The 2024 TPRR posts — AFC East and AFC North

Tyreek Hill, Garrett Wilson, Tee Higgins, and the rest of the AFC East and AFC North

Today marks the beginning of the legal tampering period, which essentially just means free agency deals can start rolling in (and in they will roll, so keep your head on a swivel). We’ve already seen some of the released players land in new cities, including Russell Wilson to Pittsburgh yesterday. We’ve also seen returns, like how Tampa was able to bring back both Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans.

Today should begin a stretch of a ton of players changing uniforms, and there are always a few surprises, and always a big impact. One position we care deeply about for fantasy but where the NFL is increasingly disinterested in commitment to the specific players is of course RB.

I discussed on Ship Chasing last week why I’m expecting a relatively big name or two to remain unsigned into the summer again this year, as Dalvin Cook and Leonard Fournette did last year. And that’s rarely a good thing — people were advocating for both of those guys last year, as all-profit plays whose value would rise once they signed, and it very much didn’t go that way for either. (That was an example of why to be wary of arguments to the effect of, “This is how it always goes,” that claimed the market’s valuation was just off, when it was in fact properly baking in risk that something that had always gone a certain way might not actually go that way this time, because things evolve. The market is rarely missing what appears to be some very obvious data point; usually it’s instead responding to risk in a dynamic fashion and predicting change, though that doesn’t mean it’s always perfect in doing so, either.)

Anyway, free agency is going to be massive for RBs, and we’ll learn a lot more within days of this intro going out, so I don’t want to get too deep into it. Mostly, I just wanted to comment on how after David Montgomery and Miles Sanders got decent deals in early free agency last year, things got quiet for RBs. The franchise-tagged Saquon Barkley and Josh Jacobs both refused to sign their tenders, and appeared at risk of holding out. Ezekiel Elliott remained unsigned until inking with the Patriots deeper into the offseason. Some of the low-cost deals spoke to low impact, like Rashaad Penny, whose contract I looked past all offseason as one of my biggest misses.

There are only 32 organizations in the league, and there seemed to be only a couple still willing to make a strong move for a RB, while more of the seemingly needy teams were all independently saying, “We aren’t going to prioritize paying a RB.” That’s obviously been a trend, and we again have many available RBs in 2024, so I’ll just say I’m very intrigued to see what happens. My hope is these guys get what they deserve, because so many are woefully underpaid on their rookie deals, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if we’re underwhelmed by the early free agency movement for the entire position.

And all of that makes it really tough to evaluate such a highly impactful fantasy position. I’ve mentioned already this offseason I’d be high on secure roles like the Lions’ tandem, and I can understand paying for expensive but talented players like Jonathan Taylor, where I feel confident the role will be there. The fact of the matter is you can sink early rosters by taking on too much RB risk much in the way you can sink late rosters by doing the same. That’s essentially the thesis for Zero RB, and when you add in a whole offseason of uncertainty at a position the league is devaluing — such that the teams who do still like RBs might wind up with two good ones to share the load, and others might wind up with wide open depth charts, and none of it is as clean as fantasy managers would like it to be — it just becomes that much harder to nail down a position in March that we have a difficult enough time evaluating in August.

But that’s why I spend my early offseason on receiving stats, which are a little easier to evaluate over a longer timeline. Let’s get to the TPRR notes for the AFC East and AFC North. So far we’ve hit on the NFC East and NFC North in Part 1 and then the NFC West and NFC South in Part 2. The intro to Part 1 talks more about what this is, including the scale of what is good for different stats, and I recommend reading through that to be able to contextualize the analysis below. The data will be displayed in this format:

Player Name - TPRR, wTPRR (total routes)

I’m including anyone who ran at least 100 routes in the regular season. All routes numbers are on PFF’s scale, and the data is regular season only (which isn’t the best way to look at the efficiency, but does normalize the routes volume for us, and we have a better immediate grasp of fantasy scoring in the regular season than regular plus postseason).

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AFC East

Buffalo Bills

• Stefon Diggs - 0.27, 0.69 (593)

• Dalton Kincaid - 0.20, 0.44 (460)

• Deonte Harty - 0.19, 0.49 (109)

• James Cook - 0.17, 0.32 (308)

• Dawson Knox - 0.15, 0.33 (241)

• Gabe Davis - 0.14, 0.42 (555)

• Khalil Shakir - 0.14, 0.32 (332)

• Trent Sherfield - 0.13, 0.33 (178)

• Latavius Murray - 0.12, 0.21 (183)

Stefon Diggs’ YPT over his four years in Buffalo has been maddening, bouncing from 9.2 to 7.5 back to 9.3 and then back down to 7.4 this past year. But his TPRR has been consistent, and his wTPRR even more so — his TPRR dipped a bit in 2021, but his aDOT was up, and his wTPRR has been tightly placed between 0.65 and 0.69 all four seasons, with 2023 actually tying at the high end due to a narrow career high 26.8% TPRR. That’s all to say that he still earned volume in 2023 the way he always has for the Bills, and while he’s now on the wrong side of 30, his YPRR has been over 1.9 in all four years, while it’s jumped up to about 2.5 both times the YPT has peaked. That’s a strong range of demonstrated production, and he’s probably a bounceback candidate for 2024 if still with the Bills, in that there aren’t concerns about his underlying volume-earning, and his 2023 efficiency was probably on the low end of his true talent. I’d have minor concerns he’s lost a half step and the efficiency can’t return back to the peaks, so his price and the dynamics of the players around him will depend how much I’m in.

Dalton Kincaid had a successful year for a rookie TE; nothing too exciting but solid at a 19.6% TPRR with a 7.5 YPT. The 6.7 aDOT was below average, although it increased as the season wore on after some very short-area usage early in the season. The TPRR is certainly favorable in comparison to Dawson Knox’s career, as Knox’s career high season is just 17.6%, and he hasn’t been over a 15% TPRR in three years. TEs tend to develop a little slower, but Kincaid’s first-round draft capital should continue to help him get a few extra looks, and there’s no reason to be out on him in this potent offense.

You could consider being out on Gabe Davis, whose 14.1% TPRR was a dip from 2022’s 16.0% which was a dip from 2021’s 18.0%. The YPT has remained strong, and the aDOT has always been very high, which makes the wTPRR more palatable. But the simple fact is he’s never earned the short and intermediate targets with consistency, and has also steadily earned fewer deep targets, which is not ideal for a deep threat. That said, the efficiency downfield does paint a better picture than some other deep threats. There’s just a question of whether he’ll maintain that if he experiences a meaningful dip in QB play on a new roster.

James Cook was in a decent range for a RB, and well above Latavius Murray both in routes and per-route volume in a way we’d hope to see for Cook’s receiving outlook. Khalil Shakir is fine, and had a ridiculous 13.6 YPT, but his career TPRR on 473 routes is below 13%, which suggests he’s probably not worth chasing up draft boards if there’s hype in the aftermath of the expected Davis departure in free agency.

Miami Dolphins

• Tyreek Hill - 0.35, 0.92 (471)

• Jaylen Waddle - 0.27, 0.68 (385)

• De'Von Achane - 0.22, 0.37 (172)

• Chase Claypool - 0.17, 0.46 (113)

• Cedrick Wilson Jr. - 0.14, 0.37 (271)

• Raheem Mostert - 0.11, 0.18 (258)

• Braxton Berrios - 0.11, 0.24 (323)

• Alec Ingold - 0.10, 0.19 (143)

• Durham Smythe - 0.10, 0.23 (400)

• Julian Hill - 0.07, 0.15 (107)

Tyreek Hill backed up the ridiculous 2022 per-route usage metrics by no just taking it up a notch, but flying up to a 35.5% TPRR (he was at a league high 31.3% in 2022). I don’t even know what to say about his per-route volume — for starters, it doesn’t seem sustainable, but then anytime you watch this offense you know that it’s basically designed around getting Hill the ball in space. I’d still expect something closer to 30% in 2024, simply because 35% is absurd, but it doesn’t really matter because he’s also added a YPT over 10 each of the past two years and is a demonstrated efficient player. I mean he posted a 3.82 YPRR this past season, which if you’re counting at home is a solid 1.91 season, except two of those jammed into every route. He was at 3.20 in 2022, so this wasn’t a recent explosion, and Hill’s scheme success and overall dominance is frankly a longer track record than CeeDee Lamb’s, who is the only WR currently going higher than him. Of course, without taking a dig at Lamb, I find it hard to imagine Hill would be the WR2 if he didn’t suffer the lower leg injury late in the year that held him to 471 routes for the season (Lamb ran 629).