The Cowboys and WR Ceedee Lamb came out of the bye on fire in Week 8 against the Rams, with Lamb earning his highest target share (45%) of the season en route to a 12-catch, 158 yard receiving performance capped with two touchdowns. Lamb’s 41 PPR points constituted his highest single-week output of his career, but the timing of his explosion is particularly interesting when we look at what we saw from him last year and compare it to this year…
Through eight games before the bye in 2022, Ceedee Lamb was averaging just 14.6 PPR points per game with just three touchdowns total. In his first game back after the bye last year against Green Bay, Lamb put up double-digit targets and receptions (15 targets, 11 catches) for 150 yards and two touchdowns - and went on to average 20.5 PPR points through his final nine games in 2022.
This year? Through six games in 2023, Ceedee Lamb is averaging 14.9 PPR points per game over the first six games of the season, and returned from his bye week with double-digit targets and receptions (14 targets, 12 receptions) for 158 yards and two touchdowns – a near identical performance to the one he had coming off the bye in 2022. Could post-bye week Ceedee Lamb become part of fantasy football mythology and turn things up a notch this year like he did last year? Time will tell, but the parallels are pretty surprising.