owners should have probably expected an up-and-down season from him considering he generates so much of his fantasy production with his running ability and is coming off a major knee injury.

Tom Brady (scored fewer than 20 fantasy points in seven of his first eight games), who ranks 15th overall in fantasy scoring. Like Griffin, Brady’s “slow start” is explainable. Brady wouldn’t have been drafted nearly as high as he was had we known that Rob Gronkowski and Danny Amendola would miss significant parts of the season back in August.

The most pleasant surprise on this list:

Nick Foles (scored at least 20 points in four of his five starts), who is 13th overall in fantasy scoring despite seeing a great deal of time on the sideline in Weeks 1-4 and a hard-to-explain dud in Week 7.

There may be no better indicator of the landscape of the running back position than Pierre Thomas, who is 11th in fantasy points. While it is true that Thomas has seen his playing time increase since Week 4 (62% of the snaps over that span as opposed to 41% in the first four weeks), much of that can be attributed to the fact Mark Ingram missed significant time. Most of us wouldn’t even think about Thomas being a fantasy RB1 in any format (especially considering he has four games below 10 points to his credit), but yet he is still a few points ahead of more consistent backs like Frank Gore or Alfred Morris. Even Joique Bell, who has enjoyed exactly one moderately productive fantasy week since Week 3, is 20th – ahead of players such as Maurice Jones-Drew, Ray Rice, C.J. Spiller, Lamar Miller and Trent Richardson.

One of the more interesting observations I made from this data is the fact that not only are five rookies among the top 24 scorers at the position, but they have also all have been remarkably consistent when compared to their peers. Stacy, Ellington and Le’Veon Bell all got off to slow starts for obvious reasons, but it seems hard to believe a draft class that was knocked for being average – especially at running back – has produced so many players capable of consistent fantasy contributions. Further consider that two of the most talented running back prospects in the draft – Seattle’s Christine Michael and San Francisco’s Marcus Lattimore – haven’t even had a chance to show off their wares on a consistent basis yet (or in Lattimore’s case, at all).

Whereas the cutoff for “useful” fantasy running backs was at No. 18, it is hard to say there is much of a difference from a consistency perspective from about Nos. 14-28 at receiver (and that’s after losing two elite or near-elite options in Julio Jones and Reggie Wayne). Of course there are exceptions, but I look at players like Kendall Wright and Steve Smith as acceptable WR2s in PPR formats when every other spot on my roster is squared away. Neither player has been extraordinary in any of their games, but both have been fixtures in at least two of my teams’ lineups. Obviously, the goal at every position is to get production one grade higher than you have them slotted (WR1 plays like an elite fantasy player; WR2 plays like a WR1 and so on…), but in highly competitive leagues – especially those that don’t like to trade all that often – that isn’t always possible.

Even some of the players owners have labeled as disappointments for most of the year have been acceptable WR3s. At least one of my teams – which lost Randall Cobb, has endured the Roddy White nightmare and is now awaiting the news of Tony Gonzalez’s toe injury – would benefit greatly from having a player like Marques Colston I could start every week. Has he lived up to his fantasy draft slot? No. Would he be helping that team win? Yes. And he is 47th overall in fantasy scoring at his position. One could also make the argument that if they were starting Michael Floyd and Reuben Randle (43rd and 44th, respectively) as their receivers every week and were secure everywhere else, they would win more fantasy games than they would lose. Try to do that with Donald Brown and Brandon Bolden…

In terms of consistency, the tight end position doesn’t feel much different than it has in recent years. Generally speaking, there are usually about 3-4 players that are very good or elite options, 3-4 players that should probably considered every-week starts despite their inconsistency and a whole lot of uncertainty after that. I am most struck by the amount of yellow that appears on the table starting in Week 6, particularly at the top. Sure enough, after calculating each week’s average of the top 30 tight ends, here is what I discovered: the average point total has fallen from 12 (in Weeks 1-5) to 9.5 (in Weeks 6-10). In two of the last three weeks, the averages have been 8.6 and 7.1. Even for tight ends, that is abysmal in PPR scoring. Players like Jason Witten, Martellus Bennett and Charles Clay – all of which had a hint of consistency over the first five weeks – have become more miss than hit. That isn’t such a big deal when it is Bennett or Clay – players drafted as TE2s or picked up off the waiver wire – unless owners dealt their original TE1 in order to fill a hole at another position. It is a big deal for Witten, though. It’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty whether or not the 30 tight ends above are being kept in to block more and if that is the reason for their decline in production. What the falloff does tell me, however, is that owners of Jimmy Graham, Julius Thomas, Vernon Davis, Jordan Reed and perhaps even Jordan Cameron have a huge advantage over their opponents as we move towards the fantasy playoffs.

By all accounts, any tight end that is fourth in overall scoring is not having a bad year relative to his position. But as any Witten owner can tell you, he is not having a good fantasy season. What is worse is that he has been particularly bad over his last five games, which means he is trending in the opposite direction he was last season. While there are plenty of “football reasons” as to why he is struggling, fantasy owners only have to look at his catch percentage and target average. Last year, Witten caught 110 of his 147 targets (74.8%); this year, his success rate is 47-of-72 (65.3%). Witten’s targets have declined by 1.9 from last season (9.1 to 7.2), so it isn’t hard to understand why his production has slipped when he is seeing fewer targets and catching a lower percentage of them. Given how bad Dallas’ defense figures to be without MLB Sean Lee, it’s a reasonably good bet the Cowboys are going to ditch the run earlier in games than they would prefer and the increase in pass attempts will boost Witten’s production. He hasn’t regressed much in terms of his ability to separate from linebackers, so there is still hope. It is worth mentioning, however, he is on track for his worst fantasy scoring average since 2006.

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