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Who actually gets the work when a starter sits?
Verdict — His own position groupThe rest of his own room, and by a wide margin. With the room’s leading option out, the players behind him gain +0.63 receptions in the backfield, +0.59 in the receiver room and +0.53 at tight end — each measured against those players’ own recent form.
It is the most valuable thing you can know on a Sunday morning, and the most commonly guessed at. The honest version needs two controls: compare each beneficiary with himself, and subtract what he does in the weeks the starter plays.
| Room | Extra receptions | t | Player-weeks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Receiver room | +0.59 | 10.6 | 1,353 |
| Tight-end room | +0.53 | 9.5 | 881 |
| Backfield | +0.63 | 10.7 | 865 |
The work stays in the room. When a receiver is out the targets go to other receivers, not to the tight end. That sounds obvious and is routinely ignored: a great deal of advice pushes you toward a tight end because the team’s best receiver is hurt.
The room total is predictable. Which player takes it is not. Every candidate predictor of who gains — pecking order, snap share, route depth — comes back at roughly zero. In any single week one replacement usually takes most of what was vacated; it is simply not reliably the same one. Treat it as a pot of work with a known size and an unknown winner.
How this was measured
Room order comes from trailing target share, never from what happened in the game being measured. Each beneficiary is compared with his own previous four games, and the figure is net of the same quantity in weeks the room’s leader played — without that control it would be contaminated by ordinary mean reversion. 2018–2026.