I actually, for real this time, don’t really have an intro to hit. Many of the things I can think to write about, or I’m seeing others cover — scoring being down, the QB issues, what the hell this week even is — I’ve kind of already covered.
And I already wrote so many words on so many topics this week, so let’s just go game by game and talk a little about input volatility spots for Week 8. As always, rather than spending something like an hour on each game like I might for Stealing Signals, in this piece I fly through the games and spend maybe an hour on all of them combined.
Defer to good projections or the variety of great forward-looking stuff from the analysts I frequently reference — Kerrane; Overzet; Siegele and the RotoViz team; Leone, Silva, and the ETR guys — over my thoughts. I offer these considerations solely because you guys have asked, and because I’m deep enough in the weeds with Stealing Signals that I might have a unique thought about a different part of a range of outcomes in some cases. I don’t offer these thoughts because I think they will be explicitly great predictions.
Dolphins at Chiefs
There are a lot more volatile situations around the league this week than anything on these rosters, but Rashee Rice and Jeff Wilson are still two guys I’ve talked about a lot of weeks where the role could ramp up at any time really.
Vikings at Falcons
The whole Vikings passing game, right? But that’s mostly baked in by trying to capture what is ultimately a very wide range of outcomes from the QB position but an understood split of playing time.
For the Falcons, with Drake London out and Taylor Heinicke taking over, it’s a mess as well. I think there’s legit “Kyle Pitts gets all the first-read targets” upside which would frankly be hilarious because, 1) I’d expect him to perform well because he’s good, and 2) it would just argue it is underutilization holding him back. I’m fantasizing again; this isn’t actually going to happen. But there’s definitely more Pitts upside in a non-London game, and I’m sure that’s been difficult to dial in for anyone doing projections this week because there’s still always the floor of Arthur Smith shenanigans.
Van Jefferson isn’t good, so while people might tell you that because he ran the most routes last week he has upside, my suggestion would be to run and hide from any situation where you find yourself making that kind of bet. That doesn’t mean it can’t hit, obviously, and I could see a world where he scores more points than Pitts, which would just be devastating to me personally, but as always it is my job to give my opinion and that is not a part of the range of outcomes I would be betting on.
The Falcons going extremely run heavy and Bijan Robinson being this week’s RB1 isn’t hard to envision either.
Seahawks at Ravens
I got some great feedback this week from a few sources that I might have been a little reckless with my Zach Charbonnet commentary, and it’s very much true that I wasn’t focused on Ken Walker’s injury status going into the game when I wrote that section of Stealing Signals this week. But when I wrote Charbs might be making it “closer to a 50/50 split,” there was an emphasis on “closer” that I should have done a better job articulating — I was looking at Charbs’ snap shares, which had been sub-30% in four of five active games prior to last week, and thinking we might be to the point where he’s consistently playing in the 35%-45% range, with Walker still as the lead (Charbs did play 59% last week, but I wrote that up as Noise even without the focus on Walker’s injury, calling it more of a hot hand situation; obviously with the good feedback about Walker’s health, I’d argue it was both and even more convenient to roll with Charbs). So anyway, for Week 9 there’s volatility here after what Charbs did last week, but I do think Walker is well-positioned as the lead and I don’t believe 50/50 is likely; I just think we’ll move toward it, which was perhaps obvious, and I should have emphasized how low Charbs has been at times because it’s probably the case that most don’t assume he’s been at a ~25% snap share in four games.
We’re getting a little chatter on Rashod Bateman’s health, with him saying this week he’s feeling better than ever, and John Harbaugh reportedly saying his second half “is going to be big.” Odell Beckham hasn’t looked like the same player, and I’m not entirely sold on Zay Flowers as a route-winner downfield, rather liking him more in that low-aDOT-plus-YAC role where he seems most comfortable (he adds some nice plays on scramble drills where his motor and elusiveness helps him get wide open downfield at times, and that can all add up well). But Bateman would still seem to have a path to a role in this offense, as I’ve written, as something like the Brandon Aiyuk to Flowers’ Deebo and Mark Andrews’ Kittle. (Maybe an earlier-career Aiyuk when Deebo and Kittle were the main guys, but essentially I’m saying that true X receiver while the other main receiver is more of a move guy.)