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Does a hot streak keep going?
Verdict — It reversesNo — it reverses, hard. A player running far above his established level gives back -1.28 receptions the following week. One running far below gains +0.78. The colder player is the better buy.
Every waiver wire is built on the last three weeks. That is the single most available piece of information and one of the most misleading, because a hot stretch is partly role and partly luck, and only one of those carries forward.
| Recent form vs his own level | Next week | t | Player-weeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Running much colder | +0.78 | 15.7 | 1,444 |
| Colder | +0.41 | 15.4 | 4,280 |
| About normal | +0.06 | 3.6 | 11,200 |
| Hotter | -0.49 | -13.7 | 3,406 |
| Running much hotter | -1.28 | -21.3 | 1,668 |
This is not an argument that recent form is meaningless. It is an argument about which part of it to keep. A rise in snap share or target share is a role change and it persists. A rise in catches on the same number of targets is mostly variance and it does not.
The practical reading: when a player explodes, look at whether his playing time moved. If it did, buy. If his snaps are unchanged and only the box score moved, you are buying the top of a bounce.
How this was measured
Buckets are cut on the gap between a player’s trailing four-game average and his previous full season — both inputs, so the groups cannot depend on the outcome being measured. The figure is his next game against that same trailing average. 2019–2025.