"Perfect Storm" candidates for monster 2024 seasons
Plus another YouTube stream today
Between the new YouTube channel and the normal podcasts I do, I realized I’ve done about 20 hours of podcasting since last Monday (I’ll be doing another YouTube stream today, so come hang at Noon ET or do me a favor and just go subscribe to the channel).
That’s a lot of talking about football. Inevitably when I do this much content, I find myself repeating certain ideas as I sort of try to grasp why I’m so enamored with a situation. I was thinking about this recently, specifically how I start to repeat these arguments in my stream-of-consciousness style, almost trying to dial them into a more convincing and shorter hook, since I definitely wish I could gather my thoughts better at times (read: always). And it hit me that I what I needed to do for my next piece here at Stealing Signals was not necessarily dial these things in, but let myself really dig into this list of the things I have the most conviction about right now, and why.
I haven’t released any rankings yet, and I’m doing that thing I always do where I’m more or less avoiding other rankings. I’ve watched a few of Peter Overzet’s videos at his Deposit Kingdom YouTube channel, including some that break down some of the biggest early differences between a few popular sets of rankings. Pete’s posting a ton of well-produced videos over there, and it’s great content on its face, but you should also be watching because he has his finger on the pulse in a way that makes him the best source for understanding the shifting draft trends for any serious best ball player.
In his videos, he’s pulled from a few sources I would rank among the top of the lists I’d keep an eye on, including Shawn Siegele’s rankings at RotoViz, the Legendary Upside ranks, and Establish the Run. I also saw my buddy Jakob Sanderson post his rankings at his Substack Thinking About Thinking last week, and I’m going to be checking all of those out soon enough.
But I’ve written about this in past years, and it remains true for me. I struggle with conviction in some cases, and even just watching some of Peter’s breakdowns I felt myself getting hashtag influenced. At this time of year, my No. 1 goal is to work through my own process as independently as I can (while of course recognizing that’s extremely difficult when I have the joy of doing so much content with people whose opinions I have so much respect for).
Those of you who have subscribed for some time know I struggle with rankings. I recognize the necessity as a content creator where subscribers need a quick way to distill takes. At the same time, the way ADP plays in is a major element, and over the past few years I’ve emphasized how things like the tiers and “Targets” and “Fades” notations I build into my ranks (when I do release them) are far more important than just the list itself. Those things shape how I’d like to be building teams across formats, and within which pockets of players I want to be living structurally.
Anyway, I’m still trying to figure out when I want to get some preliminary rankings out — whether I’ll wait until I’ve done my projections, as I typically always have. But regardless, a major utility of ranks at this stage is to see which players a ranker has very far ahead of ADP. It’s sort of like: What are your strong takes?
That’s what I realized would be most valuable here today. Of course, I’ve already written the full TPRR posts breaking down basically every pass-catcher in the league back in early March, so it’s not like I haven’t challenged myself to get takes out there. As with each of the past few years, it’s been cool to see some of the guys I highlighted in those posts become popular and build steam, which builds confidence in my analyses.
The discussions I keep having on all my podcasts are more of these types of strong takes. They aren’t my only strong takes — for some guys, I’m in lockstep with other people I’m podcasting with, and stuff I’m seeing. Those are more “popular” takes that I maybe don’t require the same deep dives right now, as I’m confident those takes will be out there and influencing the market for people that are looking.
But the ones I’ve tried to articulate a little bit of a unique position on a couple times — and maybe haven’t been able to get right, and thus haven’t convinced many — tend to be the ones that seem like they are probably the most valuable. They aren’t necessarily going to be baked into the market through other people moving the same direction on those positions. At this point in the post-draft period, I’ve noticed several of those fall into this category where I’m looking at upside scenarios I see to be very compelling.
One of the things you’ll always see me write about is how all the past data in the world can’t explain everything in football, and there’s always a healthy chunk of “unexplained variance” when people start talking about stuff like the strong r-squared figures of some stat. You’ll also see me write about how “you’re looking for outliers,” which implies that the extreme upside scenarios — while difficult to quantify — tend to be the things that decide who wins at this game.
There are so, so many analysts — often younger ones, up and coming in the industry — who are incredibly good at digging into the weeds of advanced metrics for interesting nuggets, but where that stuff frequently just uncovers why a player is mispriced from his median outcome by a round or so (and then when that research becomes ubiquitous, the market typically responds quickly). But being right by a round or two against the median outcome of a player is not the most important way to win in fantasy football. Don’t get me wrong — we want to get good prices on all our bets, and there are those who will argue (convincingly) that upside is difficult to parse and finding good prices is a way to open ourselves up to it. Even if this is your approach, my argument would be it’s not about stacking small wins — stacking a ton of those usually just earns you a 75th percentile team that will finish third place or something.
In other words, for how many words we all spill on the nuances of usage and role within offenses, and how to place the guys ranked 10th and 11th at their position relative to each other, that’s mostly just peacocking to try to win arguments.
The cold, hard truth about what really moves the needle during the actual season is this vague concept of upside, which as I’m getting at is very difficult to predict. I like to think of it within that concept of “unexplained variance” I just referred to — the situations where a perfect storm of events can create dynamic statistical production, in a way models aren’t going to account for. That 0.60 r-squared stat looks at the aggregate and is going to predict the most predictable outcomes pretty well, but the outliers — what we’re looking for — are the reason there’s 40% unexplained variance.
I also want to make the tangential point that this isn’t an anti-data argument. It’s logic, and the logic is frankly pretty strong, and it should then guide the data usage. The argument is you aren’t going to solve the puzzle of the 2024 season by diving deeper into 2023 statistics; instead, you need to use incomplete small sample data to predict.
That concept is a core tenet for me as a fantasy analyst. Not every situation I discuss today will be my favorite bets for massive upside, and they are definitely not likely scenarios. They are more like “bold predictions,” if you will.
It’s always cost-adjusted, and if I was going to argue for the purest forms of upside, those would be all the more expensive players. Instead, I’m highlighting low-probability outcomes I think are nonetheless being overlooked, such that the full range of outcomes for a player (or players) isn’t baked into his (their) price(s). In short, situations where I think several elements are moving in the same direction to create “perfect storm” potential.
Naturally, I’m going to be discussing guys that I’m taking a lot of in drafts — i.e. those I’d likely be ranking well above ADP if releasing ranks now — because I think there’s more upside (or a balance of floor and upside) at cost than the market does. So that’s the deal — this type of article is the best way for me to explain my May conviction while maintaining some degree of analytical flexibility and not opening myself up to take lock. I think it kind of rules, and I’m already thinking about doing it again next year, or even a 2.0 version later this summer if I feel like it.
That’s also why I thought it was worth the long intro, but enough explaining the idea. Here are some of my favorite “perfect storm” situations for 2024.
Kansas City pass-catchers
Per my buddy Michael Leone’s PROE numbers, here are the Chiefs’ league-wide ranks in Pass Rate Over Expectation each year, working back from 2023:
2023: 1st
2022: 1st
2021: 1st
2020: 1st
2019: 1st
2018: 2nd
2017 (before the Patrick Mahomes era): 4th
2016: 9th
2015: 10th
2014: 14th
2013 (Andy Reid’s first season in KC): 8th
I’m sure if I had the data to go back through Reid’s time with the Eagles, we’d still see top-half pass rates basically every season. The point is twofold: Reid has always been at the forefront of the pass-first movement, and then when he paired up with maybe the most talented quarterback of all time, he predictably ratcheted that up even further.
Mahomes has caught some flak for his lower aDOT last year, but that was really a trick of averages and volume. He throws so much — and defenses play him by taking away the explosives — that he has to be patient and take the underneath stuff more than other QBs. His numbers weren’t as good per-attempt as his peak, and people seem to be emphasizing that, without considering how poor the guys running the routes were. It was so bad that it’s legitimately shocking they still finished first in PROE. (A sample: Marquez Valdes-Scantling led the WRs with 446 regular season routes, earned a target on just 9% of them, and didn’t get signed this offseason until after the NFL draft.)
Rashee Rice was a hit, but didn’t run routes on more than 70% of dropbacks in an individual game until Week 14. He would maintain that fuller role through the playoffs, so about eight weeks, which I’d call a meaningful sample. Travis Kelce also turned a light switch on for the playoffs, and showed his really poor second half of the regular season wasn’t due to being unable to play anymore. The Chiefs agreed, signing him to a new deal this offseason.
Adding a mostly-efficient Marquise Brown into the MVS role, and then the dynamic Xavier Worthy — who they traded up to acquire in the first round, which is far more buy-in than guys like Skyy Moore and Mecole Hardman who have busted in the past — to take at least the Hardman and Kadarius Toney usage (plus maybe more, if you ask my Stealing Bananas cohost Shawn Siegele) creates the potential for a substantially improved room.
The Rice off-the-field stuff is tough, but it’s an incredibly safe bet that Kansas City will have an improved receiving corps this year even if he’s suspended for some time. And yet, their collective pricing makes no sense.
The same offseason drafters are afraid of Kelce — pushing him down to a seriously palatable fourth-round price tag — and also shying away from Rice with the potential suspension looming, Brown and Worthy sit at the Round 5/6 turn.
Something is wrong here. Either Kelce is going to be a smash in the fourth round. Or Rice isn’t going to get the suspension people expect (i.e. shorter), and he winds up being a smash in the seventh round. Or if those two prices are accurate, then Worthy and/or Brown are league-winners.
There’s really no other way to put that. The perfect storm element here is for all the fun passing offenses in the league, this is the single most consistently bankable when looking at the intersection of volume and efficiency. They are going to throw as much as the upside cases for teams like the Bills and Texans, and Patrick Mahomes is going to be a good QB who elevates the value of all those targets. There’s no better mix of volume and efficiency in a median outcome among the passing offenses for the other 31 teams, and while some other teams will have upside outcomes that reach them in those regards, the fact that it’s the default expectation for Kansas City is what makes me so confident this pricing is wrong.
But then there’s the further perfect storm element that asks: What if Mahomes’ stats just rebound with a better receiving corps? What if the Chiefs go a little scorched earth this year because they can, because Brown and Worthy bring that much to the equation? It’s all free upside at cost, and makes everyone great to target. Oddly, Mahomes’ price is the one that feels least exploitable, because he’s priced in a range that does acknowledge he’s the league’s premier passing stats QB (he does offer some mobility, so I don’t want to call him a pocket passer, but he’s much more reliant on the passing numbers being elite than the three QBs who go before him).
My answer has been selecting all of the pass catchers — often two on the same roster even without Mahomes, as a directional bet on the passing game similar to my Bucs stuff last year. I’m particularly in on Rice at that cost, as I don’t think he will stay down this low all offseason. (The best point I’ve seen made about his new cost is a commenter mentioning Jameson Williams didn’t go meaningfully lower in terms of opportunity cost tiers, and that was after his six-game suspension was announced last year. Williams had also struggled to produce up to that point, while Rice posted a 2.39 YPRR as a rookie. And we don’t even know the Rice suspension yet, with 6-8 games still seeming to be the likely high end.)
I’ve also taken a ton of Worthy, because it feels like his early-season timeline gets sped up if Rice does get suspended, which could be massive for him. That doesn’t mean Kelce and Brown aren’t easy clicks at this point, too, because they are, and it’s Brown that’s started to rise a little bit.
Broncos RBs
I wrote about the Bo Nix to Denver effect just before the draft in a section I titled, “Three NFL draft takes I sort of believe, or maybe want to believe.”
The Bo Nix to Denver thing is too perfect to not happen. I need Sean Payton to get his new Drew Brees with a hyper-accurate underneath passer that allows him to run his West Coast type offense, mainly because I then want to be able to hammer Denver RBs for their High-Value Touch potential. Give me this RB receptions goldmine for the next few seasons, please.
Obviously I don’t think Nix is going to be the next Brees, but the stylistic similarities have to be acknowledged. No team threw to RBs more than Denver’s 153 targets to the position last year, and that was with a relatively mobile QB under center who didn’t have a long history of high RB target rates.