Fantasy Football Week 5: Breakout Model Picks

Oct 07, 2026

IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Week 4 was a mixed bag. I was clearly too confident in a Josh Downs breakout game, as he got out-targeted by both Laquon Treadwell and Ashton Dulin. Woof. Hopefully the 38.2 (!) fantasy points from Tetairoa McMillan made up for it. Let’s give some details on how the breakout models work, but the first article of the year has a more thorough walkthrough.

About the Breakout Receiver Model

The table below shows pre-snap field position on the x-axis, and air yards are on the y-axis. The numbers in the table show the average number of half PPR fantasy points that a target in that specific bucket earned in 2025.

So, I made a machine learning model that looked at every target from 2021 to 2025. It uses pre-snap field position and air yards to predict how many fantasy points a given target is expected to earn. And now that we know how many fantasy points every target *should* earn, we can compare those expected fantasy points to what actually happened.

The graph below does that for every player this season. Players far below the dotted line are underperforming their expected points and are potential buy-low candidates. And players above the line are overperforming their usage and are potential sell-high candidates.

And it’s a similar process for RBs. The graph below shows pre-snap field position on the x-axis and average fantasy points per carry on the y-axis. A run 10 or fewer yards from the opponent’s endzone is four times as valuable as essentially any other carry.

Just like for WRs and TEs, I built a machine learning model to calculate expected points per carry. It’s mostly using field position but also has a small adjustment for down, where 3rd down carries are slightly more valuable and 4th down carries are slightly less valuable.