Offseason Stealing Signals, AFC & NFC West
The Signal and Noise for each AFC and NFC West team
I’ve gotten a ton of great questions about my rankings and projections since releasing them Friday, and while I started to hit on a few in Discord and elsewhere, it seems like a perfect topic for the first Mailbag Monday after the weekend. There are a couple things I’d wanted to add into the release of them, and will mention again Monday.
The first is about the tiers in the rankings. You guys picked out some key spots where tier breaks didn’t feel great to me. I guess the way I’d put it is not all tier breaks are created equal — there are spots like the RB tier break after JK Dobbins or the TE tier breaks after Kyle Pitts and then also George Kittle that feel like very big gulfs. In some other spots, the tier breaks are a lot more nuanced (e.g. the first few RB tier breaks among the pre-dead zone backs that are all draftable). This is something I absolutely have to expand on and clarify, tier by tier, from a structural perspective. And I will, but probably not super soon. For most of you asking questions, it’s clear you’ve read my stuff a lot, probably listen to Stealing Bananas and Ship Chasing, and have a good idea about where I think there are the widest tier breaks. Honestly, that’s been super encouraging for me. Have loved those well-thought-out questions.
Another thing with the ranks I mentioned is I do defer to ADP at least some. I’ll probably get more aggressive as I start to tweak and August news solidifies the ways I want to play certain offenses, but that’s just how I’m drafting right now. The truth of the matter, though, is I haven’t found myself able to pull the trigger on some fallers that I have ranked well below ADP. That’s something Shawn and I discussed this week on Stealing Bananas in the “Fantasy Football Drafters Are Still Not Aggressive Enough in 2022” episode. Even if you’re not a big podcast listener, I’d recommend giving that episode a shot; I think it’s the one I’ve gotten the most feedback on so far this year, and all of it was very positive, including a few people saying they listen to every episode but they really enjoyed that one in particular.
The last note I want to make is about my projections, and that is that they run hot. I mostly assume full health, because I want to get a view of what I think an offense might look like if everything goes right. That means I’m aggressive on both sides of the symbiotic relationship between QB and WR efficiency, for example. Last year’s leaguewide pass TD rate was about 4.5% of attempts; my projections have it up around 4.9%. Some of these teams will lose key WRs and that will hurt the QB; some will lose their QB and that will hurt the WRs. Just wanted to make this clear as I got a couple questions about using my figures to bet overs on season-long props, and I would put my confidence level on that stuff as low unless there’s a ton of cushion. There are a lot more ways to hit an under than an over. (Good time to plug Stealing Lines for anyone interested in more betting-specific analysis.)
Figuring out how to weight injury stuff is one of the toughest things about projections. I do scale back RB volume to some degree, kind of by feel, just knowing massive workloads over 17 games are unrealistic to expect. But I think of my projection results as something like a 60th or 70th percentile outcome, not 50th. As a result, while I have figures I’m targeting for leaguewide numbers like play volume and pass rates, I always tend to finish my projections with a leaguewide run lean (specifically, my projected 63.5 plays per game hit my leaguewide target of 63.3-63.8, but I projected an average of 34.2 passes and 26.9 runs per team against targets of 34.4-34.9 and 26.3-26.8). That’s because the teams that tend to be pass-heavier than expected often are ones who have stuff go wrong and wind up trailing in more games than expected. That’s true of teams that bottom out, but also teams we expect to be good, like last year’s Ravens.
Alright, that’s enough about projections and rankings. More Monday. Let’s now get into the next Offseason Stealing Signals post focused on the AFC and NFC West divisions, which are loaded with storylines. This will probably be my longest one of the series. If you missed the AFC and NFC East piece, you can find that (and my full archive) at bengretch.substack.com. You can also check out my podcast discussions with Michael Leone on the Establish The Edge feed, where we discussed our projections for every team over eight episodes.
Kansas City Chiefs
Key Stat: Team — called pass rate of at least 64% and at least +7.7 PROE for four straight seasons (Patrick Mahomes’ career)
There’s a lot unclear about how the Chiefs will look in 2022 with Tyreek Hill gone. What should remain mostly clear is this team will throw a ton, and Patrick Mahomes will elevate the efficiency of his pass-catchers. Looking at the aDOT-adjusted RACR metric I use for my projections, basically every Mahomes receiving weapon with any amount of volume has been very good over the past several seasons, even guys like Byron Pringle or the much-maligned Mecole Hardman, and again even when controlling for the depth at which they see their targets. Looking at Michael Leone’s PROE numbers, the Chiefs have been at least 7.7 percentage points over their expected pass rate for four straight years, and at least 9.5 to the positive in PROE each of the past two. These are extreme numbers; since 2011, the range of expected pass rate over a season is roughly 52% on the low end to 68% on the high end, with actual observed pass rates being just a touch wider (roughly 48% as the lowest, 71% the highest). We’re talking about roughly 20 percentage points of possible pass rate outcomes, and while the Chiefs typically have a lower expected pass rate because they are frequently in positive scripts, they consistently blow those out of the water. To be fair, it’s entirely possible they look a little different with an overhauled pass-catching corps, but how pass-heavy they’ve been since Mahomes took over the reins has been unmatched around the league, and there’s clear Signal there.
The notes on efficiency are why you can be bullish on the new additions. JuJu Smith-Schuster has struggled for multiple seasons since he stormed onto the scene looking like a future Hall of Famer with back-to-back monster years in his age-21 and age-22 seasons. I count myself a little skeptical at his current price, but I absolutely expect him to be more efficient catching passes from Mahomes than we’ve seen the past few years with Ben Roethlisberger. The issue for me is target-earning more than efficiency; in his best season to date, 2018, he got up to a 23.5% TPRR along with his plus efficiency. He’s since been sub-20% for three straight seasons, though he’s played hurt some and two of those years feature smaller routes samples. That makes it a bit of a two-step to see him becoming a No. 1 WR again, and it opens the door for the other wide receivers to potentially be on par with him, and for fantasy, those other receivers are a lot cheaper.
Travis Kelce should be a monster. As we worked through in Stealing Signals last year, he played through a stinger in the middle of the regular season, but he finished the year strong and then in three playoff games averaged 9 targets, 7.7 receptions, and 99.7 yards, with three total touchdowns. I’d been concerned about age-related decline midseason, and the full-season numbers show some concern, but that’s without considering that playoff figures which were peak Kelce. There is still age-related risk with him turning 33 in early October, but the way I’d classify it is it’s hard to argue he declined last year. If he’s his normal self this year, we’d expect him to dominate underneath looks. I’m not particularly concerned about more defensive attention; Hill was always the more explosive player that teams maybe keyed on more, but there was little else, and it’s not like Kelce wasn’t still a focal point. With the Chiefs’ passing weapons now deeper, I’d argue there’s a different type of cover for Kelce that shouldn’t be significantly less effective than what he had in the past.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling comes from another offense and quarterback that’s always elevated receiving efficiency, so I’m not sure there’s a huge bump that should be expected. He has some of his own issues that may limit his ceiling, and last year he hit a career-high five targets per game (which paces to 85 in a 17-game season). Green Bay is definitely a lower-volume offense than Kansas City, and I understand MVS got a great contract, but I don’t count him as a likely candidate to earn huge volume. He’s still a really nice best ball receiver and we’ll see some splash plays. Mecole Hardman meanwhile probably isn’t just going to go away like the market seems to expect — he’s the main potential rotational WR who has played with Mahomes before, and the underneath role last year suggests they still wanted to find ways to get him the ball. He does have more competition to be the fourth target in this offense than he ever did to be the third, so there are reasons to believe his playing time isn’t going to increase or anything. But MVS in particular isn’t a unicorn in this passing game as the sole deep threat if Hardman’s speed is also utilized to fill the Hill-sized gap in the receiving corps.
If I’ve not sounded particularly excited about the Chiefs’ WRs so far, that’s probably fair, but I do want to emphasize they are very much worth taking shots on because of the offense. That said, the dude I’m in love with is Skyy Moore. Moore was a fantastic prospect who was the first three-year early declare WR from a non-Power 5 school to be taken in the second round since Davante Adams (hat tip Pat Kerrane for that stat). The fact that he was a second-rounder is a bit of a knock for some, but I think you can adjust for what I just listed — school prestige does tend to influence draft capital, perhaps even a bit more than the reality that the best players play at the best schools. So Moore is already a pretty unique second-round pick on his own merits and then also because he slots into an offense like this one. As an industry, we sometimes hamstring ourselves by looking at things like “second-round WR hit rates” in situations where we can easily point to legitimate reasons that comp group might not be reasonable for an individual player. I harped on this with Kyle Pitts re: rookie TE stuff last year. I’d similarly argue Moore’s base expectation should be better than a second-round WR comp group just by virtue of playing with Mahomes in this offense. He might have a slow start because of the depth, but rookie WRs can be late-season hammers, and in early camp they are doing interesting stuff with him like using him in the backfield and on jet motion. There’s a lot to like as a stash option in a heavy-WR build who could flash earlier than expected in an unsettled depth chart.
We haven’t seen the impressive pass-catching in Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s prospect profile materialize through two years, and he fell from 13.9 carries per game as a rookie to 11.9 in Year 2. He did leave a couple games early last year, but was only lightly used in the postseason once activated, and with Jerick McKinnon as the lead during that time, the offense just seemed to work much better. I’m pretty out on CEH after the team signed Ronald Jones, drafted Isiah Pacheco, and brought back McKinnon. There’s a lot of discussion about who among those three might get cut, and it seems unlikely all four backs will make the final roster, but for redraft I’m not sure it matters, which is to say that yes there is some risk the player might get released, but if he makes the team, he’s in a good spot. I probably think Jones is in a little better spot than most, simply because they brought him in reasonably early and would have known he isn’t great on passing downs, so I’m not really buying that his limitations there are a reason he wouldn’t fit. As a pure rusher, he brings something the other three probably don’t, and all of the Chiefs’ moves have signaled a desire to reorient their offense so it can handle all defensive approaches after the two-deep shells they ran into midseason last year caused some issues for multiple weeks. One of the ways to attack that type of defensive approach is with a power running game, and for all of Jones’ warts, he rattled off three straight 100-yard rushing games when the Bucs were in need of a similar pivot early in 2020, and would go on to finish just shy of 1,000 yards on the ground. Jones also seems like a good bet for goal-line work, which CEH has struggled with, assuming Jones makes the team. Still, McKinnon’s postseason stretch makes him a very nice play late in drafts, and Pacheco has been lighting up camp and is also a fun flyer in deeper formats.
Signal: Team — four straight seasons with +7.7 PROE or higher (both pass volume and efficiency are big positives); JuJu Smith-Schuster — TPRR has been sub-20% for three straight years since 23.5% in monster 2018 (I expect his efficiency to improve in KC, but concerned about his target-earning); Marquez Valdes-Scantling — never a huge target-earner but does get team pass volume bump; Skyy Moore — could flash earlier than expected in unsettled receiving group
Noise: Travis Kelce — 21.4% TPRR, 8.6 YPT last regular season, lowest for both since at least 2015 (played through a stinger midseason and dominated in the playoffs which doesn’t show up in this data; still some risk but hard to argue he declined substantially last year)
Los Angeles Chargers
Key Stat: Team — 25.9 secs/play in neutral game script (2nd in NFL), 24.5 secs/play overall (T-1st in NFL)