Being as into the NFL as I am, I haven’t had serious team allegiances for a while. I actually grew up a Minnesota Vikings fan thanks to my grandfather, but there were times in my adulthood I pulled for the local Seahawks, mainly because I knew all the people close to me were pulling for them.
After the Sonics left Seattle, I haven’t had much interest in the NBA, either. I basically have two things I root for: my alma mater, the UW Huskies. And my Seattle Mariners.
I’m telling you this because the Mariners were sweet in my formative years. Their epic first trip to the postseason in 1995 came when I was a little 8-year old, and their 116-win 2001 season was when I was 14. Basically all the cool stuff in Mariners history occurred in those seven years, but they were a very important seven years in my life, in terms of developing fandom and what I would care about even when I was in my thirties.
Until yesterday, the Mariners hadn’t played another postseason game since that 2001 season, when I was 14. Through my whole twenties, I just wanted to be able to have a beer while watching my team play postseason baseball. I got to meet up with some friends and do that yesterday. And they won. They now play again today, and then on Sunday if necessary, to see if they’ll advance to the ALDS. This whole Wild Card series is in Toronto, so advancing would mean a playoff home game in Seattle. Obviously you want to believe your team can do something really special, but I’ll save the ways I’ve already scripted their run to the World Series for another place.
I mention this because I was kind of wreck leading up to yesterday, and now as I write this I’m just nervous about today’s game. Those of you who have baseball teams that play in the postseason every year — how do you compartmentalize that? I am quite literally not used to caring about baseball from when fantasy draft season picks up, let alone into October, because for most of my adult life, with the exception of a couple near-miss runs to the playoffs, there was nothing to care about.
Let’s jump into some Input Volatility situations. I’m going to do today a lot like Week 3, where I sort of just note some situations that seem high-variance to me. Full disclosure, this is not my best work. I’m far more concerned about how effective Kevin Gausman has been over the past month. I’m going to go team by team in alphabetical order and just throw some ideas out there.
Rondale Moore
There’s not much that suggests you could use Moore in a starting lineup for Week 5, but his 11.6 aDOT in his first game of the season — coupled with routes on 92% of dropbacks and even a high rate of snaps out wide — was a massive shift from the ways he was used in 2021.
So far in his career, Moore has two games where he has hit 60 receiving yards, and they came in Weeks 1 and 2 of 2021, before he became a rotational, underneath-only option. The simple fact that he ran enough downfield routes to post a double-digit aDOT creates volatility here — as a rookie, his aDOT was just 1.2 yards downfield, though he “earned” a target on 24.2% of his routes. I put earned in quotations because so many of those plays were designed touches.
If Moore still has that element to his game where the Cardinals might get him four or five easy catches around the line of scrimmage — last week, he didn’t hit on anything downfield, but had three catches for 11 yards, as well as a carry for -4, which wasn’t really on him as he ran into an unblocked edge rusher immediately upon taking a jet motion handoff — then that gives his stat line a solid base and he’s more or less one or two downfield plays away from a pretty usable week. If he’s good downfield — something we can’t really know yet, but he showed the potential for during a stunted college career at Purdue — there’s potential for him to put up stat lines like Marquise Brown has been over the past few weeks in this offense.
Atlanta RBs
Tyler Allgeier and Caleb Huntley take over a backfield that has lost both Damien Williams and Cordarrelle Patterson to short-term IR. For a team so willing to run the football, the mix between these two could get very notable as soon as this week.
Allgeier seems like the de facto lead, having worked his way into some touches alongside Patterson over the past few weeks. Huntley was active for just the second time in Week 4, and had played just three offensive snaps back in Week 2 in his other game on the gameday roster, but in Week 4 he got his first touch with 3:06 left in the third quarter, and Arthur Smith liked what he saw. Huntley got five straight carries to end the third period, and while Allgeier came on for two rushes to start the fourth, Huntley was back on for three more to close a drive that saw him carry eight times for 54 yards and a touchdown.
Allgeier again started the next drive, but after he ripped off a 42-yard run on that drive’s third play, Huntley subbed back in for a carry from the 4-yard line. The Falcons didn’t run the ball again that drive, and then Huntley was in to carry the ball on first down the next drive, as well, which wound up being the team’s last drive of the game, save for a couple kneeldowns at the end.
Allgeier still got carries on each of those final three drives, and Huntley only played 12 snaps overall to gather his 10 carries for the game, but while most projection systems have Allgeier comfortably ahead in this two-back split, there’s a pretty easy story you can tell yourself that Huntley has “hot hand” paths to being the team’s leading rusher this week, potentially with goal-line duties. It’s a tricky backfield to parse no matter how you slice it, and given the Falcons are double-digit underdogs and have a sub-20 implied team total, it might be one to just avoid. I’m not sure the upside justifies the uncertainty and floor potential in this matchup.