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NFL · Weekly Report

Week 4

Tetairoa McMillan led the week with 38.2 half-PPR points, CeeDee Lamb led it on usage.

307 players with a touch · 32 teams · half PPR · nflverse through 20261005

Everything Week 4 gave us: what happened, what the usage says about the week ahead, and who to add. Read the Opportunity Points column before the points column — it is the one that survives to next Sunday. Fixed order, every week, and short.

Week 5 has not been played yet — our box-score export is complete through week 4, so everything below is week 4 and what it implies for week 5. Nothing on this page projects a result; the forward-looking sections say who to add and who to start, and stop there.

Opportunity Points: the leaderboard that travels

Opportunity Points price a player's volume at what that volume returns on average: 0.44 a pass attempt, 0.61 a carry, 1.38 a target. The rates are fitted by least squares over 29,407 regular-season player-weeks from 2020 to 2024, and the metric knows nothing about whether anything reached the end zone.

It leads the page because it predicts better than the box score. Held out on 2025, a season the rates never saw, a player's Opportunity Points correlated 0.633 with his points the FOLLOWING week against 0.569 for the points he actually scored, over 4,504 consecutive-week pairs. Same direction in sample (0.614 against 0.557, n=21,258). Volume carries; efficiency mostly does not.

Share of offence is his Opportunity Points as a fraction of everything his team generated, which is the version of the number that survives a blowout.

1. 307 players touched the ball, and they averaged 7.9

362 offensive players appear in Week 4's box scores across 32 teams, 307 of them with at least one attempt, carry or target. Those 307 averaged 7.9 half-PPR points and scored 2,436 between them.

Don't overreact. This is one week. Every rate on this page is computed on a single game per player, which is the smallest sample the sport offers, and the reason the leaderboard is sorted by usage instead of by points is precisely that one week of points is mostly noise.

2. The first three rounds: who returned the pick, and who quietly cost you

27 players who went inside the top 36 of preseason consensus ADP (captured 26 August 2026, averaged across six platforms) were in action. They averaged 17.0 points against 7.9 for everyone who touched the ball — which is the gap an early pick is bought for.

The four who paid it back:

And the silent killers. No injury, no disaster on the stat sheet, just a third-round price for a bench-grade afternoon — the more expensive kind of miss, because nobody cuts them and the opportunity cost compounds:

4. Buy low: the workload is already there

Everyone here cleared 8 Opportunity Points and scored less than that was worth. The workload is the durable half, so this is the list to trade for and the one to hold through a bad box score.

5. Waiver targets, in priority order

This list is Waiver Wingman itself, not a second opinion written for the article: the same projection snapshot, the same league-scoring conversion, the same value-over-replacement ordering and the same bid model the tool runs for a member's own league. The one thing the tool gets from a member and a public page cannot is the league, so this run assumes the common shape — 12 teams, one QB, two RB, two WR, one TE and a flex, half PPR, with replacement level set at the worst fixed-slot starter and the flex left out of that count — and treats anyone drafted outside the top 168 of preseason consensus as available. Point it at your actual league and the order will change, because your roster changes what each of these is worth.

Bid ranges are Waiver Wingman's pooled prior: the 25th to 75th percentile of what a claim at that rank has actually cost, measured across 40 public Sleeper leagues and 2,566 paid claims sampled 2026-09-16. Shown as a percentage of your budget, because a dollar figure means nothing without one. The suggested figure is the median of that rank; move toward the top of the range if he would start for you this week and the bottom if he is bench depth. 1 of the 600 available players clear replacement level at their position, which is the honest size of this week's wire.

No ownership percentages, and that is a data gap rather than a style choice: nothing we run reads a rostered-percentage feed, so a number in that column would be invented. You know your league better than we do — in a shallow ten-team league half of this list is already rostered, and in a deep one none of it is.

Quarterbacks

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 17.4, the median among QBs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

Joe Burrow, CIN (ADP 54.2). He threw for 428 on 54 attempts with 1 touchdown and 2 interceptions and carried 3 times for 6 yards and 1 score, worth 25.7 points. That volume priced at 25.6 Opportunity Points, 24.2% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. He was given a starter's work and did a starter's job with it; there is nothing here to explain away.

Matthew Stafford, LA (ADP 94.2). He threw for 317 on 51 attempts and 2 interceptions and carried 3 times for 10 yards, worth 11.7 points. That volume priced at 24.3 Opportunity Points, 22.8% of everything his offence generated. Start him. The workload is already starter-grade and the scoreline has not caught up, which is the gap that tends to close.

Jared Goff, DET (ADP 122.4). He threw for 412 on 52 attempts with 1 touchdown, worth 20.5 points. That volume priced at 22.9 Opportunity Points, 22.4% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

Running backs

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 7.2, the median among RBs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

Kyren Williams, LA (ADP 29.6). He carried 16 times for 80 yards and 2 scores and caught 10 of 13 targets for 67 yards, worth 31.7 points. That volume priced at 27.6 Opportunity Points, 25.9% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

Aaron Jones, MIN (ADP 116.0). He carried 20 times for 94 yards and caught 4 of 8 targets for 34 yards, worth 14.8 points. That volume priced at 23.2 Opportunity Points, 28.8% of everything his offence generated. Start him. Nobody gets this many looks by accident. The role is real even though the box score has not paid for it yet.

Chase Brown, CIN (ADP 14.4). He carried 9 times for 10 yards and caught 11 of 11 targets for 71 yards, worth 13.6 points. That volume priced at 20.6 Opportunity Points, 19.5% of everything his offence generated. Start him. He is being handed the volume of a starter and has not been paid for it yet; volume is the half that shows up again.

Receivers

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 5.5, the median among WRs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

CeeDee Lamb, DAL (ADP 11.8). He carried 1 times for -6 yards and caught 17 of 21 targets for 189 yards and 1 score, worth 32.8 points. That volume priced at 29.5 Opportunity Points, 31.3% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. The usage earned the points, so neither number needed luck.

Tetairoa McMillan, CAR (ADP 39.2). He caught 14 of 16 targets for 192 yards and 2 scores, worth 38.2 points. That volume priced at 22.0 Opportunity Points, 24.8% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. The usage earned the points, so neither number needed luck.

Tee Higgins, CIN (ADP 42.0). He caught 11 of 16 targets for 157 yards, worth 21.2 points. That volume priced at 22.0 Opportunity Points, 20.8% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. He was given a starter's work and did a starter's job with it; there is nothing here to explain away.

Tight ends

Ranked by Opportunity Points rather than by what they scored. The bar for this position is 3.4, the median among TEs who touched the ball; above it is starter-grade usage.

Sam LaPorta, DET (ADP 72.8). He caught 8 of 13 targets for 84 yards and 1 score, worth 18.4 points. That volume priced at 17.9 Opportunity Points, 17.5% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. Touches and production agree, which is the combination that repeats.

T.J. Hockenson, MIN (ADP 165.4). He caught 13 of 13 targets for 119 yards, worth 18.4 points. That volume priced at 17.9 Opportunity Points, 22.2% of everything his offence generated. Start with confidence. The usage earned the points, so neither number needed luck.

Trey McBride, ARI (ADP 21.6). He caught 7 of 12 targets for 31 yards, worth 6.6 points. That volume priced at 16.5 Opportunity Points, 20.8% of everything his offence generated. Start him. He is being handed the volume of a starter and has not been paid for it yet; volume is the half that shows up again.

Efficiency: points per Opportunity Point

Points scored for every point their volume was worth, among the 129 players who cleared 8 Opportunity Points. Above 1.00 beat his usage. This is the column that does NOT predict next week — it is here so you can see which of this week's big numbers were earned and which were bought.

Negative regression candidates

The mirror of the buy-low list: they scored well past what their volume was worth. Not a sell signal on its own — but if somebody offers you a real price this week, this is the list to listen on.

More from ATO

Waiver Wingman · Weekly projections · Preseason ADP · Schedule · College weekly recap

Points are half-PPR on the same table the weekly scoreboard uses, computed from nflverse box scores. Opportunity Points price a player's pass attempts, carries and targets at what each returns on average, fitted over five finished seasons and graded on a sixth the fit never saw; the grade is printed in the report. Salaries and our pre-slate projections are DraftKings', and the value-per-dollar table is a record of one slate rather than a prediction of the next. Nothing here is betting advice.

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