Stealing Signals, Week 7, Part 2
Stealing Signals, Week 7, Part 2
Injuries suck, plus the Biggest Signals and Biggest Noise
I wrote some optimism about where the NFL stands as a league right now in the introduction yesterday, but all I’ve seen since writing that in the morning yesterday is more doom and gloom. It wears on you!
But the worst part of it was the Chris Godwin injury last night. Godwin has been one of the best storylines of the year, and is a player I’ve been on a bunch throughout his career, if not this year. He wasn’t quite all the way back last year in his second year removed from that ACL tear, but had gotten back to peak form this season, and was once again performing like a guy who had been a Round 3 pick at times early in his career. At this moment, he leads the NFL in receptions with 50, in his age-28 season, as a peak-aged star. He was running a career-high catch rate, the best YPT he’d posted since his age-24 season in 2020, and his 5 TDs were already his most since 2021, the year he eventually tore his ACL.
It was just a brutal reminder of what this sport is, and how it can manifest. We got a similar reminder with the Brandon Aiyuk injury Sunday, and as the WR injuries pile up, I’ve seen the typical gleeful celebrating of the “failure” of Zero RB from the types of people who build a not insignificant portion of their online presence around a very specific type of hypocrisy where they pop up whenever possible to take a sort of moral high ground in painting Zero RB philosophies as this ghoulish strategy, while they do far more celebrating of WR injuries and failures than I ever seem to see from Zero RB people when the RBs aren’t performing well. Just one more of those awesome trends that makes the fantasy football space worse. Everybody just wants to be vibes-based because it’s tougher to be accurate.
Anyway, injuries of all kind suck, and it’s an element to the sport we can’t avoid. I wrote a bunch of positive stuff about where the NFL is right now yesterday, and in doing so I mentioned the hip drop rule change and how that’s seemingly limited those types of injuries. I also tweeted about that, and I got a few responses that they are still happening and just not being called. It was interesting because I was targeting that tweet — where I said it “hasn’t really been an issue” — at people who claimed this rule change would make it impossible to tackle, and pointing out that there’s been essentially no effect on how players play defense, and we’re not playing flag football now, etc. But the response I got was that they actually need to do more, and we do know this is a split issue.
My position here is it’s clear that a rule change was at least positive. As part of that discussion, I got sent several examples of supposed hip drops from earlier this year, which included tackles on Josh Allen, Rachaad White, and Chase Brown. My note back to that commenter was all three of those examples featured the defender going to the ground before engaging with the player’s legs, which was a specific distinction in the rule, and then all three of those players didn’t suffer major injuries because of how that takes stress off the impact with the legs. While there are always going to be players pushing the boundaries, it actually feels like telling defenders they no longer have the green light to swing like a wrecking ball at a player’s lower legs and at least have to be careful has had a positive impact.
Again, I’ve preached before the issue with hip drops is one of misunderstanding, and that it’s a very specific technique that became a thing in Rugby in the early 2000s, which you can Google to confirm (typing something like “hip drop tackle history” will return Google’s dumb AI telling you it was invented in 2002 with the Melbourne Storm rugby team), if you’re one of those people inclined to believe that this type of tackle has existed forever. It very much has not, and because it’s so incredibly effective at getting guys on the ground (while having extremely high injury rates), it’s something that had gained popularity. A rule change here does seem to have at least limited the degree to which defenders are swinging at these guys, and it’s helped us avoid some major injuries.
All of which brings us to last night. Early in the Bucs-Ravens game, Zay Flowers got rolled up on a play that someone responded to my earlier thread about, claiming it was evidence hip drops still exist, which incidentally is not a point I ever made. It’s that “Why don’t we make society better?” “Yet you participate in society. Curious!” meme. Anyway, I thought that tackle was another example of the player engaging with the ground first, and Flowers seemed to avoid major injury because he was back in the game relatively quickly (although maybe a little hobbled).
Then came the Godwin play. I couldn’t really find a good shot of it and it doesn’t ultimately matter how much of a hip drop it was, because he’s out for the year. What I think it validates is that we gotta try to prevent these exact types of injuries where guys’ legs are getting rolled up on, seemingly more than ever. I had some people asking me about data for this kind of stuff, and the truth is we aren’t going to have great data on it necessarily, but we can use logic that rules changes are helpful from a preventative sense. Helmet to helmet rules reduced those hits, obviously. The horse collar rule has clearly led to defenders not going through the whole motion as often, even if they do still do it occasionally (sometimes you’ll see the guy grab and release, as well). Even the body weight thing I referenced yesterday which was one of the tougher ones I think to define and get right has still had positive effects in that we don’t have defenders driving QBs into the turf and breaking collarbones as much anymore.
I do think these things should be reviewable, because we shouldn’t encourage player safety rules to be potentially scorned when they are administered incorrectly, but beyond that little note I just think it’s so important the more injuries we see that we actually do accept the changes to the sport. The personal foul calls people get so riled up about constitute a lower percentage of plays than you even think. I can’t remember the exact number but I remember getting in arguments about roughing the passer and looking it up and it came out to something like 1-2 roughing the passer calls per game, out of 60ish plays per team. Don’t quote me on that, but it’s sub-5% of all plays, and the way we discuss this stuff you’d think it comes up a full 50% of the time players try to make tackles.
Yes, it does make the sport more difficult on defenders when we give them a million restrictions on how they can tackle. But they keep coming up with new ways, including how the hip drop became a go-to option after going high became a problem. I absolutely support a league willing to proactively try to keep its players on the field, even if that’s unfair to defenses. It’s not just that I’m a fantasy analyst, either; the sport loses popularity when you don’t have the talent out there. It’s just the reality.
As for the hip drop, I don’t see a major problem that the officials have erred on the side of not calling it so much through the first seven weeks. The last thing you want it over-penalizing it and getting everyone out on the new rule before it has a chance. The officials are still getting used to spotting it, surely. But it’s on the books, and it can and should be called more going forward, to continue to dissuade defenders from that specific type of action. Hopefully it leads to a lot more of the Flowers outcomes than the Godwin ones.
Let’s get to the games, and then to the Biggest Signals of the week, as we have a ton of key notes and guys you can look at on your waiver wire this week. You can always find an audio version of the posts in the Substack app, and people seem to really like that. You can also find easier-to-see versions of the visuals at the main site, bengretch.substack.com.
Data is typically courtesy of NFL fastR via the awesome Sam Hoppen, but I will also pull from RotoViz apps, Pro Football Reference, PFF, the Fantasy Points Data Suite, and NFL Pro. Part 1 of Week 1 had a glossary of key terms to know.
Rams 20, Raiders 15
Key Stat: Brock Bowers — 35% TPRR, 14 targets
Antonio Pierce settled for field goals all day, including from the 9-yard line with under three minutes left, where he cut an 8-point game to a 5-point game and would still have needed a touchdown. I always say 8-point games should be thought of as two scores because of how you need the conversion just to force OT, so two coinflips to win, but contingent on still needing a TD to win, I think I’d like to just take my shot there. They got the ball back at their own 11-yard line and didn’t come close to advancing the full length of the field, like the would have needed to. Earlier in the fourth quarter, he also kicked from the 9-yard line on 4th-and-5 (meaning it was possible to gain a first down without scoring) to cut it to 8, when the score at the time was 20-9. That one was probably worse, but the net result of all this was the Raiders covered a 7-point spread, and I didn’t bet on this game but I thought about laying the points, so I’m extremely glad I didn’t. The Rams also missed a 35-yard field goal in the fourth quarter, and I imagine those who did have Rams -7 were not pleased with how this shook out!
Tutu Atwell (9-6-51) was the guy early and often in this one, and then coming out of the bye Jordan Whittington was active and I saw him well into the second half, but he only played 9 snaps while Tyler Johnson (7-4-57) was back in an every-down role. Johnson is probably worth a pickup again as Cooper Kupp is rumored to be on the trade block. Demarcus Robinson (3-1-9) continues to run a ton of empty routes and the guys running routes alongside him are going to have value. Colby Parkinson (2-2-32) is also a TE name to keep an eye on, despite a quiet game here.
Blake Corum (3-11) got a little actual early in the second quarter in the normal flow of the game, but Kyren Williams (21-76-2) still played a whopping 89% snaps in this one. I do think we’re going to see Corum playing more at some point this season, and he’s a worthwhile hold, but it’s Kyren’s backfield for now.
Brock Bowers (14-10-93) had two quick catches, and then eight more the rest of the game, and when I talked to my Stealing Bananas co-host Shawn Siegele Sunday night, all he seemed concerned about was how the Raiders went the whole third quarter without getting him the ball. It was a pretty hilarious moment on that podcast when discussing a guy who finished with 14 targets and 10 catches, but it also underscores a real point here that Bowers is in some ways their whole offense and also that he doesn’t seem easy to take away for defenses, so it really is a question of just how much can the Raiders go to him? Anyway, he remains the clear redraft TE1, as we’ve been discussing. Each week he obviously solidifies that more and more, and each week he’ll be harder to acquire, but I’m still open to paying up.
Tre Tucker (8-3-36) and D.J. Turner (7-2-13) got a lot of volume, and didn’t do much, because they aren’t great. They’re going to continue to get big work when Jakobi Meyers is out, though.
Aidan O’Connell injured his finger so we got more Gardner Minshew, who I’ve compared to Ryan Fitzpatrick before, but he’s like Fitzpatrick plus. I joked on Bananas he’s Fitzpatrick who has been huffing glue all game on the sidelines. There’s a Charlie Day “wildcard” thing going on here, or those dudes from Mad Max — every extended play he’s a lock to throw a ball up but it’s often to no man’s land, and he’s one QB where you’d prefer if the play breaks down that he just gets sacked. His 3rd-and-10 interception to seal the game instead of living to play fourth down was extremely predictable. I could hear him yelling, “Leeroy Jenkins!”
Alexander Mattison (23-92, 3-3-31) played a ton despite Zamir White (3-13, 1-1-14) being back, so that was new. Ameer Abdullah was out there some but didn’t see a target or touch. Mattison’s been fine and is a low-ceiling volume play, but that volume could also go away if White’s role were to grow.
Signal: Tyler Johnson — 92% routes in a game Jordan Whittington was active for, but Whittington ran just 9 routes (Johnson an add again amid Cooper Kupp trade rumors); Tutu Atwell — 92% routes, 9 targets, seemed like the focal point (another key name); Alexander Mattison — 70% snaps, 26 touches despite Zamir White being active
Noise: Tre Tucker, D.J. Turner — 15 combined targets, 5 receptions (over 95% routes for both, but won’t get this type of volume when Jakobi Meyers returns, and the low efficiency actually probably isn’t totally Noise at this talent level)