Input Volatility, Week 8
"Beginner" questions, WR expected catch rates, game-by-game thoughts
I often write about how different people are at different points of the fantasy football spectrum, and I’ve gotten some self-described entry-level questions lately that are clearly thoughtful and come from a sharp mindset that just lacks experience, and those things always remind me I need to do a better job talking about what I guess I think of as more basic or second-nature stuff.
So that’s what a big portion of the intro is going to hit on today, starting with a bit of a specific question but getting into more evergreen concepts including optimal bench allocation in a minute.
TE value in WR/TE leagues
I’m starting in a weird spot, but it’s going to help me answer a later questions. I recently got asked about leagues that don’t have a dedicated TE spot and instead have WR/TE slots, and how to value TE in those formats. This is this individual’s first fantasy league and he read a lot about me talking up TE, so it’s a very reasonable question. For anyone else with a similar question, the answer is it almost can’t be overstated how much this devalues TE. I think most people — including the person asking this question — immediately recognize a huge part of the emphasis on TE is due to a lower production baseline and thus replacement level of the position, and that is absolutely correct.
When the requirement of TE is removed, the production gap between WR and TE — in part driven by the reality that TEs don’t run routes on every single passing down in a similar way as top WRs do, because they play a dual position that includes more blocking even just to set up stuff like play action throws — becomes an extremely significant element. Guys like Brock Bowers are still relevant, but I find the adjustment necessary is larger than what gets accounted for by leaguemates, because at least a couple people are using a normal ranking list or anchoring to ADP that includes the dedicated TE lineup spot. Thus, my short hand in leagues like this is TEs are essentially undraftable.
Yes, you can hit on good TEs, but there’s also a high bust rate there. Look at Kyle Pitts versus Darnell Mooney for an example of how the range of outcomes can manifest at these positions. Pitts is actually coming on lately and running a lot of routes again, and is easily back in the top-10 TEs for rest of season, while Mooney has been good but is no one’s idea of an elite WR. Mooney of course has far more raw production than Pitts in the same offense. While that’s been somewhat unexpected, I can’t imagine Pitts fell enough in WR/TE leagues that they were drafted even close to each other (i.e. Pitts went quite a bit higher). I often talk about WRs like Mooney as not having real upside outside something I refer to as the “WR Window,” which relates to research that shows that high-end fantasy WR seasons almost always come from WRs drafted in the first six or eight or so rounds.
Really, it’s typically only the WRs drafted in the first three or so rounds, but what research tends to show is you do see breakout WRs from about Round 4 to Round 8, typically with young players emerging, in a way that you don’t as often in the double-digit rounds. If you go look at the top of overall WR scoring right now, particularly in points per game to show real upside, there are 10 guys at 17+ PPR points per game, then a full point per game drop to WR11. Of those 10 guys that have shown real scoring ability, nine were drafted as high as Round 3 in higher-stakes stuff (Rashee Rice, Malik Nabers, and Cooper Kupp are guys who maybe fell a little later in some leagues). Chris Godwin is the 10th, and the clearly lowest drafted, despite being a clear WR Window guy.
Anyway, Mooney comes in after that, in this group of solid producers you can find but that don’t carry league-winning upside. And the point of the Mooney/Pitts comparison is how even that profile of WR can match and surpass solid TE scoring; the only way TE becomes a strong pick in a WR/TE league is when you hit on the absolute superstar season. Those do happen, but again as a shorthand they just aren’t worth chasing.
Multiple QBs, multiple Ks, etc.
In a league where everyone is carrying multiple QBs and even multiple Ks, which I know some of you do play in and I even have home leagues where guys still swear by that, it’s easy to wonder if rolling with just one player at those positions is too risky. And in some cases, because there are only 32 NFL starters at positions like this, people can hold enough that it dramatically lowers the replacement level in your individual league and can actually change the calculus.
See, most fantasy analysts will just tell you that you definitely don’t need to prioritize kicker, for example. But if you’re in a league where 25 kickers are being rostered, that’s not actually good advice. The point of not needing to prioritize it is because the scoring is pretty random and there are plenty of decent-enough offenses where it can work to roster that kicker. But in leagues that roster 25 kickers, where your only option in a given week is to take on a kicker for a team that is projected to score like 15 points, that’s actually kind of a problem. That kicker isn’t on par with the others where it all comes down to variance; he’s legitimately expected to score less, and that’s real expected value taken out of your starting lineup. Points matter at all positions.
Barring extreme circumstances like that, though, it very much is the case that you don’t need to worry too much about a backup at these positions, especially K and DST. The logic is that bench spots are rare, and you want to prioritize stuff that — when it hits — would be very expensive to try to acquire, or where you wouldn’t even be able to get it. The difference between what feels like a reasonable backup QB down to what feels a little more iffy is typically pretty mild, actually. Like this week, Jameis Winston just came into the player pool, and the reality is he’s probably just as good as most of the backup QBs being rostered across fantasy leagues. That doesn’t mean he’s definitely going to score, but rather that his distribution isn’t much different than like Aaron Rodgers’.
So what I’m saying is you don’t actually gain much by holding Rodgers on your bench. You can in all likelihood just pick up a QB when you need it. That’s definitely the case for kicker, which is a position where the scoring is very high-variance, and unless you’re in an extreme example like I discussed above, it’s almost certainly best to just cut your kicker and add a new one.
For QBs, holding Rodgers is just to make you feel warm and fuzzy; it’s a conservative move, like handcuffing your RB, meant to make you feel better about your roster when you look at it but that doesn’t actually increase your odds of winning the league much. Or, put differently, the opportunity cost of what you could be using that roster spot for is greater than what you actually get out of it, so it in fact hurts your probability of winning your league, subtly. And again, this is purely due to the reality that when you actually need that backup, you would otherwise just be able to add a very comparable player without having held that player and burned a roster spot for that long. The only time I hold two players at a position like this is if they both have legitimate long-term upside and leaving a really good and potentially high-scoring asset on the waiver wire for another leaguemate to pick up might actually wind up coming back to bite me. In that case, I’m basically dedicating a bench spot to “blocking” my leaguemate from a free pickup on a player I think could be really valuable, even if I already have a really valuable player in that position. It’s not so much about increasing my team’s scoring but preventing my opponents from building superteams, which in its way also improves my odds of winning my league.
One newer player asked if it’s ever worthwhile to just take a zero at QB on their QB’s bye, as an extension of this question. My answer is that would be a very rare circumstance, where you’re already very likely to make the playoffs, and perhaps if you’re in a league with an 8-team playoff bracket so there are no byes to play for, and your current-week head-to-head matchup really doesn’t change things all that much. In those cases, I could understand not wanting to cut someone you think is crucial to your bench, if your roster is extremely strong. But that’s why difficult cuts are often lowkey useful, especially early in seasons, because you do kind of always want to have at least one flexible roster spot that you’re churning each week. And if you have that, you can add a second QB to start for just that week and then cut him, which is what you should do in almost every case.
Extending that to asking about taking a zero at kicker or DST, if you have a kicker or DST you really like, and cutting just for a bye week is tough to envision, I can see carrying two for that one week. That’s why I led with the commentary that’s not totally black and white, while also noting it’s almost certainly the case that you should just carry one kicker or one DST in most leagues. It’s become popular to argue carrying an elite kicker or DST through a bye is bad, but I do this in high stakes leagues sometimes. I do usually make room for a second kicker or DST in those situations, rather than take the zero, because in those formats each regular season week is pretty huge. But I could see just taking the zero if your specific week isn’t that crucial for reasons similar to what I just laid out about 8-man playoff structures or those types of things.
But that’s a one-week bye week conversation, and the idea of carrying multiple kickers over an extended period of time is almost certainly worsening your chances to win your league.
More about bench allocation
So then the question becomes if you’re not doing that, what are you using your bench spots for? And that actually does change throughout a season, and even across different years. One thing I’ve found myself doing more of this year even in my home leagues is carrying a second TE, since the position is down. I have a Dalton Kincaid team where I was also carrying Tucker Kraft, but then Cole Kmet was available and I decided to add him and cut Kraft, which I didn’t like for reasons I just described about how I handed him over to another leaguemate, but I just couldn’t find room for three TEs, and I did prefer Kmet (this was before Kraft’s diving TD last week, and while Kmet was heading into his bye, but I think I stand by it).
These are the types of tough decisions you have to make, and while my anxiety rises just thinking about having cut Kraft and what he could become, I also felt that just leaving Kmet on the wire wasn’t right, and I had to predict who had more upside to beat me in the playoffs, essentially. The point is you have to be willing to make bold and tough calls to accomplish everything you’re trying to. That includes trying to build out the best version of your team both for scoring now — to make the playoffs — and also crucially for later, because the rule definitely is that Weeks 15-17 matter way more than anything else. It also includes minor stuff like blocking opponents from building even better teams than you, or having contingency plans in place in case things don’t go well. My faith in Kincaid is waning a bit for now, and for me it felt like Kmet was the best bet to be a guy I really felt like was a difference-maker late in the year if I don’t feel confident playing Kincaid at that time.
But the bulk of my bench spots in home leagues this time of year are used on contingent RBs. I do have some depth WRs, but the WRs I’m rostering are again almost always upside plays. One of the biggest examples of a “roster clogger” who limits your team’s flexibility and ability to churn your bench slots on a week-to-week basis are those WRs with the non-WR Window profiles, i.e. they can score but they are just plug-and-play WR points without real ceiling.
In a lot of cases, that type of WR can score enough to be better than replacement level, but the argument would be that they aren’t actually providing enough of a boost to your ability to win the whole league. Basically, if the WR you can add off the wire any given week is expected to score, I don’t know, 10 PPR points, and this roster clogger type can provide you with 12.5 expected points each week, that’s good, but it isn’t really worth the roster spot to hold a 2.5-point expected boost that you aren’t even realizing every week since it’s a bench spot, and it only comes into play on a bye week or after an injury (in which case you could pick up the 10-point waiver wire option).
This isn’t to say that a 2.5 expected-point boost isn’t relevant, because it very much is. The biggest takeaway you should have from this intro is nothing is ever cut and dry, and as soon as something like “never roster two kickers” becomes widely accepted, it’s probably been overstated to some degree. There are honestly a lot of unique scenarios and even a lot of unique leagues, and some fantasy analysts only talk to one group of them, whether that’s purely home leaguers like a lot of the bigger sites need to tailor their coverage (because they have huge audiences of mostly home leaguers whose leaguemates aren’t employing a whole lot of advanced tactics) or it’s purely high stakes folks, or often somewhere in between, where the analyst is both condescending toward the weaker beginner leagues but also clearly unaware of sharper tactics being employed in the most difficult ones that exist.
Anyway, I used that 2.5 expected-point boost as an example to drive home this point that a bench player that isn’t even in your lineup does need to give you something. That something in most cases needs to also be a long-term upside case. Now, one thing is we can’t always predict long-term upside very well, and a guy like a Jauan Jennings is someone I absolutely would have thrown into this pile of veteran roster-clogger types at certain points, but now that I have seen him put up a 40-point game and Brandon Aiyuk is injured, my priors are changed. But for the most part, long-term upside is most easily captured in a subset of younger players who haven’t necessarily shown who they are yet, and who might go on to be future early-round fantasy picks. That’s the key for me — a question my partner in crime Shawn Siegele loves to ask is, “Is this guy someone I could see drafting in Round 2 next year?”
The position group I’ve left aside until now is RBs, but that’s because they are sort of the default in a lot of cases. You don’t want your whole bench to be filled with them. In my longest-running home league where I referenced adding Kmet over Kraft, I get seven bench spots, and they look like this for me right now:
It could be said that I should have decided on an RB cut last week to hold three TEs. It could be said I should have more WR depth, given I’m only rostering five. But I drafted those five WRs in the first seven rounds, then didn’t take another one the rest of the draft, and they’ve all been decent enough — including some hits like Nabers, Drake London, and Jayden Reed — that the answer in this league has been straightforward. I do also have Jaylen Waddle on this team, and when you have guys like that — and what his struggles were over the past several weeks — it can be necessary to go approach some of those “roster-clogging” WR types because you do need points in the short term. In my case, I benched Waddle for the past several weeks while playing Diontae Johnson, who is now out this week, as Tua Tagovailoa returns.
It doesn’t always work out that cleanly, and I would have had to navigate my bench differently if it didn’t. I carried two QBs for a while because I have Jordan Love in this league (for those of you remembering I wasn’t very high on him preseason, I got him as a faller in Round 9 of a home league, after Dak Prescott, Brock Purdy, and of course Jayden Daniels, and in a build where I’d landed Reed as a huge faller in Round 8). But the point is, this is in some ways my ideal bench, if the starting lineup allows, because I do want to maximize my pulls on the backup RB slot machine, because I can absolutely see each of those five RBs being drafted at least by about Round 5 next year, if not Round 2.
That’s the thing with RB — when the role opens up, the next guy up can look so good that he’s a star the next year. I have Blake Corum there; Kyren Williams was a late-rounder going into last year, but won the role and was a Round 2 or Round 3 guy this year. I talked about it a little on Stealing Bananas yesterday, but Kendre Miller is probably the toughest one to see now, of this cohort, because of the Alvin Kamara extension. (That also impacts late 2024 expectations, where I would have thought they might have moved toward Kendre to see what they have in him, but they no longer really have a need to do that, in the same way. It’s a bummer how that all worked out, for Kendre’s value.)
WR expected catch rate notes
I mention Sam Hoppen’s great work in Stealing Signals each week, but you’re truly missing out if you’re not following his work. There are a lot of people who post a lot of visuals on sites like Twitter, and for the majority of them, there’s not a clear message being conveyed, there’s necessary context being mistaken, and often the actual choice for the visual is just poor and hard to follow. Many times the post is just to emphasize that one player is some kind of outlier, but the stats chosen or things like the scale are manipulated to drive home that point in a way that’s pretty silly.
Sam is the opposite of all that, though he’s pretty soft spoken and wouldn’t tell you that himself. I’ve worked with a lot of data people, and I’d say the very best share two key qualities. One, they have a unique balance of left- and right-brain skills, where they clearly understand data and its limitations, but also have a knack for the viz side in terms of finding clever ways to display things (which can be more of an artsy right-brain skill). The other is they are interested in and good at taking feedback, with a humble approach but also an ability to discern well what’s useful and what’s not. Sam’s all that stuff, and super good at what he does.
Anyway, he was sharing a fun visual to talk about how Marvin Harrison Jr. has had the second-lowest expected catch rate among 72 qualified receivers (minimum 25 targets), and then people asked who the other names were on the chart so he shared one that had all the names (with a funny warning about how hard it would be to read).
I’m going to share a version of it here, but you’re going to have much better success reading it if you go to his tweet.
His data source on this, which you can see down in the bottom corner, is NFL Pro, and I don’t know their exact parameters, but I do know their data is built from GPS stuff rather than charting. From what I understand about those models, what you’re seeing is going to reflect how far the ball had to travel in the air (deeper throws are inherently more difficult to catch), where on the field the throw was to (the sideline is a more difficult place to catch a pass than the middle of the field, in part because of how the boundary can limit completions even when a ball is physically caught), and presumably where defenders are.
I enjoyed looking at this, but it also had some interesting names at top and bottom that I’ve shared some thoughts about in Stealing Signals so I wanted to talk about real quick:
I didn’t know who the only player below Harrison was, on the first visual, but two of the first names that came to mind were third- and fourth-lowest. The actual lowest didn’t come to mind, but it was Ja’Lynn Polk. I don’t have strong thoughts here, but I do think that being at the extremes on either end probably isn’t good. Some of that comes down to separation, etc. Polk is quite a bit lower than anyone else, and you’d think that has to regress somewhat.
Keon Coleman was a name I immediately thought of because especially before last week, basically all of his targets were 50/50 balls in close coverage on the sideline, so a long throw to a boundary. Interestingly, teammate Khalil Shakir is at the very top, and by a good margin, which drives home the point I keep making that he’s catching all his passes because they are almost literally all swing passes at the line of scrimmage with no defenders nearby. He’s the only WR in the NFL with 25 targets and an expected catch rate over 80%, and he looks like he’s approaching about 82%. It’s great for him in PPR leagues, but it also speaks to a limited ceiling of his production, and he’s going to have games where defenses make it a priority to take away that type of play and suddenly the floor could be real low.
Olamide Zaccheaus is right there after Shakir, and I’ve talked about his usage for Washington similarly.
Right after that are Rashee Rice and Jayden Reed, and both of them do have lower aDOTs and get shorter passes, but they also both do stuff down the field some, and they get open at a high degree, and then add amazing ball-in-hand skills. Obviously Rice is now out, but I’m emphasizing that with a stat like this, you can view players with similar numbers differently based on their profiles. I actually would like Shakir quite a bit more than Zaccheaus, because Shakir is very good with the ball in his hand, but then both Rice and Reed I think are far more responsible for their own high expected catch rates than I think either Shakir or Zaccheaus are, or at least that’s my film-based take. And I do think that’s notable, and that Rice and Reed (and Chris Godwin, and a little while further down Zay Flowers) are examples of guys who are not just benefiting from the inputs that make up this metric but are creating some of that themselves, while adding skill after the catch as well.
There are also positive cases toward the bottom. George Pickens is very low but we’re talking about deep shots that have potential for big fantasy points, and he’s making plays on the other end. Rashid Shaheed was near the bottom and was hitting on his rate of explosives. D.K. Metcalf is down there but has been a GAM while winning at the catch point this year. Jauan Jennings had the massive game. There’s higher risk to that type of profile where it’s a lot of 50/50 balls that can go for big gains, but skill at the catch point matters, and it’s why we talk about stuff like YPT efficiency even if it’s not sticky. Calvin Ridley is not equal to even a guy like Jennings right now at the catch point (while, in Ridley’s defense, I did also know he’d be low here, and not even because his targets are particularly deep on average, but because he has seen a ton of passes that are just not catchable due to QB play).
So I had a few things I wanted to talk about here. One was some more sort of “basic” ideas about what the different WR targets mean, because I refer to that stuff a lot and I’m sure there are a lot of newer readers who aren’t following all that. Hopefully the comments on catch rate being easier on shallower targets and those kinds of things are helpful. It’s one of those things I’ve written about a lot in the past.
The second thing I wanted to talk about was just that this chart was validation of so much of what I’ve been explaining in the weekly columns re: guys like Shakir and Coleman. It’s just helpful for me to be able to point at this chart and say, “See, that’s what I’ve been saying,” but again we still need to add context to what makes Zaccheaus different from Reed.
And then the third thing is that while Ja’Marr Chase is a little on the high side of this chart since we know he has a bit of a lower aDOT, most of the true No. 1 WRs around the league fit in right in the middle, meaning they do get some gimme receptions in addition to those higher-leverage, more difficult plays, and they are good enough to make those plays at the catch point. They aren’t solely reliant on that stuff, which is crucial, but they also do have access to those game-breaking opportunities.
Go find Malik Nabers, CeeDee Lamb, Nico Collins, and Justin Jefferson on that chart. Those are the four guys that Shawn and I had as our top four WRs for next year when we did our in-season 2025 ADP update a couple weeks ago. It’s not a requirement, but if you want to be the overall WR1 — the very best fantasy WR in the league — that’s the sweet spot.
And really, that’s what I loved about this visual. There was a lot to take away from it with the individual profiles, but it also allowed you to contextualize. And what is “good” is perhaps not always obvious, and it’s not even the case that some of the guys on the extremes are “bad” necessarily, because they thrive in those roles. But someone like Harrison, who Sam had pointed out, does probably need to get a lot closer to the middle of that chart.
Alright, this was a fun, long intro. Now let’s get to the games. As always, I offer these considerations solely because you guys have asked, and because I might have a thought about a different part of a range of outcomes in some cases, relative to what you’re seeing elsewhere. I don’t offer these thoughts because I think they will be explicitly great predictions, and it’s basically just me going game-by-game and throwing out what hits me.
In past years, when I wrote this much of an intro for this column, I didn’t even do the game-by-game thing. I just made that week’s column more of a theory post. I’m still going to go through the games today, but I’m doing it fast, which specifically means I’m not going to go through every injury report. Please adjust accordingly.
Eagles at Bengals
Both of these teams are super projectable at this stage, with two key WRs and a pretty settled backfield (Eagles have their workhorse, while Chase Brown has become the clear lead for Cincinnati but Zack Moss still has his role).
Ravens at Browns
Zay Flowers has had some DNPs this week, and while he played through his ankle injury last week after getting rolled up on, he wasn’t the same player and both Rashod Bateman and Mark Andrews benefitted. Something to watch.
Also keep in mind Andrews still only ran 50% routes last week and Isaiah Likely is still an important consideration.
I don’t know that Keaton Mitchell will actually be activated but he’s seemingly not far off and probably a sneaky add in deeper leagues right now as the likely handcuff for the important rushing work if Derrick Henry were to miss time. Justice Hill would likely stay in his role rather than become a workhorse, I’d guess. He might be like the Zack Moss to Mitchell being the Chase Brown.
Browns are a huge volatility team with Jameis Winston under center, and I’ve said a few different ways I think they could wind up being a lot more pass heavy — their offensive coordinator choice plus early-season PROE stuff indicated that — and Winston might also provide more catchable balls rather than holding onto stuff in the pocket like the last guy. One note on that front was Kevin Stefanski handed play-calling over to OC Ken Dorsey this week, which to me felt like a “Hey, you have a QB where you can call your pass offense now” moment.
I’m really curious whether Cedric Tillman can really out-perform Jerry Jeudy, but the 12 targets last week are hard to ignore. David Njoku is in a great spot regardless. I expect this trio to be better going forward than any Browns’ receiving production we’ve seen to date, but this week against the Ravens and while no teams are on bye may not be the exact time to jump in with both feet and start all these guys. Njoku is one I do really like to start.
Nick Chubb is a huge volatility guy, too. I thought he looked solid last week, as I wrote, but the production wasn’t totally there.
Titans at Lions
DeAndre Hopkins hadn’t been running a ton of routes or earning a ton of volume, but his departure does allow things to consolidate a bit more. Calvin Ridley’s going to have a big game eventually, maybe here.
Without Jameson Williams, Sam LaPorta feels like he’ll need to be relied on more. I think his projections will be a little underrated this week.