Before we dig into this week’s data, I wanted to thank you guys for all the feedback on this week’s Stealing Signals format. I wrote in Part 2 how I hadn’t received much feedback, but after I’d hit send on that, I realized I hadn’t checked for about three or four hours leading up to sending that, and in that time between about 11 a.m. my time and when I sent Part 2 around 3 p.m. or so, I’d received another 10 or so messages. I’d mentioned of the messages I did see, most didn’t enjoy the new format, but a lot of those in that gap were actually pretty positive. I got several more comments since, and they have seemed pretty split. Even if I haven’t responded, I’ve read I think all of them, which has been no small task because you guys have had some really thoughtful responses, which I really appreciate.
The lesson as always is everyone probably wants something a little different, and maybe gets slightly different things out of the piece, which makes sense given the size and scope of it. Next week is a short week with Thanksgiving coming up, and the U.S. Men’s National Team makes their much-anticipated World Cup debut during the day Monday, so I’m definitely going back to my normal format given I found the new one to actually slow down my process. Having had a couple days to think, it’s possible I’ll try the alternate format again, mostly because I think I can be a lot better in how I go about it. For example, I still took all my Sunday notes in a game by game format, which is probably why I found that I wanted to be writing game by game. I think if I laid out a new format in advance and then organized my notes to fit that, it certainly would have been a helpful step. But just talking about it does have me excited to write the old format this week, and probably for the next few in the foreseeable future.
One of the things I wanted to emphasize again somewhere is how impactful Week 10 appears to have been. Because of the new format shenanigans, I’m not sure I emphasized this as much as I would have liked. I’ve talked for some time now about fewer trends materializing through the 2022 season, and things being very likely to change or solidify down the line. We saw that in several places in Week 10, which I would describe as the biggest week for usage trends since Week 1 or Week 2. It was absolutely massive, and if you’re wondering what I’m talking about, I’d just go back and read through my “Biggest Signals” and “Biggest Noise” in Part 2 this week, where some of the things buried quite a ways down the list like, I don’t know, the Kadarius Toney and Chris Godwin notes, could probably have been viewed as top-five Signals in a lot of other weeks.
Perhaps that should have been expected with a ton of teams coming off Week 9 byes, and so many others impacted by a busy trade deadline. Teams are getting to where they want to be, willing now to concentrate their usage stuff a bit more and set themselves up for a stretch run leaning on the things that they think gives them the best chance to make a run at some pretty wide open final playoff spots, or else — for the teams not contending — getting a look at important players for the future (or protecting others who might be banged up).
I’m glad to be hearing from so many more of you this week than I have over the past few, and many are asking the types of questions that let me know you’re thinking about how your team can make some noise in the playoffs. Many of my teams have finally turned around, and for some it’s a bit too late — most notably on several of those FFPC teams where the regular season runs out in two weeks, and only the top four teams advance to the league playoffs — but in casual leagues you have four more weeks and typically half the league making the playoffs, so if your league W-L records are starting to bunch up with a ton of teams between 4-6 and 6-4, you know this next month is huge. And I’ve been asked several places about whether a team is good enough to contend, and my response to almost all of those is “yes,” because I do truly believe this is the type of season where almost every team has flaws and paths to a low weekly total, so you can hit some good fortune in head-to-head playoff formats where your opponents struggle, even if your own roster isn’t as good as you’d like it.
For the rosters that have trump cards like one of the truly elite QBs or TEs (or both), or two strong RBs to pair with the typical deep WR groups I’m seeing, you’re absolutely in position to take down the whole thing, even if you’re not currently sitting in playoff position. It’s not just that your roster may have started scoring better to get back to 5-5 or 4-6 or whatever, but that the top teams from the early part of the season in many cases have started to score worse, which was the other part of that prediction earlier in the season. This isn’t the case in every single league, obviously, but it’s definitely a universal trend more so than any other season I can remember across my 30+ leagues.
But step one is obviously getting into the playoffs, and if you’re not there yet, that’s your big focus. Many of you who are in good position have asked for rankings of handcuff RBs, and how to structure your bench, and for that I would point you to today’s episode of Stealing Bananas, where Shawn and I spent the full hour discussing that topic and specifically those widely-available RBs. I won’t be able to write about that this week, but I will look to keep the HVT sections at the bottom of Part 2 of Stealing Signals more detailed with my recommendations going forward. But even if you’re not an audio person, please start with that podcast episode if you’re interested in this topic, because we got through a ton of names and it was one of our most efficient in-season shows in terms of the amount of information we delivered in an hour, and I’m not likely to match that depth in my upcoming writeups on the topic.
Alright, let’s get to some of the Input Volatility notes this week, and I’m just going to go team by team and hit on this with bullet points, because there’s so much happening.
Arizona Cardinals
Marquise Brown and Trey McBride are the big talking points, with some potential Brown returns, but it’s a tough lineup call for MNF. I think my note on him would be there’s probably too much immediate emotional response that leans to the idea he’ll return to a strong role. He was great before his injury, but DeAndre Hopkins is back and drawing tons of targets, while Rondale Moore has really broken out, so if Brown takes a bit of time to get all the way back to 100%, we could see one of those post-injury stretches of disappointing production. That’s one of those things that I don’t think is the most likely outcome because I do like Brown the player, but I think is probably more likely than I get the sense others tend to be feeling.
McBride is a bit of a mystery box, and he hasn’t been great so far on just under 100 routes in his rookie season (I may have mistakenly mentioned he’s run fewer in some places this week, and that was a data error where I had the wrong number for part of the week). It’s possible McBride can really take off in the Ertz role after running routes on 82% of dropbacks last week. It’s also possible he’s not really ready to contend for targets with a strong top-three pass-catchers, and he hasn’t earned much volume thus far.
James Conner also has to be mentioned here as a guy who has more ceiling going forward than we’ve seen, just based on his 96% snaps last week, even as that seems unlikely to stick at that level.