Week 6 Fantasy Football Market Share Report: Adrian Peterson's Rebirth

Red-Zone Market Shares

1. Julio Jones Still Can't Get Work in Close

Last year, when things were going well for Julio Jones, it was a running joke that he didn't get any work in close. Jacob Tamme missed more than half the season and still had more red-zone targets than Jones. Good times! Fun stats!

There be blood in the streets this year, and Jones still isn't getting those high-leverage targets. The people are restless.

Including Sunday's game, the Atlanta Falcons have now thrown the ball 19 times inside the 20 this year; only one has been a target for Jones. Taylor Gabriel -- who is a whopping 5'8", 167 pounds, mind you -- leads the team with five red-zone targets, and Austin Hooper is second with four. Even Levine Toilolo has as many looks there as Jones.

Other factors are lining up with Jones getting 26.40% of the team's targets in his four healthy games and 32.14% of the overall deep targets. But unless he pops a long one, it's hard to score a touchdown without looks in the red zone. This is a legitimate problem.

That said, we may not need to abandon ship just yet.

More overall touches would increase the odds that Jones busts off a long play -- something that is certainly in his bag of tricks -- even if it doesn't eradicate all of the concerns.

Jones was able to thrive last year despite this lack of work in the red zone. He had nine targets in Week 2 and 12 in Week 3 prior to his injury the following game. This is still a guy who is a huge fantasy boon when healthy. We just have to acknowledge that he's likely never going to be a horse near the goal line, forcing us to lower our exposure to him when it comes to tournaments in DFS.

2. George Kittle Benefits From Both Narrative and Usage

With C.J. Beathard being named the starting quarterback of the 49ers, prepare for the narratives to fly.

Beathard and tight end George Kittle were teammates and roommates with the Iowa Hawkeyes, and now they're paired together at the next level. It's a cute story, and it'll get run this week. But Kittle's usage is more spicy than cute.

Over the past two weeks, Kittle has 17 total targets, 18.48% of the team's total throws. That has value in itself. And these aren't just throw-away looks, either.

In those two games, the team has run 18 plays inside the red zone. -- seven of those have resulted in targets for Kittle, and five of those came inside the 10-yard line. He converted one into a touchdown, and there's the potential for more going forward.

As with Engram in the previous discussion, this adoration doesn't come without limitations. We want to tie our tight ends to offenses that will score touchdowns, and not many units led by rookie third-round picks at quarterback do that. It still doesn't mean we have to cross Kittle off our lists.

Kittle's red-zone love the past two weeks came with Beathard and Brian Hoyer at quarterback. Hoyer entered Week 5 ranked 28th in per-drop back efficiency, according to numberFire's metrics. If the team made the switch to Beathard, they clearly view him as being the superior option. They were able to generate some red-zone trips under Hoyer, so who's to say they won't with Beathard at the helm?

This all combines to mean that Kittle is at least in play at tight end when the 49ers are projected to score some points. They're back at home this week to face the Dallas Cowboys, so Kittle's worth a sniff at $4,800 on FanDuel.