Week 15 Preview + Kings of Consistency

It’s playoff time for many leagues around the dynasty world, and making the right decisions can make or break the year. Here’s some situations we’re watching to determine start/sits the rest of the way, and some guys that Dynasty Detour John trusts to maintain high floors this year and beyond. Let’s hit the Detour.

🔮 Traffic Forecast

There isn’t too much to take away from a week this late in the season, but here’s some situations that’ll have my attention ⬇️ 

Buccaneers In Deep Seas

• The Tampa Bay Buccaneers potentially see the return of both Mike Evans and Jalen McMillan tonight, which would bring them to full strength at receiver for the first time all season. If either does play, they obviously will not be at full strength, so don’t read too much into what we see (or don’t), but I definitely will be taking a peek as to how things seem to be shaking out. We don’t know exactly how this Bucs WR room will look come next year, but seeing who works well on the field together, and just how much fourth option McMillan sees the field will give us a good idea how things will look through playoffs and into the future.

• Dynasty Take: If we do see all four, I think an even spread of the ball is going to make the already shaky Egbuka a tough start these next couple weeks. With Evans and Godwin past their primes, his potential going forward certainly outweighs what should be a short-term drop problem, but for the next couple weeks trust is definitely an issue. Evans and McMillan’s history of high red-zone and near-red-zone usage make starting either Godwin or Egbuka tough for now as well.

Chargers Backs Sharing Power

• Omarion Hampton’s return last week certainly gave managers something to smile about heading into the post-season, or just looking forward to next year, but the Chargers certainly showed that Kimani Vidal accomplished enough in his absence to warrant some work. Easing Hampton back in was most likely a factor in Vidal’s handling on the lion’s share of the work (61% snap share to Hampton’s 31%, as well as one more rush and target) but it may not be the type of balance that shifts particularly quickly.

• Dynasty Take: Hampton’s long-term outlook is unaffected by recent events as far as I’m concerned, but the validity of Vidal as not only a handcuff but a legitimate rostered RB grows with every week. The two certainly compliment each other well, and in this offense that only stands to improve when they return Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt next year, we could be looking at an elite RB committee next year. Hampton and Vidal are still both at least flex plays for me, but it’s definitely something to monitor. 

-- Dynasty Detour Ryan

Consistency Is Key… I Think

A high ceiling is great, but consistency can make it hard to lose. Here’s a statistical breakdown on categories certain guys fall into if you’re looking for safe floors or high risk, high reward picks for this week and beyond.

This past year’s rookie draft, I made a decision to trade Mike Evans. He had been a guy who I had honestly not expected to hold value when I drafted him and so I got him fairly late in the draft. Our dynasty draft was in 2022, so the Brady question lingered (who would be throwing to him long-term) and the aging curve did not favor him. But man, did I get about all I could ask for out of him. He continued his streak of 1000 yard seasons for another 3 years before I let go of him and turned in some great performances. Year over year, he was the embodiment of consistency and week to week, he made me want to tear my hair out. That first year, I was competing for a playoff spot and Mike’s inability to get into the end zone week to week drove me nuts. He would throw out single digit performances and duds when the rest of my team was on top of their game, but in his last game of the year, he put up a performance for the ages, dropping 43.7 points… while I was in the consolation bracket. Personally, I would have preferred a guy who rattled off an extra 3-4 points game over the whole season leading to his WR11 finish. Those have always been the players that I have wanted to target in fantasy the ideal, high ceiling, low floor performer. I wanted to examine whether we could quantify players who fit that category over the last couple years. Were they actually that much better than the high ceiling guys on average? How do rankings switch up if we remove some outlier games, like the Mike Evans Week 15 bomb?

The Process

So I started off with the whole database of games played over the last 5 seasons (including this one) . I then created a “boom” and “bust” metric, to quantify when a player finished outside the interquartile range (between 25% and 75% outcome). I then removed those from the data set and recalculated the average score for each of the players. Building off those, I want to quantify how often those events happen so I created a percentage value to see how often a player would boom or bust. I also created a percent difference in a players average for when their outlier performances were removed. All that was left to do was train and build the clustering models by position for the top 24 performers each year by RB’s and WR’s and top 12 for QB’s and TE’s. Most of these models were most accurate when there were 8 groups, but most of these groups contained a few small examples that were isolated players with abnormal seasons (I will look at a few later), but for each group a couple primary groupings stood out. For each, I will describe the player that fits said category from the 2025 season as well as how things change without outliers. Let’s see what we can learn!

Lawful Good

These are the very talented players who do not have high variance. These are the steady folks that we love, good and stable with or without the variant performances. For this grouping, we were looking for a low boom and bust percentage and no stark changes in position ranking once we remove outliers.

QB - 45.45%

Mean Rank: 5.88  -> 6.88

2025 comp - Drake Maye

RB - 16.95%

Mean Rank:12.15 -> 11.45

2025 comp - James Cook

WR - 47.66%

Mean Rank: 12.79 -> 15.31

2025 Comp - George Pickens

TE - 3.6%

Mean Rank: 5.5 -> 6

2025 Comp - (Maybe Tucker Kraft if he played more)

Takeaway: Most top QB’s, RB’s and WR’s will hit this category and a consistent TE is near impossible

Chaotic Good

These players are lower variance, but just do not have the same ceiling as the previous group. When you remove their booms and busts, they actually may rise in the ranks as their busts are removed solitary bust performances that could be dragging them down are removed. Often have a low floor, but their average production without the stinkers is pretty good

QB - 9.1%

Mean Rank: 9.00 -> 7.80

2025 comp - Lamar Jackson

RB - 22.03%

Mean Rank:13.27 - >12.96

2025 comp - James Cook

WR - 10.17%

Mean Rank: 12.25 -> 14.25

2025 Comp - Marvin Harrison Jr

TE - 41.82%

Mean Rank: 6.83 -> 6.26

2025 Comp - Jake Ferguson

Takeaway: TE’s are chaos, most of the good TE’s will fit here whereas very few QB’s or TE”s will. RB’s remain similar between chaos and consistency, 2 different ways of doing it

Lawful Evil

These players are lower variance, but just do not have the same ceiling as the previous group. When you remove their booms and busts, they actually may rise in the ranks as their busts are removed solitary bust performances that could be dragging them down are removed. Often have a low floor, but their average production without the stinkers is pretty good.

QB - 20%

Mean Rank: 7.36 -> 5.27

2025 comp - Patrick Mahomes

RB - 16.95%

Mean Rank:12.15 -> 11.45

2025 comp - James Cook

WR - 32.2%

Mean Rank: 14.73 - >15.84

2025 Comp - Puka Nacua

TE - 14.55%

Mean Rank: 8.25 -> 7.5

2025 Comp - Brock Bowers

Takeaway: Most players in this section are players whose fantasy finish is dragged down by a couple really bad performances, but to disappoint you have to have higher expectations

Chaotic Evil

These are the players who make us want to throw in the towel some weeks and lift them up on our shoulders others. Finding the right time to unleash these guys can allow you to win big, but from week to week that inconsistency could hurt. This is the case of the expectation being lower, with an occasional surprise to boost rankings. This appears to be most common for top WR’s, with other groups being fairly similar.

QB - 25.45%

Mean Rank: 7.71 -> 10.43

2025 comp - Jaxson Dart

RB - 21.19%

Mean Rank: 11.88 ->16.68

2025 comp - Kimani Vidal

WR - 14.41%

Mean Rank: 15.12 -> 27.82

2025 Comp - Tee Higgins

TE - 40%

Mean Rank: 6.72 -> 8.82

2025 Comp - Dallas Goedert

Takeaway: Those bombs can really help someone shoot up an end of season rankings. WR’s is where we saw the most dramatic drop, one performance a year can make a guy rise 12 spots in a ranking. Players like this are not obvious to tell apart when just looking at their end of season finish, you have to explore on a game to game level. TE is a crapshoot, finding any consistency is impossible. 

-- Dynasty Detour John

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