Different shape to the post this week, because I want to talk about league-level trends some more, and I also want to get into some TPRR and wTPRR data because I’ve been really poor at circling back around to that with regularity this year.
On Part 2 of Stealing Signals this week, Jon asked:
Hey Ben, I've noticed that you haven't been highlighting TPRR (or wTPRR) in these articles as often as you used to in previous seasons. Is this because you've found those metrics to be less useful or less predictive than WOPR and route rate?
The answer to this is not at all a commentary on my appreciation for TPRR or wTPRR, but rather how I think they should be used. I don’t love looking at them in small samples, and rather would prefer to be drawing conclusions from multiple weeks of data. I’ve noted some interesting small-sample data on players where it was relevant — I remember writing about Treylon Burks’ numbers in his first few partial games — but I’d much rather be looking at samples of 100 or 200 routes, at minimum, which is maybe four or five games at a time. In past seasons, I’ve done periodic check-ins, but not necessarily looked at these stats heavily in the normal Signals columns because of the weekly nature of those. Adding this Input Volatility post and some other obligations like the podcasts has unfortunately prevented me from finding the time where I wanted to.
Anyway, I’m going to jump into some TPRR and wTPRR stuff at bottom of this post, and I spent a couple hours getting some stuff formatted so I could go team by team on that. But I want to start with two typical input volatility-type RB situations that Shawn and I also discussed on today’s episode of Stealing Bananas, where you can find more information.
Also, a quick note I’m a bit sick and working off the power of DayQuil so I imagine there are a few sentences that barely make sense.
New York Jets
I called this situation Noise this week, and that was probably an error, although I did mention Zonovan Knight looked good. I wish I would have been a little more optimistic in my commentary. He looked good, and we have the Mike White checkdown element that could be HVT gold, and it was really great to see him run a lot of routes on early downs and not totally give way to Ty Johnson for the passing stuff, after Michael Carter left.
Knight is a 21-year-old rookie who went undrafted, but is the type of player who from a long view we might expect to be a little undervalued, because he’s so young and wouldn’t have necessarily had time to develop to his full potential in college, or even by the combine. But in 2019, as a true freshman, he got nearly 150 touches for NC State, then saw similar rushing workloads the next two years, while adding 41 receptions over those final two seasons. We want guys that college teams identify as good enough to give big work to from the moment they step on college campuses, and we want guys who are young. A lot of lesser-known names that appear on the scene like Knight did last week are dudes that were maybe 22- or 23-year-old UDFAs a year prior, and they kicked around a practice squad for a year and then are getting their opportunity, but their first NFL experience is coming at 24. That isn’t happening here, and the college profile, at least as far as the work he earned, is promising.
There’s also the element that James Robinson was a healthy scratch last week and Knight was active for the first time, so even prior to last week the team seemed to be saying, “We’ve seen enough of Robinson and want to see what Knight can do.” And with that opportunity, Knight ran for 4.9 yards per carry, picking up 69 yards on 14 tries, while also catching all three of his targets for 34 receiving yards to go over 100 total yards for the day. That’s a really nice debut.
Now that Michael Carter is doubtful, you expect Robinson to be up for the game, but I’m very comfortable leaning to Knight’s side of this uncertain backfield in terms of how this work might split out. The momentum is in his favor if he can capture the opportunity. In the second half, after Carter left the game, Johnson appeared to play a bit of a Carter role to Knight’s Breece Hall. Knight isn’t the talent Hall is, but if he’s able to run about half the RB routes with a QB who likes to check down and then also gets about two-thirds of the RB carries — as he did in the second half last week, where he got 10 and Johnson got 5 — then you’re talking about some real potential. And if he builds on this, there’s no reason the team wouldn’t let him continue to play out the string a little bit because, again, he’s a 21-year-old with more potential to be a surprise benefit to the team in future seasons than guys like Johnson and Robinson.
There’s also the part where this team is in playoff position, and Knight might just be their best RB right now. That’s all a lot of optimism based on one week, but that’s the optimist’s view, at least. Basically any element of what I’ve written being off will prove to be a negative for Knight, and it probably won’t be this rosy. But it’s also not usually this easy to make a rosy case for a guy like Knight who we weren’t even talking about this time last week.