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What actually predicts fantasy production?
Verdict — Opportunity, not efficiencyPlaying time. A player’s snap share repeats at 0.98 from one half of a season to the other, and his carries at 0.98. His touchdowns repeat at 0.72 — barely better than a coin flip.
Before asking whether a number is useful, it is worth asking whether it is even a property of the player. A statistic that does not repeat within a single season cannot tell you anything about the next week, however large it looks.
| Statistic | Repeats at | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Snap share | 0.98 | a property of the player |
| Carries per game | 0.98 | a property of the player |
| Target share | 0.96 | a property of the player |
| Receptions per game | 0.94 | a property of the player |
| Receiving yards per game | 0.93 | a property of the player |
| Touchdowns per game | 0.72 | part signal, part luck |
The split is clean, and it is the same split every time. Opportunity — snaps, carries, targets — is close to a fixed property of a player within a season. Efficiency and scoring are not. That is not a claim about talent; it is a claim about sample size. A receiver runs 30 routes a week and scores roughly once a month.
The practical form: project the work first and let the points follow. A player whose snap share just jumped is telling you something about next week. A player who just scored twice is mostly telling you about last week.
How this was measured
Split-half reliability within a player-season: his average in odd weeks against his average in even weeks, corrected for the halving of sample by the Spearman–Brown formula. Only player-seasons with at least four games in each half count. n = 2,843 player-seasons, 2018–2025, receivers, tight ends and backs.