Biggest Single-Week Fantasy Performances of 2016

What were the 10 biggest single-week fantasy scores of 2016?

The table below ranks the ten largest single-game fantasy scoring performances of the 2016 season by best week, alongside each player's season totals.

| Rank | Player | Team | Games | Points | Points Per Game | Best Week | | 1 | Le'Veon Bell | Pittsburgh Steelers | 13 | 315 | 24 | 52 | | 2 | Julio Jones | Atlanta Falcons | 15 | 260 | 17 | 48 | | 3 | Ezekiel Elliott | Dallas Cowboys | 16 | 325 | 20 | 41 | | 4 | Odell Beckham | New York Giants | 16 | 297 | 19 | 40 | | 5 | Zach Ertz | Philadelphia Eagles | 16 | 184 | 11 | 39 | | 6 | David Johnson | Arizona Cardinals | 16 | 406 | 25 | 38 | | 7 | Davante Adams | Green Bay Packers | 16 | 245 | 15 | 38 | | 8 | Mike Evans | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | 16 | 300 | 19 | 38 | | 9 | Brandin Cooks | New Orleans Saints | 16 | 246 | 15 | 38 | | 10 | Aaron Rodgers | Green Bay Packers | 16 | 376 | 24 | 37 |

Two things jump out immediately. First, the top two weeks sit alone: Bell at 52 and Jones at 48 are the only performances of the year that reached the forties, and everything from third place down stayed at 41 or lower. Second, there is a hard cluster at 38, where four different players landed on the exact same best-week figure: David Johnson, Davante Adams, Mike Evans and Brandin Cooks. That logjam means nearly half the list shares one number, and separation above it came only from the genuinely historic weeks at the top.

Why Le'Veon Bell's 52-point week stands alone

Bell's best week of 52 towers over the rest of the list in a way no other entry does. Jones, in second, reached 48, so the two near the top are close to each other, but the fall from Jones to Elliott in third is steep, dropping from 48 all the way to 41. Bell also got there in fewer games than anyone else on the board: he played 13 games that season, while every other name in the top ten played 15 or 16. A 52-point single week out of a 13-game season is the kind of outlier that decided fantasy matchups on its own.

What makes the week even more striking is how far it ran past his own season average. Bell scored 24 points per game across the year, so his best game came in at more than double his typical output. Only Jones shows a comparable gap between his weekly norm and his peak, going from 17 points per game to a 48-point explosion.

How the single-week list differs from the season scoring race

Ranking by best week reshuffles the familiar 2016 hierarchy in revealing ways. David Johnson, who scored more total fantasy points than anyone on this list with 406, sits only sixth here because his biggest game was 38. Aaron Rodgers, second in total points at 376, closes the list at tenth with a best week of 37. Meanwhile Zach Ertz, whose 184 season points are the lowest on the board by a wide margin, ranks fifth on the strength of a 39-point game that none of the season-scoring giants matched.

The lesson for fantasy managers is that the players who win you a single week are not always the players who win you the season. Elliott and Odell Beckham appear in the top five on both measures, giving them the rare combination of week-winning upside and year-long production, while Ertz's presence here shows a peak week can come from outside the elite tier of season-long scorers.

Which teams placed multiple players on the list?

The Green Bay Packers are the only franchise with two entries: Davante Adams at 38 and Aaron Rodgers at 37. That pairing reflects an offense capable of producing huge single weeks from two different positions in the same season. Every other club on the board, from the Pittsburgh Steelers to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, placed exactly one player, meaning the biggest one-game explosions of 2016 were spread across eight different offenses rather than concentrated in one or two.

Where the drop-off sits in the 2016 best-week column

The shape of this list is unusual. Instead of a smooth decline from first to tenth, the numbers break into three distinct tiers: the two forties-plus weeks from Bell and Jones, a middle band running from Elliott's 41 down through Ertz at 39, and then the flat four-way tie at 38 before Rodgers rounds things out at 37. Eight of the ten entries sit within a narrow band from 37 to 41, which makes the top two entries look even more like separate events. If your fantasy league gave out a weekly highest-score prize in 2016, that prize almost certainly came down to whether you owned Bell or Jones in the right week.