Offseason Stealing Signals, NFC East
Offseason Stealing Signals, NFC East
Fast-paced offenses, featuring Lamb, AJB, Nabers, and Jayden
Firing this off before I’m out of pocket for the next 36 hours or so because this is the final division. If you need an idea of why I have a guy ranked where I do, you’ll now have all 32 teams in these writeups to hopefully answer that question.
I wrote a long introduction to the value I see in this series as its own post, and a bit more intro stuff in Part 1 on the AFC South. As I detailed, in order to maximize the value add and time committed to writing this all up, my focus here will be on how I’m playing the different teams.
One key resource I’ll link to for each team is my March TPRR writeups, which cover the whole pass-catching group from last year. I’ll reference stuff from there from time to time, but not repeat huge concepts.
So far we’ve hit:
Stroud, Richardson, and another QB I’m on in the AFC South
The perfect setup for the Falcons and Zero RB targets in the NFC South
Broncos’ RB receiving, Chiefs’ passing game, and the AFC West
An emerging division with a ton of early-round WR targets in the NFC West
Three pass rate boosts and then that other team in the AFC North
Jordan Love, Caleb Williams, and four exciting offenses in the NFC North
Whether Garrett Wilson is as good as Tyreek Hill in the AFC East
You can always catch my projections discussions with Michael Leone for each of these divisions over at Establish the Edge.
Dallas Cowboys
Key Stat: Cowboys — top 8 in play volume five years straight
If you look at the Dallas roster, you would be right to be concerned about skill position depth. And yet, they led the NFL in points scored last year. A big part of that is they will play fast, ranking third in total plays last year, and top eight for five years running. That stretch dates back to the hiring of Kellen Moore as OC, and then when Mike McCarthy was brought in Moore was retained, but after Moore exited last year, McCarthy kept it going. And McCarthy clearly does deserve his flowers for his successes last year, especially since the Cowboys went out in the playoffs less because of offense failures and more because the Packers just dismantled their defense (in fairness, the Cowboys did start with four straight scoreless drives, and found themselves buried in a hole before getting going offensively, which led to 60 pass attempts and 403 pass yard). The broader point here is you could be worried about some fragility to this group, especially if CeeDee Lamb were to miss time, but the pace of play does likely provide a nice floor to offset that some.
Lamb’s TPRR analysis stays much the same, and it’s improved in each of the various ways each year. He continued to both add routes and also targets per route last season, building year over year to a truly elite profile. In an offense that is likely to not only play fast but also carry a high pass rate due to their RB room, you’re talking about Lamb being among the favorites to lead the NFL in routes run, and also having very little target competition in terms of both earning and at times just being force fed volume. Then his depth-adjusted RACR — his after-the-target yardage efficiency — has been fantastic each year, especially since Year 2, as it’s another area he’s just grown and solidified his skill set. I’ve been asked about the 1.01 a bunch this year, and I still think Christian McCaffrey’s scoring range is just so dynamic that I’d take that plunge, but if you’re worried about age and health for a RB, Lamb’s profile does in my opinion justify going another direction. And certainly, this element of massive route volume plus the really elite per-route stuff (with limited competition) is a high enough floor to keep Lamb over the other two superstar RBs, given those two are more projection and structural bets (that’s not to say you can’t take the RBs, which I’ve obviously written a ton about, and people always want me to make those decisions for them, but for me it’s more accurate to say it’s very close; I’d probably put Lamb and Bijan in a dead heat for the 1.02/1.03 slots, Breece at 1.04, and Tyreek at 1.05 for some minor age-related concerns on him, but what I want is for people to make up their own minds; I’m here to tell you Lamb is very much someone who can define the 2024 season with a truly epic WR season).
As I noted in the TPRR piece, it’s fairly grim behind Lamb. Brandin Cooks really fell off last year, and was buoyed by TDs; he’s someone who could succeed basically through systemic reasons (team pass volume) or else just fail, and for that reason isn’t much of a target. Jake Ferguson had a really nice Year 2 but it was more routes-based than underlying peripherals smashing, and people really love to note his playoff game but it’s important to contextualize for that massive pass volume in that game which I just mentioned (60 pass attempts; Ferguson did score three TDs but was third on the team in receiving yards in the game; it was also Michael Gallup’s only 100-yard game all year, along with being a huge spike week for Ferguson to contextualize how the added volume impacted multiple players). My buddy Michael Leone did make a great case in our projections series that Ferguson is a Year 3 TE and could take a step forward in target-earning, and I’m often talking about TEs being a little later-developing, so that’s the bet there. Maybe he continues to grow. Part of why I hadn’t given him that deference is just solid but not exciting receiving production in his collegiate profile, plus being a later-round prospect — that’s an easier projection with the guys who came in as expected stars — but TE is just a weird position sometimes, and this is the perfect spot for a guy to develop, as they love to consolidate the routes on one guy and will throw a ton (which is why I advocated for Ferguson in the “Signal” section of Dallas’ writeup last year). But assuming Ferguson doesn’t make a jump, the reason I liked him last year and not this year is price; I love this type of profile in a late-round TE where the goal is a certain floor of production, but where he’s priced now I need a ceiling to go compete with the half-dozen-plus profiles I really love at the position this year, because just getting some numbers is replaceable late with this year’s version of Ferguson (say, Juwan Johnson, or Noah Fant, or maybe Tyler Conklin).
This element where there’s a clear superstar WR and then the secondary pieces are both thin and maybe not great target-earners is why I said earlier this year that the Cowboys have the systemic setup for a “this year’s Puka Nacua” (if Lamb were to struggle with missed time like Kupp, someone could emerge from nowhere to being a top volume-earner relatively easily). The problem is, I don’t know who that is. I dug into the different profiles on my YouTube trying to answer this specific question a couple months ago, and came away unimpressed with the secondary players’ ability to consolidate volume. But the guy who has made all the camp buzz since is clear: Jalen Tolbert. The team and Dak Prescott are both talking him up, and they held him out of the first preseason game with the starters. His prospect profile was a mixed bag as a small-school guy who didn’t produce until later ages, and he is now 25 and has done nothing through two years — he’s really struggled to get on the field, which is usually telling, but I guess you could say that at least leaves the door open that we don’t know he’s definitely bad. But typically speaking, if a guy hasn’t popped at the NFL level by age 25, they probably aren’t great. The rare exceptions often tend to be later-round picks because we know those guys aren’t handed early opportunity, and they can break out a little later after they’ve had to earn it (there’s been data studies on this, notably from Shawn Siegele at RotoViz). And the thing is: Tolbert was a third-round pick. He’s not some Day 3 guy; they wanted him to be an early producer. All those caveats aside, there was at least some intrigue to his TPRR profile in college, and if he’s anything like how Dak is talking him up — and apparently they spent a ton of time together this offseason and Dak is really talking him up — the ability to beat out an aging Cooks for WR2 volume isn’t difficult in an offense that will throw a ton. I’m basically explaining all those negatives to say why I haven’t moved Tolbert up into the top-50 WRs, but if you want a late-round target who could make early-season waves and gain a lot of value, with a legit path to full-season upside, this one feels clear to me, and I’ve been ranking him aggressively and drafting him in the late rounds of best ball drafts (talked about on the YouTube!) for weeks.
Part of the Tolbert thing about a late producer is the Cowboys are doing the same thing at RB with Rico Dowdle; it looks very much like a team-wide bet on weaker and older talent that has been in the building for a few years, running counter to essentially how the other 31 teams do it (it’s very rare to see teams not bring in outside names to keep Tolbert and Dowdle types from having this type of runway, and maybe that’s part of why we don’t have great comps of these types of guys hitting, sort of like how I didn’t believe Jordan Love sitting for two years could be construed positively, but it worked out and now we’re just thinking Green Bay’s unique handling of a situation didn’t tell us anything). Anyway, that’s just commentary on uncertainty, which we have at RB as well. Dowdle is 26 and the 106 touches he had in a backup role last year brought him to 113 in his career. His numbers and peripherals were fine, not great but not bad either, and Ezekiel Elliott has shown a multi-year decline in his peripherals. People have argued Elliott is a perfectly fine pick because he’ll get volume; I more or less couldn’t disagree more as he’s a clear “small hit, big miss” pick where I’ve said that if I knew he could be the poor version of himself we saw in New England all last year for 17 more games this year that I could maybe buy that, but we don’t know that, and there’s very real risk he deteriorates further and is essentially unplayable in-season this year. So again: small hit if he can be really bad and get volume, which isn’t really worth betting on because “really bad” can turn to “unplayable” over time. But that gets back to Dowdle, who projects for at least a partial role right now and then could presumably consolidate touches as the clear lead. They’ve talked up Royce Freeman as the No. 3 if you’re wondering if other threats might emerge in-house. The real question is whether they’ll grab a late-August cut from another roster, and while many have noted that there aren’t clear answers to that question, we’ve also knocked down youngsters like Kendre Miller and Kimani Vidal over fear they may not make their teams, so we do collectively believe surprise cuts can occur (the Miller and Vidal stuff probably won’t lead to cuts, and the really damning outcome is when they still make the team but those August reports are accurate in that they are buried; it would be a little like the Rashaad Penny stuff last year; you almost want them cut if their team doesn’t intend to use them, but also in the case of Penny, he’s a good example that the intel we got from the team was valid and he just wasn’t physically able to be himself anymore). Anyway, there’s a very valid question about whether a third RB being brought in would usurp Dowdle; my earlier inclination was, “Yeah, he’d drop to RB3 immediately because Elliott will get that deference as RB2,” but that assumes whoever is brought in would be RB1. The reality is Dowdle is the overwhelming favorite to be the early-season and perhaps full-season RB1 this year, which again is just a really difficult thing to understand for an age-26 non-prospect RB (he did test well athletically but his collegiate production looks very rotational — he never had 150 touches in a season — with underwhelming efficiency, as in there are seemingly hundreds of these RBs in college football each year) who touched the ball 7 times before his age-25 season and was mostly just a depth special teams player. And the answer to that, much like the Tolbert section above, is that guy could be this year’s Kyren Williams (to be clear, Sean McVay’s system, and the way he consolidates volume, led to the size of the Puka and Kyren hits last year, as well as the fact that Puka and Kyren were young players who are obviously very good and had a true star breakout season, and so even if these Dallas guys are your “random late-rounders who hit” this year, it’s more like a very poor man’s version, with the main comparison simply being a wide open depth chart and snaps and routes and usage available for overlooked players to seize them).
Dak Prescott is a boring ass QB for fantasy, now. He doesn’t run as much anymore, but he does have Lamb, and he does project for huge pass volume because the Zeke and Dowdle backfield can’t be the whole deal. But he also doesn’t have secondary pieces that we can bet on to elevate his efficiency. So it’s a mostly dropback passer play where the volume is there but the ceiling is probably somewhat limited because you need efficiency spikes for this profile to hit and he’s gotta carry his talent, and won’t get much help. So he belongs ranked aggressively because he’ll ultimately score well through volume, but also probably doesn’t actually destroy worlds — “small hit, small hit” kind of boring ass pick.
Signal: Cowboys — will play fast, mitigating some offensive depth concerns; CeeDee Lamb — truly elite WR profile with huge projected routes and also per-route production; Jake Ferguson — looks like a volume-based and slightly overdrafted mid-round TE, but some Year 3 potential could loom; Dak Prescott — looks like a volume-based mid-round QB (high floor, low ceiling type because elite efficiency will be tough with these weapons); Cowboys — uncertain opportunity for secondary players to step into big roles (Jalen Tolbert looks like the favorite for a late-round WR to be a huge early-season surprise, and Rico Dowdle is the RB bet to emerge, but these are true dollar store versions of “this year’s Puka and Kyren,” with far less upside)
Noise: Ezekiel Elliott — just his whole thing (he would be purely a play on specific volume — HVTs like goal-line touches and inefficient receptions — since the talent profile looks very bleak at this point, and that’s a “small hit, big miss” bet I advise against)
New York Giants
Key Stat: Giants — top five in play clock seconds, first-down pass rate, and situation-netural no-huddle rate (fast paced)
The Giants were horrible last year offensively. I mean, it was really bad. But per my guy Pat Thorman at ETR, even in that down year Daboll had them playing fast, as they finished top five in play clock seconds remaining at the snap, first down pass rate, and situation-neutral no-huddle rate. This was with horrendous QBs at times — the Tommy DeVito experience was rough.
For a long time this offseason, I thought Daniel Jones was a really good late-round QB. I still think he can score at a rate that makes him worthwhile in some situations, but the camp reports have been rough, and I do think you need to know what you’re getting into, because Jones is probably just bad. The key though is he is obviously mobile, and even coming off an ACL tear where his mobility will almost certainly be curtailed some, he’s a guy that averaged 7.9 rush attempts per game in 2022 and 6.7 last year, so even a decline would leave him in “mobile QB” territory.
I’m also projecting boosts to his YPA and TD rate, because he’s never had anything like a Malik Nabers. (For reference, I wrote about this concept in the Vikings’ section, and how I was projecting an increase for Sam Darnold, but I wasn’t sure how much to increase it, and wrote there I was maybe not going far enough.) Nabers is a superstar, and I wrote about his profile here, but the thing that stuck out to me when going through projections was how little else I could bank on projecting well in the Giants’ receiving corps. Some of it was QB play last year, but everyone else was pretty poor last season, and we’re hoping a little bit with guys like Wan’Dale Robinson or Jalin Hyatt to have a rebound. But what that says to me is separate from a guy like Marvin Harrison who has a Trey McBride and a couple other efficient secondary pieces in his passing game, Nabers steps into a situation where if he’s a hit, they more or less have to build the passing game around him. I tend to believe that some of the rookie exuberance has ignored a little risk around how high these guys’ target ceilings can actually get in Year 1 (specifically a commentary on Harrison at his cost, I guess, which I wrote about), but Nabers is the one where that feels like less of a concern. If he’s a hit — and I said he “is” a superstar and not “looks like” one because I’m willing to assume rookies will be stars — then the situation should be great for him in a volume sense. The comparison I’ve loved is rookie year Jaylen Waddle (h/t I believe Dwain McFarland from a recent episode of ADP Chasing), who was force-fed underneath volume to the tune of 104 catches on 140 looks as a rookie. His YPT efficiency wasn’t great necessarily, but Nabers is elite at that (and Waddle probably just got a bit unlucky there).