Revenge Games: 10 Years of Data on Fantasy Breakouts vs. Former Teams

Revenge is a dish best served cold…. right? So perhaps the best NFL revenge games took place in the snow or in bitterly freezing conditions? I didn't go that far, but with the help of Steven Hoopes, we looked into revenge games and how they actually play out for fantasy football purposes.

He compiled data from the last decade (2015-2024) to see how many more or fewer fantasy points per game a player scored against their former team, ie, the one they most recently played for, compared to their average FP that season.

The revenge game is a narrative we often discuss, but it is something I had yet to see researched, so here we are. This concept will be a weekly column on 4for4 throughout the season, as I will review the weekly revenge game slate and parse out any advantageous information.

So, please, join me on a stroll down revenge game narrative street.

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Quarterbacks

The Backups Wanted it More

The QB position proved to be the least revengeful, as only 17 signal callers of the 49 who qualified posted more fantasy points over their average that season when facing their former employers. The QBs with the most vengeance proved to be the backups, but some starters also popped off against previous clubs.

Malik Willis was the king of getting back at his former “lover”, as he posted a whopping 25.38 FP against the Titans in Week 3 last year, which was 16.35 more than his seven-game average in 2024 (9.03). In Week 11 of that same season, Jameis Winston caught fire against his former Saints for 24.6 fantasy points, an impressive 9.13 more points than his seasonal average for the Browns last season in the 12 contests he played in.

Taylor Heinicke also sought and got some QB revenge with a 2021 uptick in production when lining up against his previous team. Heinicke, then with Washington, dropped 23.34 fantasy points on the Panthers in Week 11 as part of his stint as the spot starter there. His performance was 8.31 points higher than his average score that season.

Starters Still Got Some Revenge

Baker Mayfield was traded from the Browns to the Panthers in July of 2022 for a 2024 conditional draft pick after four seasons as their QB. After no doubt circling that calendar for a date with Cleveland, Mayfield posted 19.1 fantasy points, which was a decent 7.40 above his average in 2022. Also with Carolina, Sam Darnold got revenge for his awful ghost performance in New York by dropping 21.66 points against the Jets, up 6.88 from his average output in 2021.

Matthew Stafford had three revenge games against Detroit in 2021, 2023, and 2024 that all resulted in more fantasy points than his average for those respective seasons. His best came in 2023, where he posted 22.68, up 5.56 from his average. Then in 2021, the Rams QB torched the Lions for 25.36 fantasy points, 4.12 more than his average throughout that campaign. Last year in their matchup, Stafford only scored 15.68 points, but it was still .89 higher than his meager average as the QB32 in fantasy points per tilt.

The Skill Positions

Of 384 positional players/instances to qualify for this study, just under half of them (190) scored more fantasy points against their former team than their average for that season, calculated in half-PPR scoring. To break it down even further, the WR position proved to have been the most vengeful, as 94 of them got retribution in the form of fantasy points, while 53 RBs and 43 TEs scored more than their yearly average as the jilted ex-lovers.

While I’d love to discuss them all, we only have a week or so until the season starts, and we all need to get drafting, so I will highlight the players with the most retribution of the nearly 200 revenge games that resulted in a higher point total than that player’s average that year.

Jerry Jeudy leads the pack, as his contest against Denver last season in Week 13 produced a monstrous 18.30 point total over his average from 2024. He put up a 28.2 in half-PPR scoring in the Mile High City in front of his former home crowd, despite the game itself being a 3-9 dud, with the Broncos getting the win. Back in 2018, Brandon Bolden sought division rival revenge against the Patriots as a member of the Miami Dolphins, dropping 18.50 in half-PPR scoring, which included a 54-yard rushing attempt.

The next year, Jarvis Landry got revenge on the Dolphins while wearing a Browns’ uniform, with an impressive 10-148-2 line that equated to nearly 10 more fantasy points than his average that season (9.81). While some may think of James Conner as a Cardinal, he did play for Pittsburgh for four years. In Week 1 of the 2023 season, Conner busted out 25 rushing attempts for 105 yards and two TDs, scoring 8.96 more half-PPR points than his seasonal average.

Everyone remembers the Minneapolis Miracle back in 2018, right? To refresh your memories if needed, on the last play of the NFC divisional playoff game between the Vikings and Saints, Stefon Diggs scored a 61-yard catch-and-run TD with no time remaining to send Minnesota to the NFC Championship Game in Philadelphia. It was the first game in NFL playoff history to end in a touchdown as time expired. Fast forward a bit, and Diggs is now in Buffalo, facing his former Vikings team in Week 9 in a contest that ended in overtime. The WR had 12 catches for 128 yards that week, posting nearly seven more points in half-PPR scoring than his average that year.

While there are many more cases of large upticks in production during revenge-game scenarios, the last I will point out of this kind is one of the most recent, and that is Saquon Barkley from just a season ago. After the Giants weren’t willing to pay him, the RB went to the division rival Eagles during last year’s free agency period. The two teams met in Week 7, and Barkley went off for a 17-176-1 rushing line with an additional two catches for 11 yards through the air. The former Giant dropped a massive 25.7 fantasy points on the team that let him walk, which was nearly five more than his already monster average as the fantasy RB1 in 2024.

Non-High Scorers Who Showed up for Redemption

So, it may not be that far-fetched that someone like Stefon Diggs or Saquon Barkley lit up their former teams, a bit beyond their usual outputs. But what I found interesting was that even some of the players who rarely scored points at all, or primarily averaged single-digit outputs, increased their fantasy production against their prior employers. Take TE Josh Oliver, for example. He averaged just 1.96 in half-PPR scoring per game in 2022 with the Ravens, but posted 9.6 against the Jags that season. And Carlos Hyde, who only scored an average of 3.98 per tilt in 2021 while playing for Jacksonville, dropped double digits (10.2) in retaliation in Week 6 on the Seahawks.

Devontae Booker is another notable example of a lower-performing player going ham against their former team. Booker was the RB74 in half-PPR scoring on a per-game basis in 2020, averaging just 4.80 per contest with the Raiders. When they played Denver in Week 9, he posted an 8-61-1 line for 12.8 points as the RB11 that week. He did it again the next season when he joined the Giants. Booker was the RB49 on a per-game basis in half-PPR formats that season, putting up an average of 7.8 each week. When New York played the Raiders in Week 8 in 2021, he scored 15.0 fantasy points as the RB15.

So if you're hurting on some of those monster bye weeks and have a guy at the end of our bench going against his former team, the data shows us that he has a really nice chance of playing over his skis and producing for you in that pinch.

Bottom Line

After seasons of revenge game narrative being thrown around the fantasy community, I felt it was time to actually do the work to see if it really was something we should be paying attention to when preparing for redraft league Sundays or creating DFS lineups.

QBs weren’t as revengeful as the skill players, but when they were, their fantasy numbers averaged nearly six points above their seasonal average output, which could be the difference maker in your weekly matchups.

When it came to positional players, just under half of those studied over the last 10 seasons scored more fantasy points against their former employers than their average in that given season. Wide receivers got the most payback, as 94 of the 190 players who scored more than their average when facing their prior team were wideouts, while 53 of them were RBs and 43 played TE.

We always look for any edge we can get in the fantasy community, and this data shows that if you’re deciding between several players to insert into your lineups and one has a revenge game, there’s a pretty decent chance that player’s output will be higher than their average on the year. Like a jilted lover, everyone seeks retaliation and retribution, whether it's in the form of a revenge body or, for our purposes, fantasy points.