The Worksheet: Week 4 Fantasy Football, All You Need To Know

Welcome to Week 4 of The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview, by Rich Hribar.

What is The Worksheet from Rich Hribar?

The Worksheet is a comprehensive weekly fantasy football preview for each NFL game. Rich Hribar analyzes the matchup for every notable fantasy player for every game every week of the NFL season.

Three weeks are now in the books as we flesh out a real sample of what we have on a team and player basis.

While approaching the end of the first month of the season, the year is still fresh.

Big games and opponent influence still heavily influence overall statistics, but we are getting there.

Overall, Week 3 was an encouraging step forward for offenses with NFL passing games also taking baby steps toward improvement.

In Week 3, the league set new season highs for completion rate (68.0%), yards per pass attempt (7.3), and touchdown rate (4.7%).

We had 49 passing touchdowns this past week after 35 and 34 in the opening two weeks.

Teams averaged only 20.5 points per game on offense, which was still below the total in Week 1 (21.6).

The primary issue for offenses right now regarding scoring points is that the sack rate is heading in the wrong direction.

After a 7.4% sack rate in Week 1, that rose to 7.9% in Week 2 and then spiked to 8.6% this past week.

On drives with a sack, NFL offenses are averaging only 1.11 points with a scoring rate of 27.3% on those possessions and a touchdown on 7.1%.

Without a sack on a drive, offenses have scored 2.19 points per drive, scoring on 41.4% of those drives and a touchdown on 24.4%.

We also have the continued disappearance of the tight end.

Through three weeks, NFL tight ends have 13 receiving touchdowns. That is the fewest at this point of the season in the 2000s.

The previous low was 20 back in 2003. At this point a year ago, tight ends had 25 touchdowns.

As always, the more information we acquire, our evidence-based approach can be more robust.

We are only one week away from the beginning of the bye weeks, so we have another full week ahead in Week 4.

This article will be updated throughout the week to reflect major news or injury implications.

I encourage you to use the game-by-game tables and data points here in conjunction with the player rankings that will be available every Wednesday. Enjoy the games!

Click the matchups below for the individual game previews.

Week 4 Fantasy Football Matchups