The Six Players With Goal Line Work That Nobody Owns

A touchdown is worth six points and about sixty yards of offense. Almost all of them start inside the twenty, and a lot of them start inside the five. Yet the number that tells you who gets that work does not appear in a box score, a fantasy app, or on most ranking pages.

So we went and got it. For this column we read every offensive snap of the season, roughly four thousand plays, and recorded where on the field each carry and target happened. Then we filtered to players rostered in under twenty percent of leagues.

Below is what came back, with each player's week by week line so you can see the shape rather than take our word for a total. The three numbers are touches, red zone touches, and goal line touches.

The steadiest profile available

Chris Rodriguez Jr., RB, Jacksonville. Rostered in 17 percent.

w1  4/1/0     w2  5/1/1     w3  7/3/1     w4  6/1/0

He has taken a red zone touch in every week of the season. Nobody else on the available board has done that. His overall workload has climbed from 4 to 5 to 7 to 6, which is not exciting, and that is exactly why he is still sitting there.

This is the profile the research was built to find: a back with no loud game, no viral stat line, and a consistent share of the only work that reliably produces touchdowns.

The one the market has mispriced

Tyler Higbee, TE, Los Angeles Rams. Rostered in 2 percent.

w1  2/0/0     w2  did not play     w3  8/2/1     w4  5/0/0

A starting NFL tight end with fifteen targets, available in ninety eight percent of leagues. He missed Week 2, which is most of why nobody has noticed, and in his two full games since he has drawn 8 and 5 looks with a goal line target among them.

Tight end is the position where the gap between a replacement and a starter is largest and the cost of acquiring one is smallest. At 2 percent rostership this costs nothing.

Running back depth with real red zone work

Tyler Allgeier, RB, Arizona. Rostered in 28 percent.

w1  18/3/0    w2  7/0/0    w3  6/2/0    w4  9/2/1

Forty combined touches, red zone work in three of four weeks, and his first goal line carry in Week 4. The highest rostership on this list, so he will cost a real claim.

Keaton Mitchell, RB, Los Angeles Chargers. Rostered in 18 percent.

w1  4/2/0     w2  6/0/0     w3  11/2/1    w4  12/0/0

Touches climbing every single week, 4 to 6 to 11 to 12. The honest caveat is that his red zone work went the other way in Week 4, so what you are buying is a growing role, not a scoring role. Those often become the same thing. They are not the same thing yet.

Chris Brooks and Kaleb Johnson, RB, Green Bay. Rostered in 8 and 6 percent.

Brooks has red zone touches in three of four weeks; Johnson took a goal line carry in Week 4. They are in the same backfield, so claiming both is paying twice for one job. If you want the Green Bay backfield, pick one.

One we are showing you so you can reject it

AJ Barner, TE, Seattle. Rostered in 8 percent.

w1  2/0/0     w2  1/0/0     w3  8/4/2     w4  2/1/0

By season totals Barner leads this entire board in red zone work. By the week by week line, all of it is one game. Week 3 was genuinely excellent and Week 4 was two touches.

We are including him because an earlier version of this research ranked him first, and because the same flaw promoted Mike Gesicki, whose two goal line targets both came in Week 1 and who has had none in the three weeks since. A cumulative number cannot tell the difference between a role and a good afternoon a month ago. That is why every player above is published with his distribution instead of his total.

What this does not tell you

Four weeks is four games. A two week window is two. We are not claiming these six are better players than the ones already rostered in your league, only that they are doing a specific kind of work that produces touchdowns and that you can still have them.

Red zone usage also moves faster than most stats. A back who gets three goal line carries in a blowout has told you less than a back who gets one in a close game, and this method does not yet separate those. We will say so again when it costs us a call.

Every figure comes from the Week 1 through Week 4 play by play at ESPN, with rostership from ESPN leagues. The full available player board is on our waiver wire page, and the reasoning behind leading with workload rather than matchup is in this week's scorecard.