It’s a mess out there. We’re in full blown lying season for the draft, and social media disagreements on who might go where have gotten hyperspecific to points that have a fairly high likelihood of not even being relevant. Prospect discussions in the dynasty community suffer the same fate. I find myself enjoying the analysts that are out on a limb that it’s cliche to call “noise” because at least they are bringing us something unique. But plenty of unique opinions are just hot takes, obviously.
And the USFL, which was supposed to provide us a fun reprieve as spring football is always a fun thing, unfortunately can’t hold a candle to the AAF and XFL, the major spring leagues of 2019 and 2020. The level of play got a little better this past weekend, but opening weekend was rough, and I’ve come to believe the level of bottom-end NFL talent just isn’t there. The AAF and XFL both had more notable former NFL players — Trent Richardson and Charles Johnson and even guys like Lance Dunbar — and also sent players to the NFL who have stuck with teams, like Donald Parham, D’Ernest Johnson and even John Wolford, who has established himself as the backup QB for the Rams. We’ll see how the USFL develops, and it might be pretty fun to track into May if things do improve, which is a reasonable hope.
But if you’ve been somewhat disengaged from football over the past weeks, I applaud you for committing your resources in life elsewhere during the offseason. It’s been a rough few weeks, and I’m going to have some fun in this post getting some thoughts out before the draft kicks off. The best part of this time of year is it culminates with the draft, which is such a massive influx of talent and franchise-shifting outcomes all piled into a three-day event. The draft is long, but for fantasy football it’s something of a nonstop barrage of shocks to our loosely-held offseason opinions, and once it’s over, the last of the major offseason events is done and we have a pretty solid idea of what 2022 rosters will look like.
Round 1 begins tomorrow night at 8 p.m. ET, and I’ll be breaking it down live with all of my regular podcast cohosts — including Peter Overzet and Pat Kerrane from Ship Chasing as well as Shawn Siegele from Stealing Bananas — plus some great special guests, for a draft livestream that you can watch on YouTube right at this link. Shawn and I will also be back for Day 2 takes at 7 p.m. ET on Friday, on the RotoViz YouTube channel. We’re talking about maybe coming back for Saturday as well. It’ll be a whole weekend of fun reactions and interactions with viewers in the chat, so definitely come tune in. And if you haven’t subscribed to the RotoViz channel yet, it’s a relatively new content avenue for RotoViz and they are hoping to get to 1,000 subs this weekend so let’s make that happen.
But enough preamble, let’s get to some takes. I want to start with Melvin Gordon signing back with the Broncos before getting into some of the key TPRR findings I uncovered about the 2022 wide receiver class.
Melvin Gordon back to the Broncos
It pained me all through 2021 in Stealing Signals to have to admit, as a Javonte Williams truther, that Gordon was playing very well. And with Gordon back on a one-year deal, many are rushing to point out that he was, in fact, very good, and that anyone who thinks this doesn’t matter for Javonte is delusional.
That’s fair, but only to an extent. The main thing I want to add to this discussion is that it’s a great example of how we have to be aware of what the team’s actions tell us. There is a very big gap between the Broncos making Gordon a priority re-signing in the early part of free agency in March, and them letting him test the market for more than a month and ultimately bringing him back after Gordon couldn’t find a multi-year deal elsewhere. Denver made it painfully clear this offseason that they were willing to let Gordon walk and move forward with Williams; that their view of the 2022 backfield differed from the 2021 usage in that they prioritized the youngster in an expanded role and were essentially unconcerned with whether Gordon would return. They said all the right things about him, obviously, and they seem happy to have him back because he was, as I said, a productive player even at 28 last year.
But now he’s 29, and there are age cliffs with running backs, and Gordon may not hit one this year because he’s been a high-level back pretty much his whole career, but the biggest thing I want to warn against is thinking the way 2021 played out matters all that much. It really doesn’t, because the Broncos already tipped their hand. It is absolutely the case that Gordon is a worse outcome for Williams than [insert generic backup RB here], but there was always going to be another back added, and there were scenarios where it was some intriguing Day 3 rookie, or that Mike Boone started flashing in limited reps early in 2021, or what have you.
Perhaps all you need to know is the fantasy community did this with Year 2 Christian McCaffrey. McCaffrey split time with Jonathan Stewart as a rookie, and then Stewart signed with the Giants and the Panthers were in no rush to replace him, and there was excitement for an unleashed McCaffrey for a few months. And then in May, after the draft, the Panthers brought in C.J. Anderson, fresh off a 1,200-yard season with the Broncos. Anderson became a high-priority handcuff for many, and I’m not going to look it up — because in my experience old ADP is unreliable in capturing offseason shifts anyway — but I swear he was going in like the ninth round that year. A May low-cost signing playing behind a top-10 real-life pick, but people were convinced he would take over that Stewart role and McCaffrey’s early-down work wouldn’t increase with a guy like Anderson on the roster. McCaffrey fell to late Round 2 as I recall, and went on to post his first truly great season with 1,965 yards. Anderson was cut midseason, but it’s worth noting he was still good — he latched on with the Rams later that year and had a very strong stretch of production filling in for a banged-up Todd Gurley from Week 16 into the playoffs as the Rams made a Super Bowl run.
I’m not saying Williams is McCaffrey — he isn’t the same player, he doesn’t have the same draft capital McCaffrey did, and Gordon was with this team last year so there’s some familiarity, even if it’s a new coaching staff and whole new offense. But what I am saying is Williams just became an incredible antifragile pick for 2022 if he’s priced down into the second round because of Gordon’s presence, as I expect he will be. The two backs may start the season in a timeshare of sorts, but the most likely scenario may well be Williams on the strong side of a 60/40 split by about Week 3, and you will hear a lot more about last year’s 50/50 split for the rest of this offseason than comments like that. And then most of the ways the 2022 season could break for the Broncos will still stand to benefit the 22-year-old Williams, given the Broncos made their intention clear to this point that they were willing to move forward without Gordon. Williams will still retain elite upside even with Gordon on the roster.
Gordon signing here, on draft week, is an admission he couldn’t find better alternatives. Even the timing is odd — he seems to have exhausted every possible day before the draft almost as an admission any potential suitor who hadn’t yet offered the multi-year deal he was seeking wasn’t going to do so once those teams moved on to adding rookie RB depth. But it would have made some sense for him to wait one more week and at least watched how the draft played out, right? Why not be sure there wasn’t some team that missed on their target(s)?
This timing reads to me like the Broncos may have let on they were considering replacing Gordon with rookie depth if they didn’t have him under contract. Again, they were clearly happy to have a productive player back, but their team-building intentions show a clear lean that is very helpful in parsing which way the scales might tip once the season starts.
Treylon Burks sucks now?
It’s become popular to bash Treylon Burks of late, with some analysts putting him outside their top five at the position, which is going to seem silly in retrospect even before he plays a down in the NFL this fall. The most popular takes around Burks seem to be knocks on his distribution of routes and where his production came from, as well as comps to notable age-adjusted production superstars who busted like N’Keal Harry and Laviska Shenault.
There’s this idea that Burks’ very strong production profile is a bit fraudulent, because he saw a lot of targets out of the backfield and around the line of scrimmage, which are the types of targets that produce more yards after the catch on average and should be viewed differently than “earned” targets downfield if they are designed plays.
But in Pat Kerrane’s great breakdown of the pros and cons of every WR in this class over at NBC Sports EDGE, he notes these two things:
“Burks also has plenty of yards to spare in his receiving line. If we strip out his behind the line of scrimmage production in 2021 (235 yards), he would still have had a 36% yardage share. As it stands, Burks had a 42% yardage share in 2021, with 112 rushing yards. If he instead had a 36% yardage share and 347 hyper-efficient rushing yards, we'd probably be just as excited about Burks as we currently are.
Moreover, Burks produced 35% of his YAC on targets 10+ yards downfield, which is in line with Brandon Aiyuk (34%), A.J. Brown (36%), and Jaylen Waddle (40%) — players who have flashed NFL YAC ability in a non-gadget role.”
I love the way Pat puts it as he thinks through what Burks’ line would be if we shifted the schemed production to rushing work, which is essentially the argument against it — that it isn’t real “receiving” production. The 36% yardage share without the behind-the-line production is still well above the breakout threshold you’re looking for, so we’re just talking about an additional thing the player does well when we’re looking at that production. Various PFF sources have shared a lot of data on different route types this draft season, and the other note on Burks is he was very good on go routes as well as slants and ins, while he was not as good on curls and outs. There’s some concern about his ability in the intermediate depths as a result of that inconsistency between different routes in that range, but I mean I almost couldn’t care less about this. It sounds like a better profile than the same knocks that were used to break down D.K. Metcalf as a guy who could only run deep and the occasional slant. Now Metcalf has athleticism that Burks can’t match, but Burks has all the ball-in-hand production at all depths, as Pat says, and everything he did on those manufactured touches behind the line of scrimmage is relative to how he was being used, and the simple fact is he excelled at it. But he also excelled as a downfield receiver overall as evidenced by the 36% yardage share Pat cites.
Burks is a big-bodied receiver who as a three-year early-declare with multiple breakout seasons — that included Dominator Ratings not just over the 30% threshold but over 40%, and in the SEC — easily checks all the cursory boxes you’re looking for. He didn’t run the 40-yard dash as fast as some expected, but it wasn’t a total bust of a time at his size. He added over 200 career rushing yards on top of the other production that was classified as behind the line of scrimmage receptions, and was generally just really good at gaining yardage and scoring touchdowns in the toughest conference in the nation. And nine of his 10 career 100-yard receiving games came against SEC foes, including an 8-179-2 line at Alabama in his final season, so he’s not a guy who padded his stats against nonconference walkovers.
I find Burks incredibly interesting in relation to Drake London, the other high-profile big-bodied WR in this class. I’ve seen some analytics folks lean pretty hard into London as the No. 1 WR in this class, and I like London’s profile and am not here to bash him. But London appears to be viewed a tier higher than Burks at this point, in part because no one sees issues with his profile while there are those that are extremely low on Burks.
The interesting thing is that London is another three-year early-declare but who didn’t really produce until his final season. Now he competed with both Michael Pittman and Amon-Ra St. Brown as a true freshman, and still had St. Brown there in his sophomore season, but when I’ve done my TPRR research on this class, London’s two seasons at 15.7% and 15.6% stand out among the elite prospects as being a pretty big sample of not actually earning volume. Even in an offense with other future NFL players, you’d expect a top-15 overall pick at WR to be someone who could at least get up around the 20% TPRR mark as an underclassman, and London didn’t do that.
It’s complicated for London, though, because in his junior year he posted a TPRR of 38.6%, which is one of the best single seasons of anyone in this class. He only played in eight games last year when posting that number, but his game log is ridiculous, with at least 9 catches in seven of those games, 12 or more receptions in four of the eight games, and at least 130 receiving yards six times.
What’s pretty interesting about this is London put up all that production at a somewhat low aDOT of 9.2. I think the best comp I’ve seen for him is Michael Thomas as a big-bodied WR who can dominate looks in the shorter area, but there are also opinions on London that he’s a big-bodied WR that can win down the field, and I again want to reiterate I buy that. He looks sweet.
But by comparison, Burks gets hit with these negative marks for being tougher to project to the next level, and I think that take on Burks is more or less exactly wrong. He shares similarities with a guy like Shenault, but there are several points to make there including:
Shenault was a great prospect, and his lack of NFL production doesn’t change that. Sometimes there are misses. His career’s also not over. He got banged up as a rookie and played under Urban Meyer in Year 2. Anyway, trying to avoid the next Shenault seems like reactionary and poor process. If Deebo Samuel was in this class, he’d be “the next Shenault” to avoid. Frankly, if there were a prospect identical to Shenault in this year’s draft, I’d want to make that bet again. That’s not stubbornness, that’s understanding you don’t change an entire process that has successfully identified a bunch of hits over one miss.
Every player is different. Burks isn’t actually Shenault, just similar. Deebo is also similar. I’ve made this point on Stealing Bananas, but it’s one of the biggest reasons I hate comps — it’s not always easy to explain why but you can have two very similar WRs and one is elite and one is a total bust. That’s true for all types of WRs — the hyperathletic ones, the unathletic target hogs, these bigger-bodied YAC kings. Some groups do tend to be better as a whole and others worse (speed demons are notoriously overdrafted, for example), but whatever classification you want to make, I can name you a big-time hit and a big-time miss. And the guys aren’t necessarily that different other than in hindsight, where we say, “Well, that one is Deebo Samuel and that one is Laviska Shenault,” but can’t even really articulate the why.
And once you go down that path, the next logical step is trying to decide what about their profiles could have told us in advance, so that we’re always chasing our tail, trying to identify the “difference-making trait” of the most recent breakout star or “trait to avoid” of the most recent bust. And yet, like I said, once you see these guys in the NFL, you don’t even think of them similarly. No one is comping Deebo and Viska just like no one says, “Justin Jefferson is like…” anymore. He’s just Justin Jefferson. But you’ll damn sure hear people say who might be the next Jefferson.
Who was the next Jerry Rice? Who was the next Randy Moss, or Terrell Owens, or Larry Fitzgerald, or Steve Smith, or Torry Holt, or on and on? This is exactly why the production metrics continue to provide such a big edge — people always want to figure out an impossible puzzle, when we can’t always define why a guy is productive until it’s so clear and obvious as to be undeniable, e.g. after Deebo’s 2021, but the same people who think they have the next… so and so are the ones who helped us get so much exposure to Deebo before 2021. And yes, we also had huge exposure to Viska, but having exposure to both was a clear net win.
We can cut Burks’ profile up into what routes he runs or where he sees his targets or all sorts of tiny pieces but that leads you down a path to taking a very good and very productive WR from the best conference in the country who succeeded in multiple ways and multiple different alignments and finding yourself putting him outside your top five. There will be more advancements in how to analyze prospects, and some of this stuff is really encouraging. But simplicity is an ally here.
Burks succeeded in college both in the slot and outside, as well as on plays that originated in the backfield. He posted TPRRs of 22.3%, 24.6%, and then 28.6%, and while those may have been inflated a bit by manufactured touches, that’s three strong years of target earning, and he paired it with after-the-target efficiency at various depths. Burks’ career aDOT, despite all his behind the line of scrimmage targets, was 11.7, a full two yards deeper than London’s 9.7.
The thing I think people are getting exactly wrong is I’m not sure how Burks’ versatility makes him tougher to project to the next level as if that’s a bad thing. Early in A.J. Brown’s career, I wanted to the Titans to throw him more passes near the line of scrimmage. But if Burks is used like that, his downfield profile suggests he can still hit. His profile frankly suggests he might be able to hit in any role. I’ve noted I like London, but I’m more concerned about projecting a guy forward who has one eight-game season of dominant production in a role that featured a lot of underneath passing. He also had some downfield big plays on contested catches where he looked sweet, don’t get me wrong. But if I’m supposed to buy that NFL-level competition kept him from being productive his first two seasons, and if I look at his lower aDOT and more specific usage that people seem to see as a positive in how it’s viewed as clear how he can translate, I actually wind up thinking he needs to fall into a pretty specific situation this week.
My main point, though, is that the narratives on Burks are arbitrary. Given their respective aDOTs, there are almost certainly endpoints we could choose that would make London look like too much of an underneath guy compared to Burks. Or what about the fact that Shenault and Harry, our boogeymen, both played in the Pac-12? I’m a Pac-12 guy, but even I would acknowledge the level of competition might be closer to the best of the non-Power 5 conferences than it is to the SEC. Burks posted a lot of his production against future NFL players; because of scheduling quirks, London never played against my Washington Huskies in his college career, the one Pac-12 school that has consistently sent defensive backs into the early rounds of the NFL draft and could have two more drafted in the first round tomorrow.
This stuff is silly, but it could have just as easily swayed opinion on London, who I do very seriously believe has a more concerning profile. He didn’t even test, but I’m supposed to care that Burks didn’t run as fast as some expected. Meanwhile, some have started to project London in the top 10 and Burks outside the first round entirely, but The Athletic’s Arif Hasan released his Big Board aggregation that is typically very accurate and it has London ranked 12th and Burks 21st overall, so the gap in perception of these players by NFL teams also probably isn’t as wide as is perhaps perceived by some in the fantasy community, and their draft capital might reflect that. It’ll be interesting to see where both land, but each has the potential for a high-level NFL future, and they have always been in the same tier.
TPRR and the Ohio State group
One of the things I was most excited about testing with TPRR was the offenses where there are a ton of future NFL receiving weapons. Alabama comes to mind first, right? As it stands, Waddle’s TPRR was consistently in the 21%-25% range, with his career high coming as a true freshman, while both Jerry Jeudy and DeVonta Smith saw their numbers increase each season and Henry Ruggs was never over 19%. Waddle’s after-the-target efficiency was absurd, and if you want to compare profiles, he looks really good with the three years of consistent target-earning. Jeudy does as well, starting at a 13.7% TPRR as a freshman but quickly accelerating to 25.5% in Year 2 and a fantastic 30.7% in 2019 when all four guys were there. Smith lagged Jeudy each season, starting at 8.3% and growing to 18.4% and then 24.6% in 2019, before taking off to 34.3% as a senior in 2020 when he stayed the extra year and didn’t declare early.
I didn’t find anything particularly telling about those numbers other than perhaps with Waddle, whose route samples were quite a bit smaller than the others’ top seasons. Waddle went on to post a fantastic rookie season with a 23.8% TPRR on more routes than he ran across his entire college career, so he proved his per-route skills are probably legit, and it’ll be interesting to consider how to play him in relation to Tyreek Hill. That’s one situation I haven’t quite parsed this offseason. An additional thought from these numbers might be to see Jeudy a bit more favorably than Smith after viewing their numbers when in direct competition with one another.
But of course I was looking at these figures for the 2022 class. I spent a lot of time on Burks and London above, but Garrett Wilson is the No. 1 in the class for some, and certainly his TPRRs and collegiate production while competing with multiple other high-level prospects are very notable. Wilson topped out at a 28.9% TPRR in 2021, but was up to a very strong 24.4% as a true sophomore and was even at 19.2% as a freshman.
Then the other two names typically closing out the top five for most in this class also have OSU ties. First there is Chris Olave, who is frequently listed fifth of this group in more analytically-focused fantasy circles, because he wasn’t an early declare. Olave did show really strong target-earning potential early in his career, topping out at 29.9% as a sophomore when Wilson and also Jameson Williams, who we’ll get to in a minute, were both freshman. But from there, Olave fell to 27.1% and then 24.8% this past year, while Wilson developed and 2023 prospect Jaxon Smith-Njigba joined the team. Smith-Njigba isn’t yet draft eligible having only played two years on college ball, but his presence and Wilson’s development seemed to move Olave down the pecking order some, as Olave’s routes sample got larger. It’s still a strong profile overall, but it’s part of why he’s seen perhaps half a tier behind the top names in the class, including his teammate Wilson, despite Olave projecting for pretty strong draft capital as a likely first-round pick.
That leaves Williams, who on a very small sample of just 51 routes as a freshman was able to draw targets on 23.5% of routes, but then in his sophomore year in 2020 became a total wind sprinter. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a TPRR this low. On 178 routes, he earned just 13 targets, for a TPRR of 7.3%.
It’s no wonder Williams then transferred to Alabama, where he had a monster 2021, including a 23% TPRR at a deep 14.5 aDOT. He still declared early for the 2022 draft despite the transfer and unfortunately tearing his ACL in the National Championship, but medical reports have been optimistic and it sounds like he has a shot to be the first WR off the board tomorrow night.
I’m not sure what to make of Williams’ extremely poor sophomore season, but I think I’m mostly willing to ignore it, largely because when he became available for transfer, Nick Saban and Alabama of all teams not only wanted to bring him in, but they immediately put him in a featured role, and he thrived in that setting. I frankly trust Saban’s evaluation over that of the Ohio State staff, which is not to say OSU made some huge mistake given their embarrassment of riches at the position, but just that context is always everything. For Williams, getting beat out may not have been such a glaring red flag given the alternative that was available to him and what he made of that opportunity.
All of Wilson, Williams, and Olave are lighter WRs that bring a ton of speed, with Wilson and Olave both running sub-4.4 40-yard dashes, and Williams being described as perhaps the fastest of the bunch despite not running given his ACL recovery. Teams can sometimes misuse players, to be sure, and I’m mostly viewing these guys similarly to how the market has them evaluated.
Some more TPRR studs
Here are some quick notes on TPRR guys I have to mention before going today, but keep in mind that basically any production metric provides us value in relation to draft capital. That’s why the draft is seen as such a big deal, because we want to know NFL teams are buying into these players. How long will they last? If they do start to slip a little, does a team trade up to stop that skid because they are concerned someone else is going to?
Draft capital isn’t everything, but it’s a lot of the equation. The teams making the draft selections then decide who they are going to play, and there’s not a ton of opportunity for guys to change minds. We even see draft capital influence second contracts well into players’ careers, or whether a bust may get a second chance. The implication is there are potentially good players who because of draft capital never really get their opportunity, and then because they didn’t get an opportunity, can’t earn a second contract, and they fade out of the league. That’s probably an oversimplification because the true stars are likely the ones we see show up enough in practice and in situations like the preseason that the teams quickly realize they need to adjust their draft capital priors. But how soon that opportunity might come, and how many chances that player might get to show what he can do over a larger sample, is the type of stuff that’s going to be driven by draft capital.
Justyn Ross is being projected as a fourth-round pick by aggregation lists, but his whole deal is health. As a true freshman on a National Championship Clemson team headlined by Tee Higgins, Hunter Renfrow, Amari Rodgers, and Travis Etienne, Ross posted a 36.3% TPRR on 201 routes, capping his season with a 6-148-2 line in the semifinal against Notre Dame and then 6-153-1 against Alabama in the championship. Ross led that roster of older skill players destined for NFL futures with 1,000 receiving yards. Then he posted a 30.3% TPRR in a little less productive sophomore year, before a congenital spine condition was discovered the following offseason. He had surgery and missed all of 2020, but it was serious enough his football-playing future was in doubt. He did return in 2021 and played through a broken foot, posting another strong TPRR at 28.9% on 249 routes last year. There’s no player for whom I’m more interested to see his draft capital and how much NFL teams are buying into his long-term situation than Ross.
Skyy Moore posted three seasons with TPRRs of at least 24% and a career number of 29.1%. Per Pat Kerrane, he’s likely to become the first non-Power 5 early-declare WR to go on Day 2 since Davante Adams, so while there might be a temptation to knock him some due to lack of target competition, his elite numbers have led to expected NFL buy-in that doesn’t usually come for underclassmen declaring early from these smaller schools.
George Pickens went from a ridiculous 28.0% TPRR as a true freshman at Georgia to just 19.9% in Year 2, on similar-sized route numbers. His career number of 24.3% is strong, but he missed almost all of his junior year after an offseason ACL tear, and the overall sample is relatively slim as a result, with the best production coming back in 2019. That might hide some real upside, or he might not be the same player he was three years ago when he steps on the field for some team in 2022.
David Bell is the classic unathletic target-earner drawing comps to Keenan Allen and Jarvis Landry. He was a three-year guy at Purdue who posted TPRRs in the 26%-28% range all three years. Those are strong but not really college elite numbers for a profile that likely won’t include big after-the-target efficiency, so the NFL buy-in in the form of draft capital is an especially important data point on his profile.
Kentucky’s Wan’Dale Robinson has a bit of a gadget profile, with a 3.3-yard aDOT as a true freshman that rose to 6.2 and eventually a more typical 10.4 by Year 3. His TPRR each year was at least 27.6%, but a lot of those were manufactured touches. Still, he finished with a 33.2% TPRR for his 791 career routes at a 7.8 aDOT overall, and even discounting that high TPRR for manufactured touches would still paint the picture of a guy who earned a ton of volume.
Alright, that’s all I have for today and before the draft. It’s going to be a blast, and I hope you’ll swing by to watch it live with us over on YouTube.
Draft takes, Melvin re-signing
I have not been paying close attention to the offseason, but I always read these posts in full, and they're always worth the investment. As someone who almost completely tunes out all sports, full stop, once football season ends -- in favor of catching up on reading and film, what I consider my two true, lifelong passions -- I mean that as the highest praise, because I really do go into hibernation mode viz. fantasy football by this point. The analytical rigor and clear passion you bring to your thinking is bracing. It's appointment reading for me and an inspirational model for how to approach work with honesty, dedication, and humility. None of us will get everything right in any future-telling endeavor, but integrity is its own reward. Thanks for rising above the noise! Just wanted to drop in this note of encouragement during the lower-trafficked periods of engagement here. Writing can be a lonely practice (I'm an editor), but you've got a loyal reader here.