Input Volatility, Week 1: Mailbag, surprise start/sits

Several questions and nihilistic topics to get to

Sep 16, 2023

∙ Paid

It’s my daughter’s eighth birthday today, and we did a thing we’ve done for years with both of them where I write up a few four-line clues — little rhyming ABAB passages — for a scavenger hunt. I got a lot of, “That’s too easy, dad!” this year, because these kids are getting too dang smart for me, but we did start with a, “I don’t kn— ohhhhhh” so that clue was a winner.

There’s just so much I want to cover, but it’s been a busy first week on several fronts. I launched the #ShipCast with the Ship Chasing crew Thursday night, where every week this year you can come hang with Pat Kerrane, Peter Overzet, and me for three-plus hours of football watching during Thursday Night Football. We had Arif Hasan on this week, and he was incredible, and we’ll continue to have great guests and do fun Underdog Fantasy giveaways, so if you ever wanted to watch a game and tail some plays with me, here’s your chance. We hit four out of five of our picks for this week’s Underdog Pick ‘Em, which would have been a 20x hit, so it was a fun sweat. Only A.J. Brown failed to hit his over, which was sad. I’ve angered him.

We’re also doing some really cool stuff over at Stealing Lines, the betting project I have with Dalton Kates. Dalton absolutely crushes the prop markets, and we have some giveaways from Underdog Fantasy over there, too. It’s been super cool to get to work with Underdog a bit more this year, because they genuinely do want to make partnering easy for content creators, and fantasy easy and accessible for their users, which is like the No. 1 thing you’d ask for in a platform. They’ve always had a great reputation in the industry, but I’m stoked to do more with them specifically because of how they take care of their players.

I’ve gotten some questions about Discord, and just an FYI that I don’t hang out there a bunch during the season (I tried to answer questions during the offseason!), but there’s a ton of great conversation going on between you guys. Because I don’t pay for the premium Discord functionality, I don’t think I can get links that won’t expire, so they always seem to. Here’s a new link for those of you trying to get in there.

Today’s agenda

I started this post last year as a late-week thing where I could kind of do whatever I wanted to spin forward the research from Stealing Signals. I didn’t want to commit to anything too much, because that’s frankly become an issue with Signals and the length of it, but it worked pretty well as an opportunity for me to just write whatever I wanted late in the week.

This week, I have a ton of things. I added a whole additional post about nihilism and fantasy football. I have other topics I want to hit. I got a crazy number of questions on the posts this week, and it’s something where I just can’t get to those on busy weeks. (I did do my weekly Q&A for an hour and 40 minutes and got to every question for Signals Gold members on Tuesday night, and that’s where you can reliably catch me. If you want to upgrade, you need to email me separately about that, but those private livestreams will be a Tuesday night staple.)

There are also more “input volatility” spots than there will be all year — that concept is based on the idea of using good projections (I use Michael Leone’s at Establish The Run) to set most start/sit lineup decisions, but then highlighting the few spots where I think the projections maybe aren’t capturing “input volatility,” which can mean significant potential for upside or downside if certain things break certain directions (I love Leone’s projections because he does a great job of capturing the range of outcomes in them, but inevitably there will be tough spots and I may have a differing opinion where I’m going a different direction than the raw projections as a tiebreaker in close situations, so that’s what this post ostensibly is about listing).

And again, it’s my daughter’s birthday, so I’m going to tug on your heartstrings a little as I say, “This is going to be a lot of nonsense jammed together and we’re going to hit on everything we can.”

The nihilist’s guide to fantasy football

I got some great feedback on the nihilist post, and that’s fantastic. First of all, there was some stuff shared with me on Twitter and elsewhere about the coaches from The Playcallers, and some great work Josh Norris did this week, highlighting the short motion the Dolphins (and a couple other teams in that group) used to such success (which I wrote about) this week.

I also got a long post in my Premium Chat (for Signals Gold members) section of Discord, that included some notes like Vegas not buying the trends (citing offensive teams still being favored to win the Super Bowl), just how extreme Week 1 was (scoring production in Week 1 was so, so low), that “obviously the answer isn’t ‘defenses didn’t care about stopping big plays’,” rules changes, and that the NFL just operates in cycles and there are overreactions and regression can hit.

These were all incredible reactions and responses to what I wrote and there’s nothing I wanted to address today more than following up on that post, and I’m going to hit on all of that stuff in just a second.

I also got a comment on the nihilism post that has stuck with me for two days, because I absolutely understand the perspective:

Love your work, appreciate your forward thinking analysis, and I’m a happy subscriber. But man, this is a pretty tough read this soon after digesting and working from all of the advice from you and Siegele that runs completely counter to this.

One of the things I struggle with, with the philosophical concepts I hit on, is that everyone is coming at it with different perspectives. Everyone has additional influences outside the Stealing Signals/Stealing Bananas/Ship Chasing universe, and even within it. Everyone has different amounts of time they’ve read and/or listened to my stuff and different amounts of buy-in on it. But anytime I hear someone who appreciates it and listens to it a lot giving feedback like this, it’s definitely important to me, and something I want to make sure to address. So I really, truly appreciated this comment.

Incidentally, the same poster who wrote the longer notes in the Premium Chat — sunrise089, who has been around for a while and I absolutely trust to read what I’m getting at well, so thanks for that — replied to this concern with a long response in the comments on Substack, and said some things super well that I want to highlight.

First, he mentioned early that he suspects “Ben intends his advice here to be nudges at the margin and not a wholesale reranking of player value.” And this is absolutely the first thing I want to hit on, and sunrise, would also be my response to some of your comments about just how bad Week 1 was and regression — yes, absolutely, there will be shifts back.

My post this week was not meant to panic anyone and to be a whole shift; it was meant to address a very real complaint I get every season about my upside-focused drafting and team-building where rosters can wind up in an early hole, then come on late, but still miss the playoffs. And for the most part, that’s just part of the deal, where it can happen when things don’t piece together well enough, even if it’s a frustrating outcome, but one of my big motivations for writing was to say that this year in particular I want to be vigilant about avoiding, say, a 1-3 hole after four weeks. I’m fine with 2-2 given how I build my teams, but 1-3 (or obviously 0-4) is a line I’m drawing. And for me to communicate that’s a focus for me right now, because I believe it’ll be more difficult to come back from 1-3 or 0-4 this year, like I believe it was in 2022, I needed to write something like this.

There were other great things sunrise089 hit on, going through some different points I’d hit on in the post, but the other two I want to mention specifically are “RB in flex” — he notes “Ben has been super on this,” and I just want to say I hope that didn’t feel like a rug pull because I feel like all my August content this year definitely shifted us that direction versus prior years — and then “Floor/Ceiling,” which the original commenter ended up replying was the point of their original comment.

So again, let me be super clear with how I’m applying this “at the margin,” as sunrise089 said — I am not saying to start James Conner over Tee Higgins this week because Conner isn’t going to get you a goose egg. That’s not at all it.

I was thinking within the context of the rosters we build around here, which are already packed with ceiling plays, it’s OK to make moves that prioritize floor. In one league, Shawn and I are starting Sam LaPorta over Kyle Pitts already. In Week 1, I had some tough Jaxon Smith-Njigba versus Breece Hall decisions, and I leaned JSN because of concern about Hall’s touch ceiling — and I did get pretty solid routes from JSN at 66%, and Hall did only play like 30%-35% of the snaps or whatever — but the logic was JSN was a better bet for a true spike week, while ultimately taking the RB and the higher-floor element actually led to a really nice spike in itself. But even if it hadn’t, and Breece didn’t have 81 rush yards over expected or whatever, I still think that was a miss on my part, visualizing some 8-catch JSN game versus Breece not likely having real 25-point upside.

My point on the Floor/Ceiling and “Start RBs in the Flex” stuff is absolutely at the margin, with these decisions where I know for myself, I’ve conditioned myself to avoid worrying about 5-point fantasy outcomes, and just swing for the 25-point fences. And that absolutely works most of the time! I still think that’s right, and I’m in no way saying to stop thinking about upside. I just think we need to be cognizant, especially early in the year, and with these early trends that were not favorable to offenses, that trying to grind out 10-15 point fantasy games from our last starting lineup Flex spot might actually be worthwhile at this stage.

So for anyone who had a similar read about my advice in that nihilism post feeling like a complete 180-degree turn, please just know it was only like a 10-degree turn (and also that maybe we’d already made like a 20- or 30-degree turn in August, with the WR-WR start but then take a bunch of detours and be willing to sacrifice some WR depth stuff I wrote about), but anything that read more extreme than that was a miscommunication on my end.

However, to circle back on some of what sunrise089 wrote in the Premium Chat, as well as the stuff from Norris I was sent (and had previously referenced), I have some thoughts:

The short motion thing changed the way defenses could react presnap by not giving them time — the length of motion going all the way across the formation last year — to “rock and roll” the safeties and adjust their responsibilities. That’s exciting! It also strikes me as something that catches the defenses off guard in Week 1, but then they make adjustments to more quickly adjust their responsibilities when they see those alignments (which they now have film on) or even the start of the short motion. They have to be quicker in their presnap responses, sure. But I’ll need to see this more to think it’s the effective counterpunch that can sweep over the whole league. I’m not ignoring this, let’s be clear. But to me, this doesn’t seem like something defenses can’t adjust to; it felt like a short-term band-aid that some offenses employed effectively, and yet unders still went 12-4 in Week 1. (The other big thing I theorized this offseason was two-TE sets, and we did see that to an extreme degree in some offenses, but those offenses weren’t suddenly extremely efficient because of that shift.)
Vegas not caring just isn’t accurate. They might still favor great offenses longterm, but the average over/under fell 1.91 points from Week 1 to Week 2, by my count. I have it as the average over/under in Week 1 being 45.25, and in Week 2 it was down to 43.34. That’s massive. I don’t mean to make anyone panic, but Vegas is absolutely responding exactly how I am — they hung optimistic over/unders in Week 1 with the idea that we don’t really know and offenses might have an effective counterpunch, and then they immediately adjusted to gross sub-40 over/unders in a bunch of Week 2 spots, much like the 2022 lines we got to know. (And for the record, over at Stealing Lines, 6 of my 8 picks this week were still unders, even knowing the lines had moved.)
To the point about obviously defenses not caring about stopping big plays, I think that oversimplifies things. I might get a little controversial here, because as sunrise089 framed that, he quoted Community in saying “no one is on the other side of that issue,” specifically because NFL coaches obviously weren’t just in the business of giving up huge plays and quick scores… except I’m going to essentially get on the other side of that issue. I don’t think they were proactively doing that, but I think their focuses and understanding of what they needed to accomplish essentially allowed that as a byproduct. It’s always been, “you have to stop the run,” because it feels so demoralizing when a team runs for 6.0 yards per carry and builds 12-play drives on you. The ways you do that — committing players to the line of scrimmage — allow you to get beat over the top as a byproduct. We saw this on Thursday night, where the Eagles ran so effectively that Minnesota did have to adjust, but that didn’t help Minnesota, because Philly just beat them when they eventually took their shots downfield. What my whole point on this specific note has been is that defensive coaches have finally started saying, “We can let teams run 6.0 yards per carry on us, because that’s better than the alternative.” And even then, it doesn’t mean they will entirely eradicate big plays. But the entire philosophy is different. I don’t know how else to put this, but I feel strongly about it, having watched this sport for a very long time. And it’s why I was early on it. Defenses have admitted tactical defeats in ways they never did. I have been pointing this out for a long time, and it’s continued, and I continue to get replies that amount to, “That would imply defenses of old were dumb,” and also, “You can’t just stop explosive plays,” and also, “It’s not that simple,” in some other way, and I mean, yes. To some extent, all of that would have to be or is true. But also, I’ve been calling attention to this stuff since mid-2021, and been hearing the same stuff since then, and the results since then have been overwhelmingly supportive of my pessimistic view on the whole thing, which I would argue has been a tough stance to continually take because a) people don’t want to believe it, and b) if it’s wrong, people are going to love calling you an idiot for overreacting to that. And I still might be wrong! To be clear, I freaking hope I am wrong about this going forward. But I still need to write what I am observing, and as a lifelong watcher of the NFL, stuff like what happened on TNF this week just doesn’t bring us right back to the trajectory we’d been on with offenses between like 2015-2020.

I realize the NFL operates in cycles; I write about that constantly. And I actually do think that this ends with a rules change of some sort (no, not banning two-high shells, that’s ridiculous and not possible). But rules changes can’t happen midseason, and on the point of the cyclical nature of the league, what I’ve been trying to say as I bang the drum a little bit is there are cycles but there’s also longterm evolution. Passing has evolved positively for 40-plus years. There have been cycles with how that’s happened, but pass volume and pass efficiency has trended positively through those ebbs and flows.

So the evolution works two ways. And again, while I was really hoping I didn’t understand something and offenses might have an effective counterpunch — and I loved seeing some deep balls on Thursday night! — I do keep going back to that note I gave where I wrote, “I kinda think ‘prevent explosives at all costs and force long drives, even (and perhaps especially) when per-play efficiency rises’ is the end game for defensive philosophy.” That to me doesn’t just change. It was a crossing the Rubicon moment when defenses said, “After all these rules changes to benefit offenses, we can’t care if we give up 6.0 yards per carry anymore. We have to force long drives.”

So I believe there’s a real thing here that has changed. I also do think the extent to which it played out in Week 1 was extreme, yes, duh. That was a super low-scoring environment, and the shortened offseason and stuff like guys not getting a lot of preseason reps and just not being able to execute on the long drives effectively was a real issue. Over time, even if defenses force offenses to matriculate the ball down the field every week, they will get more effective at it as a group than they were with their execution in Week 1.

But more broadly, it was a very clear indication that scoring isn’t suddenly going to snap back to pre-2022 levels. It still might, but the really positive indications I was looking for just weren’t there.

All of that said, I also want to note that some degree of what I wrote in that post was tongue in cheek. I hope that came across for most of you. I don’t want to be that guy who writes something and then says, “I’m only asking questions,” or doesn’t stand behind what he’s saying, but I think it would be equally disingenuous for me to try to earnestly call myself a fantasy football nihilist. I mean, I’m obviously extremely passionate about this stuff. There’s no nihilism in me, as it relates to the NFL.

I maybe should have made that clearer, and I do truly hope that my notes here are all wrong, and I’m overstating the degree to which this is an “end game” for defenses, and offenses all do snap back, etc. And like I said, even if I’m right, I think the way this ends is with another rules change, because rules changes have been the catalyst for a lot of the cyclical nature of football over the decades.

Some other questions from posts this week

Let’s just fire off. I realize some of these might have missed the moment for some of you, but it’s still maybe helpful to comment.

Spears is an interesting PPR stash. Would you drop Bigsby for him?

I still like Tank Bigsby, but yes, Tyjae Spears is super interesting and I think I’d go that way right now.

Based on your Chiefs write up, think it’s worth dropping Skyy Moore for Rashee Rice? I have Mahomes (6 Pt passing TD) and would love the upside swing of a stack. I’m trying not to overact but feels like the signal is there

Yep, I would be Rashee Rice > Skyy Moore right now, and I drafted it that way after the Thursday Night Football game.

Are you suggesting that Toney might be an add if someone were to drop him? I’m completely with you that Patrick Mahommes was often looking for his guts to get some separation and there was none.

Yes, Kadarius Toney — where dropped in shallower leagues — is one of the best Week 2 take-a-peek guys where there’s some “input volatility” where there are thin paths to him just getting force fed volume (out of necessity, and his own upside), and him bouncing back from such a disastrous game and really hitting on the upside thesis in a way that makes that add look amazing. He could also be nothing, but when he’s priced like he definitely is nothing, it’s a worthwhile swing to take.

Sometimes I really question why I get so consumed and care about the hobby when it affects my daily mood and those around me in such a heavy fashion when things go south. As a Jets fan I should have been ecstatic and celebrating after watching such a thrilling victory, and yet I was only enraged by the fact that I cost myself a fantasy victory by late swapping Breece Hall for Kincaid. It actually made me root against Breece Hall while I was watching the game. It's definitely not healthy, and I hope to be able to find a better balance this year.

I’ve totally been there with these emotions, and still feel them frequently, although I think I’ve made some progress. In all sincerity, the first step is recognition, like you’re doing here. You’re absolutely right that it’s not healthy, and we gotta do what we can to let the stuff out of our control play out, and accept the stuff within our control is just probabilistic bets that are by definition going to miss sometimes. Even if we’re good enough to make every decision a 70/30 where we’re hitting the 70 side, there will be 3 of 10 times where we feel like this, and we gotta manage the outcome side of that stuff, too. But it’s never easy, and it’s OK to sometimes not be our best selves, too. We live in a social media world where things are presented in fake ways and this type of raw emotion isn’t discussed enough, and that’s not healthy for anyone.

Ben, would you trade Zay Flowers for Tyler Allgeier? PPR 12-Team, 2 WR set & 1 Flex
My other WR's are: Diggs, Waddle, Metcalf and recently I picked up Zay Jones.

I would not trade Zay Flowers for Tyler Allgeier, but that’s largely because I expect Flowers’ value to continue to grow and Allgeier’s to probably fall back to earth in the next week or two. I still like both as long-term plays. Just would look for a different deal, value-wise, this week.

Ben - thanks for emphasizing the 180 on Puka. I digest a lot of Signals, RotoViz and Ship Chasing content so I think I kinda got take-locked by you dismissing him outright on a Ship Chasing show… I made him a priority waiver claim in both of my strongest leagues because while his college production profile sucks, that seems a bit irrelevant now that he he just did it in the NFL… This player seems like a total smash and the kind of profile we want to target for upside/we don't want our leaguemates who had poor builds to be able to grab a high target WR for free

This was what I was going for, and I sometimes highlight where I miscommunicated, so I just wanted to highlight this as well. It’s a good spot for me to remind that at the top of “Biggest Signals” each week, I’ll usually do some kind of ranking of top waiver guys, and I did wind up with Puka Nacua first, then Kyren Williams, then Justice Hill, even though I’d made a comment in the Part 1 writeup of Hill that he was the top add, or something. The reality was I just wasn’t thinking of the Rams’ guys while writing that, and I was trying to force some waiver commentary in there because I get questions asking for waiver commentary, but ultimately even with the “Biggest Signals” rankings, keep in mind that this isn’t a waiver column (I’m addressing other comments here, for the record). I just can’t make the Stealing Signals writeups all the things that could possibly matter for fantasy; it’s massive enough as it is. People’s whole Monday articles are writing up and ranking the top waiver targets and I always get the request to add that whole analysis to my already several-thousand-word writeups, and I mean that’s not a small lift to then rank and discuss the waiver impact of all the players I’m writing up.

So to be crystal clear on this: don’t take my writeups as anything other than what they are, a direct commentary on the player I’m discussing, and then try to apply that to your waiver process and trade decisions and all that. To get back to what led me down this rabbit hole, Puka’s one where I did hope to emphasize my excitement, and then that excitement grew during the Signals Gold Q&A Tuesday night, and then I think on Wednesday is when I really considered waiver stuff in depth and it crystallized for me that I definitely liked him most of the Week 1 guys. If all that had crystallized while writing all the games up on Monday and Tuesday, I absolutely would have written that very plainly for you guys, but what Stealing Signals is is my preliminary research for the week, not my final takes. All that had crystallized for me at that point was that I was wrong to dismiss Puka in the offseason. So anyway, this comment I’m highlighting above is exactly the way I’d hope you guys would take Stealing Signals and leverage it — the commenter took what I was saying and did a little legwork and applied it to their own leagues.

In a shallow home league, JSN was dropped. Do you think he's worth picking up if I have to drop Pickens, Addison, or Flowers? I could also drop a RB but that would leave me way overweight on WR on my bench

These questions are always so hard, but to get back to the last commenter’s note about not wanting leaguemates to get a high-target WR for cheap, I’m not leaving Jaxon Smith-Njigba for anyone else. If I’m in this situation, my response is probably that last option — “drop a RB and leave me way overweight on WR on my bench.”

At this stage of the season, you can make a case to just stockpile talent and depth on your roster, and one of George Pickens, Jordan Addison, or Zay Flowers might look worse (or there could be an unfortunate injury) in the next week or so, where you can rebalance that stuff. Or you trade an Addison or Flowers — the guys who seem to be hitting the most right now — for a RB to rebalance, and use JSN to restock that lost production. Anything other than leaving a player of that caliber out there on the wire.

Hey Ben, question on Javonte - are you still as high on Javonte as you were pre-week 1? I've heard some rumblings about this turning into a 3-headed backfield (Sean Payton seems determined to give Jaleel McLaughlin more looks). Sean Payton also has no personal stake in Javonte, given Javonte was drafted by the old regime. Basically, I'm wondering if I should try to flip him while his projection is still high (something like him and Roschon for Kelley and Dotson, in a league where I have already stashed Spears, Warren, Bigsby, Kyren Williams, & Justice Hill).
Is the thought with Javonte just that his talent will force Payton to feature him and/or he'll just be able to be super efficient and will get lots of passing game looks?

I am higher on Javonte Williams than I was pre-Week 1. I think you have to be really pleased with how much he played and how he looked, where the biggest concern was the “multi-ligament” nature of his injury and rehab, and yet he looked like a guy who just had a knee sprain last year. Both he and Breece Hall showed indications that they could get back to 100% this year, and the unfortunate reinjury stuff that happened with J.K. Dobbins in 2022 when he was coming back from the 2021 injury (man, this guy’s last few years have just been so depressing) doesn’t seem to be a major concern for Williams and Hall.

And given that, you have to be high, because Williams the talent — before the injury — wasn’t far off Hall the talent. I’ve argued Hall would have been the RB1 in ADP this offseason if he didn’t get hurt last year, and I would similarly argue that Williams would have been no later than a second-round pick, and probably in that Tony Pollard range. That takes a little more projection, because while he’d started to displace Melvin Gordon, he hadn’t done some of the electric stuff Hall had done before Hall went down. So with Hall, it’s like, “This was a train headed for a 1,500-yard season and early-career Jonathan Taylor valuations,” whereas with Williams it was more like, “I think he would have gotten there production-wise and people would have really bought in.” But you go back to his rookie year, too, and this guy was very good, including really strong receiving metrics that get you excited about a high-end HVT profile. He’s in a different tier right now than every other RB mentioned in this question, including Kyren Williams and Justice Hill.

A note on advanced stats

I just want to throw a quick note toward questions I get about a lot of advanced stats, where my general take is just know what you’re referencing. We’re already in a small-sample advanced-stat nightmare, where the “advanced” part implies something that often isn’t there; way too often with these stats, a huge percentage of the utility is captured by something more simplistic, and even when they are slightly better, they can do more harm than good in that they are given so much more weight.

I’ve been talking with my buddy Pat Kerrane about “first-read targets” a lot lately, and this is the best example I can give, but I want to be clear that I’m not coming at Pat on this, because he’s a super sharp analyst who is using this data effectively. He’s used it in the past with his Walkthrough writeup, and has found ways that it gives him an edge, and I absolutely buy that and enjoy his analysis on it. He has some really intriguing ways to read into the various types of profiles that can exist within that dataset and the larger “target share” type data.

But it’s also notable to make a strong point that “first-read targets” is probably a misleading name (which Pat didn’t come up with, he’s just using the name from the data providers that compile this stuff), at least as far as WRs and TEs are concerned. And the biggest thing I’d point to is that more than 80% of all targets are getting classified as this, which points to the inability of charters to actually be in the heads of the play-callers and quarterbacks.

Yes, there are a lot of quick passes at the NFL level, but there are multiple challenges here, from combo reads (I had a good time watching some QB School clips from former NFL QB J.T. O’Sullivan this week, and he highlights a ton of plays where he thinks the first read is a combination of two routes on the same side of the field and the QB is maybe reading a defender in that space to determine which depth the ball gets delivered to), to presnap reads — obviously Aaron Rodgers’ whole career is one data point here, but also just guys who get to the line and see something they want to go to (I told Pat I suspect this is why Jake Ferguson had a high “first read” share in Week 1, not because the team wanted to feature him as a pass-catcher, but because Dak has always seemed to favor his TEs and maybe just made some presnap reads at times where he liked what he had on a quick out or something like that) — to there even being a decent likelihood that some QBs are making multiple reads quickly, again on the same side of the field, and getting to their No. 2 read and throwing on time in a way that gets classified as a first read but wasn’t.

Simply put, I just don’t buy for a second that where the ball goes on 80%+ of all passes is determined at the playcall level.

Now, Pat has been in on first-read target share for years, since before it even existed, talking about it on podcasts and behind the scenes as something that would have value. And this data unquestionably gets closer to that — the actual first-read plays are definitely going to be included in this dataset, and perhaps they make up a lot of the dataset, and he’s found this dataset to be stickier than overall target share, which definitely matters. I can’t be any clearer than this: when you read his work, you should definitely pay attention to his conclusions using this stat.

But you also shouldn’t put too much weight in the “intent” that is implied in the name. The “first-read” is probably really just an “early read” thing — or, as I would maybe argue, it’s the quarterback’s first read, but doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the same on the receiving end — and this is all semantics, unless you think it must be telling us a specific thing about intent and overreact to it. That’s what I’m trying to drive home with this example about advanced stats, where I get these sometimes almost aggressive questions about how I must be missing something because of an advanced stat like this, and I’m like, “dude, you’re just telling me that Player A had more targets than Player B last week.”

Again, it’s not as simple as that, and I kind of hate that this is the example I had top of mind because it’s not the best one. A better one I’ve referenced in the past is how we cut down RB receiving from “routes” to all these specific down-and-distance situations, when really just using routes and then team context is probably better. The down-and-distance stuff just gets you going down the wrong path of usage without considering, say, the quarterback and scheme and all of that, which is way more important that the extra 5% of utility you can get out of parsing the overall routes down into these spliced subsections.

The point is merely to be careful out there. You can fall into an issue with much of the advanced data that’s cited of believing it’s moving the needle more than it actually is, because it’s new and interesting and feels like it’s giving us more than it is.