Player

A season-by-season table looks simple — a row per year, numbers marching left to right — but the rows answer two different questions, and most bad fantasy takes come from mixing them up. Some columns measure volume: attempts, targets, carries, games played. Others measure efficiency: yards per carry, yards per catch, touchdown counts relative to touches. Volume is the closest thing fantasy football has to a stable signal, because it reflects a coaching staff's decisions, and coaching staffs are stubborn. Efficiency bounces around from year to year for reasons nobody fully controls — scheme changes, quarterback play, a handful of long plays landing or not landing. So when you scan a career, trace the volume arc first. A receiver whose targets climb three straight years is being fed on purpose; a back whose carries collapse from one season to the next has usually lost a job, not a step. Only after the volume story is clear should you ask whether the efficiency supports it or fights it.

Targets are the honest column

This page doesn't show weekly splits, but the yearly target column still tells you most of what a target-share chart would. Targets are a coach's vote of confidence cast dozens of times a season, and a multi-year target trend survives the noise that wrecks single-season yardage totals. Rising targets with flat yardage usually means the role grew before the production did — often the profile of a player about to break out. Falling targets with steady yardage is the reverse warning: the player is squeezing more out of fewer chances, which is admirable and unsustainable. When two players' yardage looks identical, the one whose targets are trending up is almost always the better hold.

Per-game beats season totals

The fantasy tab shows both total points and points per game, and the difference matters most in injury years. A player who missed six games will post a season total that looks like a decline even if he was scoring at a career-best clip when he played. Season totals answer "what did he give a fantasy roster last year"; PPG answers "what is he when he's on the field" — and the second question is the one that predicts next season. When a row shows a games-played dip, mentally throw out the totals and read the PPG column instead. The trap runs the other way too: a fully healthy season of middling PPG can produce a shiny total that markets treat as a career year. Check GP before you believe either number.

Rookie rows need a curve

First-season lines deserve a different grading scale. Rookies often open the year behind a veteran, learn a route tree or a protection scheme in real time, and only see full workloads after midseason. A modest rookie total can hide two very different players: one who was quiet all year, and one who barely played until November and then produced like a starter. Without weekly data you can't see the split directly, but a low games-played count or a big second-year jump in the volume columns is usually the tell. Judge rookie seasons by trajectory, not totals — and be slower to give up on a quiet rookie year than a quiet fourth year.

Age curves are position-specific

The age in the player file above means something different at each position. Running backs carry the steepest curve: the position absorbs contact on every touch, and production cliffs tend to arrive early and abruptly, often with little warning in the prior year's numbers. Wide receivers age more gently — route-running and rapport can offset lost speed for years — so a receiver's decline usually shows up as a slow leak in targets rather than a sudden collapse. Quarterbacks have the flattest curve of all; arm talent fades late, and experience compensates longest at that position. Practically: treat an aging back's fine-looking season with suspicion, give an aging receiver the benefit of the doubt while his targets hold, and mostly ignore age when reading a quarterback's table until it's extreme.

Use the position rank column to time trades

The fantasy tab's position rank turns raw points into market context — it tells you what the player finished as, in the terms fantasy managers actually trade in. The useful move is comparing the rank column against the volume columns. A player whose finish outran his opportunity — a high rank on modest targets or carries, usually powered by touchdown efficiency — is a classic sell-high, because the market prices the finish while the workload says it won't repeat. The mirror image is the buy-low: healthy volume, reasonable efficiency, but a rank dragged down by missed games or a cold stretch of scoring. Position rank is also the fastest way to spot a player whose reputation lags his reality in either direction — three straight finishes at a level nobody talks about is an argument, not an accident. When you find a gap between the rank and the story, the Trade Analyzer link above is the next stop: it prices the same player against live market values so you can see whether the rest of the world has noticed yet.