Take a quick look around ESPN playoff teams' rosters, and there's an early favorite for fantasy football MVP: Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp.
Kupp, who concluded Week 14 the NFL's overall leader in PPR fantasy points (335.4, which is 73.2 more than anyone else at his position has), targets (152, or 20 more than anyone else), receptions (113, a lead of 21 on second place), receiving yards (1,489, a 201 yard margin over second) and receiving touchdowns (12, one more than everyone else), found himself on a whopping, league-leading 70% of ESPN playoff teams' rosters. It's no shock at all, as in addition to those NFL-best numbers, he has shown a remarkable level of week-over-week consistency, finishing among the week's top 25 wide receivers in 12-of-13 games, scoring 20-plus PPR fantasy points in 10-of-13 and never finishing with fewer than 11.4 points (his Week 4 total) in a single game.
The 70% threshold for playoff-team appearances is hardly unprecedented. This is the fifth year I've written this column, and three times a player reached that mark: Christian McCaffrey resided on 78.1% of ESPN playoff teams in 2019, when he scored a second-most-in-history 471.2 PPR fantasy points; Alvin Kamara was on 77.4% of such teams in 2017, when he went undrafted on average during a rookie season in which he scored a best-in-the-league 148.0 points in the five weeks preceding the fantasy playoffs; and James Conner could be found on 75.9% of playoff teams in 2018, which was Le'Veon Bell's holdout year in which Conner capitalized as a fantasy late-rounder.
What's unusual about Kupp's rate is
Beyond Kupp's dominance, this annual list continued -- as has been an increasing trend over the past five seasons -- to illustrate the many avenues to building a fantasy football champion: Investing in elite running backs, getting to the league's hottest pickup in September, finding tight end values and, yes, even grabbing your starting running back's understudy/insurance policy.
Let's get to the list, first, before diving deeper. Listed below are the 39 players who reside on rosters of playoff teams in at least 45% of ESPN 10-team standard PPR leagues, along with their preseason ADPs (average draft positions):
It's not uncommon to see a hefty number of completely undrafted players high on the list, as -- and I know I say this a lot, but it's true -- it's all about value. Obtaining value where absolutely none was expected is huge in all fantasy sports, but especially football. This season, six of the top 12 names in the chart above went undrafted on average in ESPN leagues, and note that every single one of those six was selected by a team in fewer than 3% of all leagues during the seven-day period heading into Week 1. Cordarrelle Patterson, Hunter Renfrow, Elijah Mitchell, Dawson Knox, Dalton Schultz and Greg Joseph have been true waiver-wire heroes this year, and Patterson and Mitchell in particular were players you could easily, and wisely, scooped up exiting Weeks 1 and 2 respectively.
What's unusual, however, is the presence of clear understudy running backs high on the list. Mitchell somewhat fits this description, as the most watchful eyes might've noticed his emergence into the San Francisco 49ers' role heading into Week 1, but Alexander Mattison, and Chuba Hubbard definitely warrant the label. Mattison drew only three starts filling in for the injured Dalvin Cook in them, but he was excellent in them, scoring 21.4-plus PPR fantasy points in each and totaling 70.8 points. Hubbard, meanwhile, made six starts filling in for consensus No. 1 pick Christian McCaffrey, and while he didn't overwhelm in any of them, he did average 12.3 PPR fantasy points while never finishing with fewer than 9.1 points in any.
Generally I advise fantasy managers not to invest deeply in understudy running backs, arguing that it's better to take players with greater odds of stealing a greater share of their team's rushing attempts than waiting for a starter to get hurt. Considering the rising number of injuries at the position -- the top nine running backs selected on average have missed a combined 26 games (2.9 average), while the top 25 have missed a combined 74 games (3.0 average) -- perhaps that's a strategy I'll lean into more in the future. Certainly it's an important strategy to employ at this stage of the season.
In what has been a relatively disappointing season for the tight end position -- best illustrated by the fact that the top scorer, Mark Andrews (207.6 PPR fantasy points), is on pace to score fewer points through 16 team games than five other tight ends scored in any season from 2018-20 -- getting the position's best off the wire paid big dividends. Knox and Schultz, currently fifth (138.9 points) and sixth (137.4) among tight ends in scoring, were among the aforementioned six undrafted players high on the list.
Speaking of the positional breakdowns, let's turn our attention there. Here are the five most common players at all six standard positions on the rosters of ESPN playoff teams:
Eight quarterbacks have averaged at least 20 points while starting at least half of their teams' games, and a ninth is 0.02 shy of averaging that number, so it's no shock to see that the quarterbacks on ESPN playoff teams are becoming an increasingly diverse group. Justin Herbert is the only quarterback who can be found on as many as 50% of leagues, which speaks to his excellence at a young age, as he was also on 59% of playoff teams as a rookie in 2020. It's the lowest percentage by the No. 1 quarterback on the list in any of the five years I've written this column, however, and only in 2018 (Patrick Mahomes 59.0% and Jared Goff 53.8%) did as few as two reach the 50% threshold. Streaming your quarterbacks remains an entirely viable strategy.
Speaking of individual excellence, especially among younger players, Justin Jefferson is a repeat performer on the better-than-50%-of-playoff-teams list. He's on 53% of playoff teams this season, after residing on such teams in 54% of leagues as a rookie in 2020. That might come as a surprise, if what stuck in your memory more was his WR21 PPR fantasy point total through eight weeks of 2021 (115.74 points), but in six games since then he has been by far fantasy's best wide receiver, scoring 146.46 points, 25.96 more than any other player at the position in that time.
Can Kupp, Patterson, Knox, Herbert and Jefferson continue to carry their fantasy teams through our postseasons and to a league championship? Only time will tell, but we will be back right here to update the lists of players on the most finalists' teams in two weeks, upon the conclusion of Week 16.
Good luck to our playoff teams!