Free post: DeAndre Hopkins trade, Pearsall vs. Jennings

Plus more on Tillman and McMillan, with WR value changes everywhere

We always have a good time on the Signals Gold streams on Tuesday nights, and occasionally I’ll get questions that help me realize I don’t like the way I covered something in the main Stealing Signals writeup. That was true for a few things this week, most notably the 49ers’ WRs, as I guess I didn’t anticipate the Ricky Pearsall or Jauan Jennings storyline that’s emerged for waivers this week, and didn’t comment on Jennings at all given he didn’t play in the game.

That was pretty obviously an oversight, but some of you might have surmised from my commentary on Pearsall that my answer to that direct question does lie on the side of Jennings. Now to be clear, I still think Pearsall is very much worth the bet. We’re talking about a WR with first-round draft capital who got 70% routes in his first career game and is going to play some in a good offense.

But in writing about Sean Tucker last week, one concept I talked about is how fantasy football is a little more about chasing points than people realize. The Tucker thing didn’t necessarily break perfectly this week, but I stand by the idea that the goal on waivers is not incremental gains but finding huge wins, and that was and remains the idea with Tucker, which is why I’m holding.

One take I worked out on Signals Gold last night is I think we see a lot of Bucky Irving in that split out motion role he’s been in going forward, because the WR injuries could force Tampa to lean on that two-RB set they’ve loved where it’s typically been Rachaad White in the backfield but it just opens up more snaps at the position to get Sean Tucker involved as well. That’s good for Irving, to be clear, because I don’t think either White or Tucker really fits in that role, and it’s part of what we saw when White was out that opened up usage for Tucker was that the Bucs in some ways kept Irving in that role when they wanted to get to those formational things. And for Tucker, as little as he was involved in Week 7, I still felt like what we saw suggested that if in the future they want to try to control a game on the ground, it very well could be him leading the way.

Anyway, it remains to be seen what comes of that, but I reference it now because of course Jennings had a massive 46.5-point fantasy game back in Week 3, and my take here is chasing those points a little bit. That’s been a long time ago, I get it, and he hasn’t hit even 12 PPR points in any of his other five games. But for a bit there it did seem like he was going to be a real part of the downfield passing game, and now that Brandon Aiyuk is out, I think you pretty clearly have to go back to that game and feel somewhat confident that the 49ers will feel somewhat confident in the veteran they have to take on a bunch of those Aiyuk routes.

Again, that doesn’t mean Pearsall won’t have runway if he’s good. The opportunity’s there for him, but we do have a little bit of a questionable production profile (in fairness, it’s kind of a Brian Thomas lite profile with poor TPRR stuff but solid after-the-target efficiency, though his efficiency was more just “good” while Thomas’ was “absolutely mind-bending”). But that’s why my takeaway was more about evaluating how Pearsall looked in his limited action, because it’s maybe not as straightforward as it seems, and it’s also why I mentioned Jacob Cowing and emphasized that he looked good. Pearsall is definitely going to get his opportunity now because that’s how these things work — I write about antifragility and about how things bend toward stuff like first-round draft capital all the time — but there’s also always context, and as far as that subset of player goes, there’s at last a little more concern than usual it works out favorably here. You can definitely see a passing game that coalesces around George Kittle, Deebo Samuel, and Jennings, with the RB position obviously very important in this offense, and then Pearsall is operating as the No. 4 for downfield volume, and maybe if Cowing keeps playing well even he is a nuisance there. Keep in mind that both Deebo and Jennings were essentially out of this game, and then Aiyuk left early.

The other context here is just that Kyle Shanahan has an extended sample now of being perhaps the single head coach in the NFL who least cares about draft capital. I do think him playing Pearsall as much as he did already puts Pearsall on a higher plateau than guys like Trey Sermon and Tyrion Davis-Price and even Trey Lance who he never really got on the field, and Shanahan was a former collegiate WR himself and may just have a soft spot for the position and for Pearsall individually. And I have to keep reiterating that when I say minor negative things like this about a first-round rookie, that’s relative to the reality that rookie evaluation is difficult and there’s always inherent upside in these situations, especially on an offense like the 49ers, that keeps Pearsall as a good add because there are huge portions of the range of outcomes where I’m just wrong on the evaluation and he cleans up the little mistakes from his debut and is just good going forward. It’s always prudent to acknowledge uncertainty and add and get a short-term look at rookies in situations like this — with real draft capital and when opportunity opens up via injury — while you have them on your roster. No matter what.

That’s the other Sean Tucker parallel I could draw from last week, is that I was arguing for people in leagues of all sizes to add him to at least see what Week 7 brought. And if you’re in a shallow league and you see that Week 7 wasn’t perfect for Tucker and you want to move on from him, that’s fine. Part of the point was the short-term knowledge gain, and I recognize that if you want to make a play on a San Francisco WR in some of these spots, it means cutting Tucker, for example. Maybe even guys like Kimani Vidal who I keep saying I want you to hold. For what it’s worth, I got asked a similar question last night about holding Vidal, Braelon Allen, or Blake Corum, and I thought that was brutally tough but landing on Corum because of these Rams trade rumors and the fact that he only got on the field for 11% of the snaps coming out of the bye. Also, his prospect profile has some question marks, but I think most people would probably say to drop Vidal first, and then with Allen you’re probably talking about the least likely guy for the opportunity to open up (since J.K. Dobbins has the long health history and Kyren Williams has also been banged up both of his NFL seasons and is — importantly for this discussion — undersized for an NFL lead back) but Allen is also the guy we’ve gotten the most certainty has real talent upside with the glimpses we’ve seen, and that offense is trending well, so I do want to be holding him in highest esteem of that trio.

Anyway, Jennings to me has the higher floor of production where I guess I think it’s pretty clear he’ll have a role, and it would be incumbent on Pearsall to be so good as to push Jennings back into being just an ancillary 3-to-5 target guy we have often seen from him, but that seems like a fairly low-end outcome and Jennings does seem more likely to be valuable quicker and perhaps also have meaningful upside, which is the idea behind a play like adding Pearsall, that the rookie uncertainty can lead to real talent-based upside, but I’d argue Jennings has already displayed something there and he’s not just some Demarcus Robinson type route runner with empty production. So, if Jennings is available, he’s the play I really like this week, but then I also think Pearsall is well worth the add.

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DeAndre Hopkins trade

First of all, I wrote in Stealing Signals that Justin Watson broke his leg — in the same game writeup where I glossed over expanding on my Jennings thoughts, which tells me that I was working too fast — but it wasn’t Justin Watson, but rather Chiefs’ defender Jaylen Watson. Rest assured I’ve flogged myself this morning to atone for the mistake.

So Watson is still hanging around, but JuJu Smith-Schuster did get injured, and then DeAndre Hopkins appears headed to Kansas City this morning, which is the big news. What does it mean? Fairly straightforward really. Whatever he has left in the tank, he’ll be asked to give, because their alternative is literally Skyy Moore.

To that question of what he has left, I was impressed with his 7-6-73-1 game against Green Bay back in Week 3, and it’s entirely plausible he’s struggled to put up big numbers because of the situation he’s been in. The Titans’ pass game is legitimately one of the worst in the NFL.

The worry is just his health, since he told reporters in early September that he tore his MCL with this quote: “I had the MCL tear maybe four and a half, five weeks ago, so the thing about those is it takes a whole year for them to heal.” He seemed to backtrack that later, as I’m seeing notes he later called it a sprain, and some of that stuff is opaque, but it’s notable that he reportedly didn’t have surgery. It looks like his injury was July 31st, so we’re now about three months removed from that.

Digging into MCL injuries a bit more, if it doesn’t require surgery, it seems like the timeline is anywhere between about 3-4 weeks for mild ones to “up to 12 weeks” for more severe grades. Obviously there’s a lot that goes into rehab and getting fully right and all that, but I found that note optimistic that while the player said it takes a whole year, there’s medical research that suggests sooner, and wouldn’t you know it, today is literally exactly 12 weeks from July 31, to the day. Obviously the Chiefs were content acquiring him as well, and that requires a physical and knowledge of his medicals and all that. It seems like we’re getting some optimistic signal here, and especially that he might be healthier heading into November and December than he was in September and October.

I’m pretty bullish that he can get there physically. There’s some question of how much they might play him, and how quickly, but man, they’ve been playing Xavier Worthy quite a bit already, out of the gate, and they just really don’t have the depth WR pieces where it is easy for them to rotate as much as they did in past years. A lot of the conversation around this trade is with a look toward the playoffs — including this cool excerpt from friend of the newsletter Bill Barnwell who literally predicted this trade(!) in his fake trades column last week, right down to the compensation(!!) — and I do think that’s the main focus here.

But I also think they need passing-game production now, and they’ve seemed more urgent about the regular season this offseason and this season, and seemingly find it very important to not be playing on Wild Card Weekend again, or needing to go on the road twice to places like Buffalo and Baltimore like they did last year to get to the Super Bowl. I kind of think they are making this trade to get after it in November a bit more than some of what I’ve been seeing.

I haven’t hit on this as much in the newsletter as I maybe should have, but Hopkins’ routes have been limited quite a bit early this year, and yet his per-route stuff is actually not bad for how little production he’s had. While playing hurt, he’s been at a 19.6% TPRR and 1.64 YPRR, which isn’t strong by any means, but is only about a 100-route sample and is the kind of thing where you’re like, “One big game and he’d be right there just below that 2.0 YPRR cutoff you’re looking at as very good.” I’m actually impressed that the yards per target side is the best it’s been since 2021, given the situation and his health, and there’s some variance with that but it gets back to my comments that he looked good in that Week 3 game where the bulk of his production has come from. He’s 32, but he does still have some of the best ball skills in his generation of receiver, and is going to be able to find space, catch the ball reliably, use the boundary to his advantage in the red zone, etc. I’ve said for years I expected his specific skills to age well, and I think in Kansas City you could see him in spots like where JuJu had that huge game just a couple weeks ago, and you’ll see Hopkins hold up his side of the equation. Worthy will help open up some one-on-ones for Hopkins, or Hopkins will for Worthy. I think it’s a pretty great fit.

One guy it’s a really bad sign for is Travis Kelce, and I’ve gone back and forth on him but I said he needed to be that dude in the short and intermediate range after the Rashee Rice injury, and he just hasn’t been able to. This trade now adds target pressure in those areas, and suddenly I’m again pretty worried about Kelce, who just hasn’t looked as sharp this year and was only really a fun play the last couple weeks as a guy who needed to step up. And this trade maybe argues the Chiefs aren’t confident he’s that dude, or don’t want him to be that dude in-season, and are instead saving their 35-year old for the playoffs. Kind of fascinating point there, that Hopkins is actually almost three years younger than what is probably his biggest competition.

So anyway, I’m pretty into Hopkins going forward. And his trade solidifies some stuff back in Tennessee, but because his routes and production were already limited, it doesn’t actually change things a ton. I expect Calvin Ridley to still get a ton of volume, but the efficiency remains a concern, and it’s especially a concern that it’s not just on the QB but also on him. To get him back to the production you’d like to see, both sides of that need to improve.

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Tillman vs. Pearsall vs. McMillan

One of the other questions I got on Signals Gold was to rank Pearsall versus Cedric Tillman and Jalen McMillan as pickups this week. And in my “Biggest Signals” section I had it as Tillman, then Pearsall, then McMillan, but part of that was just that there was more Signal to what we saw from Tillman. Pearsall’s obviously came with caveats about other players being out, and McMillan’s notes were actually that Trey Palmer played a little more and he still split with Sterling Shepard, so anyway it was one of those weird ones where I wasn’t necessarily ranking by rest-of-season impact.

My answer on Signals Gold was I’d be close on all, and it’s part of why I wouldn’t feel the need to bid big on Pearsall because I’d be OK landing these other guys. In other words, when there are multiple options of the same ilk and I can just lay out contingency bids for all three, I don’t tend to go high on my favorite. Now, if you’re in dire need for WR help in a deeper league and have roster space, I could see putting bigger bids on all three and trying to shotgun approach it by landing either two or all three and then letting it play out and seeing what you have. These are all guys worth pursuing, is what I’m saying.

Just in terms of comparing the other rookie, while McMillan was only a Round 3 guy, his profile was intriguing, and there’s more immediate playing time available right in front of him than Pearsall has. McMillan could theoretically earn the top target share.

I was also asked about how the slot snaps will open up with Chris Godwin’s unfortunate injury, and how that might be McMillan’s more natural spot, and I think that’s fair but I also pointed out that he was a different slot at UW than Godwin is for the Bucs, meaning that Godwin catches a ton of low aDOT passes and is really good at getting up field and being a physical runner with the ball in hand. McMillan isn’t that — the next tackle he breaks will be the first of his life — and he found his biggest successes as a vertical slot, winning downfield on stuff like flag routes.

So it’ll all be very interesting, and this is part of why I mentioned what I think might happen with the two-RB sets for the Bucs up in the introduction, because maybe it’s just not as pass-friendly of a spot when you have to replace both Mike Evans and Godwin — we always talk about how WR is more of a skill-based position versus something like RB, and it obviously impacts the way they want to run their offense to not have two Pro Bowl-type WRs in there going forward. As I wrote in Signals, you’re talking about Palmer in the Evans role and McMillan probably in the slot, but with Shepard and even Cade Otton as threats for volume. McMillan does offer more upside than any of those names, and his profile is really interesting, so again he’s very much worth pursuing. But I guess I’d also be a little bit concerned, similar to how I am with Pearsall. Those two would still be the top WR add in a given week, but maybe not this week.

That leaves Tillman, who wasn’t necessarily very good last year, and didn’t have a great profile, but where the Amari Cooper trade opened up a role and he immediately stepped into 82% routes, and then the Deshaun Watson injury could perhaps make this a much more favorable passing situation. Plus Tillman had 12 targets in this first game.

I guess I would probably have to express concern that David Njoku and Jerry Jeudy earn more volume going forward, as they just have much better “long view” profiles, but Elijah Moore has just done so little, and the bigger point is that with Jameis Winston taking over, the Browns might actually shift a lot toward passing. They wanted to early, but Watson was so bad it was difficult, but Winston is very much that gunslinger type and we saw them open it up with Joe Flacco late last year as well. I think you’re talking about a shift in catchability of the passes, and the new QB getting the ball out earlier than Watson was, and then also a significant shift in pass rate most likely.

I do think Nick Chubb is a very interesting play going forward — I had him as the Biggest Signal even before this other trio of young WRs who were all in the top five — and think this is actually a plus for him, too, because his volume is likely to be pretty limited anyway, so a high pass rate may just help the rushing situations he does find himself in. That seems like a vaguely functional offense to me — one that throws to set up the run for their rehabbing star RB, and Winston will be aggressive enough with the areas of the field he attacks to create space for other throws and for the run. That’s one of his biggest strengths, with obviously the risk that takes on and how he sometimes turns to ball over also counting as an occasional weakness.

Anyway, Tillman to me is probably the least intriguing profile of the three, but I found myself thinking I might slightly prefer him because of situation. That said, the broader fantasy lesson is almost always that we undervalue upside in the “mystery box” situations, and both Pearsall and McMillan deserve attention based on that. So again, this feels very balanced to me, and I’m not sure whether I’ll look back and feel like it should have been clearer with the benefit of hindsight, but for now it’s just not at all clear to me.

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Alright, that’s all for today. I’ll be back soon with more!