The 2024 TPRR posts — AFC West and AFC South

Rashee Rice, Jerry Jeudy, Calvin Ridley, and the rest of the AFC West and AFC South

Man, it’s been a wild free agency period, and it’s led to me needing to rewrite this intro a couple of times (and the Chiefs’ section), as I’ve worked to get this piece out first Thursday, then Friday, and now today.

There’s obviously so much to talk about there, but the quickest way you can get my thoughts on that is by checking out some of my podcast work this week. I’d start with the stuff Shawn and I recorded for Stealing Bananas — we hit on the RBs in one episode, starting talking about the passing games with a focus on Kirk Cousins to Atlanta in a second, and then hit on key WR and TE moves in a third.

We also covered a ton of that on Ship Chasing this week, but all of those pods were before Marquise Brown and Keenan Allen changed teams. Luckily I got a chance to join my former CBS colleague Heath Cummings on FFT Dynasty where a good portion of the discussion centered on breaking down free agent movement, including a few of the veteran RBs and then of course Brown and Allen.

Of course, I’ll also be covering all the value shifts in different iterations of future newsletter posts, as well. The fact is the moves this week will have a considerable impact on everything we do right up until Week 1 in September, which is frankly fantastic. This type of player movement tests your ability to think dynamically — your understanding of the values before the moves, then how you interpret the uncertainty.

I’ve taken issue with certain types of content in the fantasy space recently, and here’s another great reason for that. We’re pushed to have a take, but the conversation is actually about a range of outcomes and multiple possibilities. People want to be right, and they want to be the first person who was right, because this is a highly competitive field. Naturally, they take a hard line stance on one possible explanation, ignoring other outcomes. When they are right — and takesmen will swing for the fences enough, because that’s their general approach, that eventually they will very much be right on certain specific explanations — people start to deify their predictive ability.

The take should be to develop multiple concepts of what could happen, but so much of the content you see this week is merely what will. If this seems like a minor point, it’s very much not. To take a firm stance and declare something very good or very bad, you have to actively shroud or outright ignore the healthy counterarguments. I’ve discussed many times how some of the best advice I received early in my fantasy career was to seek out and address reasonable counterarguments to my positions; that approach gets long and sometimes complicated, but it also helps others understand specifically what you see as possible yet not likely in a way that further crystallizes your analysis.

Of course, it’s much, much easier to just have a strong opinion that a move is “good” or “bad,” reducing to binary an analysis we know to be complex, and that all past results of past analysis of similar sorts should have taught us are not neat and easy to predict. Not binary.

I speak in generalities here because there’s just so much that has occurred — too much to try to capture in a few paragraphs before we close up this TPRR exercise. I did really try to get into this stuff in my podcast appearances this week, where it’s easier to dig into different angles and the full ranges of outcomes, so again that’s the best place to find specifics if you’re looking for them from me. But from a macro perspective, there’s been enough movement to create different angles and interpretations of so many situations, which of course allows for healthy disagreement and ultimately opportunities within our market, i.e. ADPs. And we love to see that.

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Switching gears a little bit, something I’d also wanted to mention in the final introduction to this series of posts is that while these TPRR exercises are trying to help us ground ourselves in the proper valuation of players at a certain stage of their individual careers, we’re obviously not hitting on every position. Something that’s universally true is evaluating where players are within the context of their “long view” arcs is always going to be helpful, but it’s probably more helpful for understanding the bets to make at WR and TE, while other factors help dictate fantasy approach at QB and especially RB.

In the introduction to Part 3, I suggested some of the RBs would take a little longer to land in new places this offseason, but boy was I wrong there. What an incredible early signing period that crystallized so much for us, and allowed us to focus on analysis of new situations, rather than speculation.

In addition to the 10 names referenced in this tweet, we also had Josh Jacobs landing in Green Bay, and pushing Aaron Jones to division rival Minnesota, which makes a dozen fairly notable names shifting teams before free agency even officially began (by my count, nine of them have had an ADP in the first two rounds of fantasy drafts at some point over the past few years).

As many speculated, these changes probably say something about the perception of this year’s rookie RB class, although the sheer number of teams that saw one RB out the door only to bring in another also suggests many teams were just interested in upgrading or downgrading what they had (it’s funny to look at those “chains” above and see how it’s sort of one high-profile back, then one lower, then another higher, etc., as each team seems to either be going from high to low or vice versa).

There will still be RBs drafted, and more value changes to come, but I look forward to diving into the RB landscape now that it’s been shuffled so aggressively. Still, as I wrote in the introduction to Part 3, it’s hard enough to predict this position in August, let alone March. Uncertainty reigns, and one major thing I’m considering at this stage is just what I think the individual teams can provide these guys.

For example, I mentioned a couple places this week, including on FFT Dynasty yesterday, that the Vikings appear headed for a reset season with their odds to win the NFC North now clearly fourth and well behind not just the Lions and Packers as the sort of co-favorites in the betting market, but more than twice as long as the Bears’ divisional odds. Their defense lost Danielle Hunter and looks pretty bad, as it has been (to be fair, they did add Jonathan Greenard to sort of replace Hunter), but now they’ll likely be quarterbacked by Sam Darnold and/or a rookie, with the polarizing J.J. McCarthy often discussed as a trade-up target, and even with Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison it’s difficult to imagine a highly functional offense in those circumstances. That doesn’t mean perception can’t evolve as the rest of their offseason takes shape, but there are known risks with an older RB in Aaron Jones, who did play well in 2023 but also dealt with some health issues. As of right now, balancing the risks in his profile entering his age-30 season with a payoff that feels less favorable in terms of things like touchdown equity has me less interested than, say, another age-30 RB in Derrick Henry.

As that is a relatively involved analysis, any layer could be disagreed with. Perhaps you don’t buy the assumption that the Vikings will be a below average scoring offense in 2024, or that it matters as much as I’ve said — good analyses have shown RBs can come from weaker offenses in some cases — or how I’ve positioned the age-related risk for Jones. Any of those things could alter the final interpretation to be wary of heavy exposure to Jones, although I’m describing a sort of “small hit, big miss” profile that isn’t necessarily the case if the associated cost is cheap enough, and it also might fit best ball better (“small hit” RBs without elite upside are more justifiable picks there, and the TD concerns, his efficiency profile, and the games played concerns could make for a spiky production profile where splash games exist). To get back to an earlier point, while this is a player I feel reasonably solid about my opinion on, it’s taken me a few hundred words to establish why, and the caveats I have offered that address reasonable objections do provide necessary context.

The other position we haven’t hit on much in this very involved offseason series is QB, but I’d argue so much of what matters for fantasy has been solved. Broadly, in early drafts, I’d be wary of less mobile QBs coming off efficient seasons, and targeting more mobile ones, although you can’t get a discount on guys like Anthony Richardson. I guess one way to put it is as much as I like C.J. Stroud and feel more confident in what he’ll become, those two Year 2 guys are next to each other in ADP, and I’d prefer Richardson at this point (Stroud is incredible, but fits the mold of efficiency dropback passer now getting very expensive, for fantasy purposes).

Of course, another key part of QB play is just predicting which offenses can be successful enough to score a bunch of points, because TDs ultimately drive a ton of the passing stats side of things (QB pass TD rate is notoriously unstable year to year, and we’re looking for spike seasons from pocket passers). Stroud does fit that mold, as Houston has been able to leverage his rookie contract window to upgrade several key spots this offseason, and the Texans look like an actual AFC contender in a way I’m not sure everyone has accepted yet. Certainly that’s one where I disagree with the futures odds, which still place them sixth highest in odds to win the AFC, behind teams like the Dolphins; after a strong free agency period that included major upgrades to their front seven, I’m betting through the risk of regression for an upstart team — like we see in Year N+1 for so many Year N Cinderella stories — and would have them in the tier with the Bills and Ravens immediately behind the Chiefs.

But let’s get back on course here and finalize the TPRR series with notes for the AFC West and AFC South. So far we’ve hit on:

• A.J. Brown, D.J. Moore, Sam LaPorta, and the rest of the NFC East and NFC North in Part 1

• Puka Nacua, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Kyle Pitts, and the rest of the NFC West and NFC South in Part 2

• Tyreek Hill, Garrett Wilson, Tee Higgins, and the rest of the AFC East and AFC North in Part 3

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 if you haven’t already. 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 across playoff and non-playoff teams alike).

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AFC West

Denver Broncos

• Javonte Williams - 0.32, 0.49 (170)

• Samaje Perine - 0.24, 0.40 (218)

• Courtland Sutton - 0.19, 0.51 (468)

• Jerry Jeudy - 0.18, 0.51 (460)

• Marvin Mims Jr. - 0.13, 0.38 (245)

• Brandon Johnson - 0.13, 0.34 (217)

• Adam Trautman - 0.10, 0.24 (348)

• Lucas Krull - 0.10, 0.26 (130)

• Lil'Jordan Humphrey - 0.09, 0.22 (222)

The Broncos were a hilarious offense last year, focused almost solely on getting the ball to their running backs and then shot plays. The first thing that stands out is how high both Javonte Williams and Samaje Perine come in, which to be fair has always been a Sean Payton staple (RB receiving as a West Coast offense type short passing efficiency concept). That will presumably stick with a new QB, given it was never a huge part of Russell Wilson’s game until he played for Payton, but it’s possible the offense opens up more if Payton trusts a new QB more. But if you combine Williams’ and Perine’s lines, you’re talking roughly a 400-route RB with a TPRR in the high twenties while no WR or TE hit 20%, which is a distribution unlike any other offense. Lest you think those RBs were downfield weapons of any sort, I’ll note both had aDOTs in the negative (which is not unheard of for RBs, but simply means almost all of their looks were at or around the line of scrimmage, with essentially nothing in the way of downfield looks which can help compile air yards and force a positive aDOT for a RB in the 1.0-2.0 range).

It’s fascinating to see how close Courtland Sutton and Jerry Jeudy are in both TPRR and wTPRR, and they were super close in YPT as well, carrying the similarities to 1.66 and 1.65 YPRRs. Sutton ran slightly more routes, which helped him to 3 more targets, 5 more receptions, and 14 more yards on the season, in what has to be one of the closest stat line matches I’ve ever seen for a team’s top two targets, except for one glaring number: Touchdowns. Sutton scored 10 times while Jeudy scored just twice, which drove so much of the perception difference between the two. I have to say, I went into this pretty down on Jeudy relative to Sutton, and mentioned as much on a recent Stealing Bananas, but Shawn noted how similar their lines were, and it’s frankly kind of shocking. I’m inclined to sort of mentally adjust both guys’ TPRRs given the huge numbers to RBs (i.e. they still earned a decent share of downfield passes, if we set aside the abnormally high rate of stuff behind the line of scrimmage). For Jeudy, that note would excuse a career low given he’d previously posted three consistent seasons between 21.3% and 22.1%; for Sutton, though, it would make his 2023 look like his best year since before his ACL injury, as he’s been right in this high-teens range recently, and has typically trailed Jeudy. With a solid YPT in 2023 as well, his YPRR was his highest his big 2019. I’m probably not really into either of these guys as huge targets, but I understand Sutton in Round 9 of early drafts, as he seemed to get that Sean Payton X receiver bump, and now has less competition. Meanwhile, I think you have to have a more favorable view of Jeudy than the pessimistic one I offered on that recent Stealing Bananas, but some points I made there stand: He heads to Cleveland where we’re not sure the QB is any good anymore, and two other players in that passing game — Amari Cooper and David Njoku — are coming off career years in multiple stats. Jeudy in Round 11 isn’t a bad price, either, but Elijah Moore also figures in there, and I’m not certain even in an injury situation that Jeudy would rise to the top, so it’s not a clear “target crowded passing games for contingency-based upside” situation, necessarily. Both picks are fine but uninspiring.

Behind those two, Marvin Mims had some moments as a rookie, and Sean Payton recently talked — before the Jeudy trade — about how they limited him some, particularly because they viewed him as playing the same position as Jeudy. He also implied they wanted to do more with Mims in Year 2, which of course was backed up by the Jeudy trade. One of the issues with being too in on Mims, though — even if you excuse the 13.1% TPRR as a rookie by focusing on the 11.4 YPT and kick return TD, and think through his efficiency upside scenarios — is just looking again at Payton’s offense from last year. We can chalk some of it up to Wilson, but they aren’t likely to have a huge QB upgrade given what’s currently available and their place in the draft. And when we look back to some of the really high-volume Saints passing offenses with Drew Brees under Payton, even those good offenses didn’t provide big receiving lines at the rate we’d expect (outside of sometimes that one No. 1 consolidating volume, e.g. Colston, Graham, Thomas). You almost always found the secondary weapons a little underwhelming, in part due to the RB numbers, and that was a good version of this offense with Drew Brees playing in a dome. The 2023 Broncos looked like the bad version of this already not super fantasy-friendly system, is what I’m saying, and while I like Mims, that’s a concern for his ultimate upside outside of his specific player profile in that it does add some coach- and system-based risk. Mims would be the other guy I’d be OK betting on in spots, because I do like the big-picture profile and we know rookie-year efficiency can lead to more volume, but I won’t be a zealot about him, and beyond him I’ll be pretty limited in Denver exposure overall, with RBs being my favored way to play it (short of an unexpected big QB upgrade).

Kansas City Chiefs

• Rashee Rice - 0.26, 0.54 (392)

• Kadarius Toney - 0.24, 0.46 (152)

• Travis Kelce - 0.23, 0.51 (513)

• Isiah Pacheco - 0.19, 0.28 (268)

• Jerick McKinnon - 0.18, 0.32 (175)

• Clyde Edwards-Helaire - 0.17, 0.26 (128)

• Justin Watson - 0.14, 0.46 (367)

• Richie James - 0.14, 0.33 (102)

• Noah Gray - 0.12, 0.28 (313)

• Skyy Moore - 0.12, 0.30 (289)

• Marquez Valdes-Scantling - 0.09, 0.28 (446)

The huge story here is Marquise Brown, obviously, and I covered him in the NFC West recently. The Cliff’s Notes are that his TPRR was fine last year, but his YPT was a career low. Now in KC, Patrick Mahomes is obviously going to help the efficiency. I’d said, “There’s potential for some bounce back, but he’s not a guy you’d expect to approach a 25% TPRR after five years and a current career high of 22.2%,” and that definitely fits here. But a rotational player like him who can post solid TPRRs with a downfield profile is very notable when the efficiency can pop. I’d also already written this whole Chiefs’ section before that deal was done, and after covering the most important two names, had concluded “there’s definitely still room for a KC pass-catching addition to hit in a strong way in 2024.” Let’s look at how he fits with the other two keys here though.