Offseason Stealing Signals, AFC East
The Signal and Noise for each AFC East team
Scott Fish Bowl started up this week, which is always a blast of a contest that does so much to raise money for children and other causes. It also uses new scoring settings every year, which keeps things fresh, and this year there aren’t any negatives in the scoring for turnovers or other events, plus things are juiced up at every position. It should be a fun time with some ridiculously high scoring at the top end.
I had the third overall pick and started with Josh Allen in the Superflex format, and have started to build out from there, though my draft is moving a bit slow. As we move through this Offseason Stealing Signals series, we’ll start today with Allen’s Bills. As always, my projections discussions with Michael Leone over at Establish the Edge offer another way to consider some of these notes.
Buffalo Bills
Key Stat: Josh Allen — 7.6 rush attempts per game in 2022 (career high)
The Bills are one of the few teams where we’ve had a fairly stable iteration of their offense over multiple seasons now, and I feel pretty comfortable projecting that to continue this year. There are obviously no guarantees, but Buffalo’s play volume has been consistently high since the 2020 breakout, and the pass rate and PROE have been well above average. For each of the past three seasons, the Bills have averaged between 40.8 and 41.9 called pass plays, and between 23.3 and 24.4 called runs, which is remarkable consistency.
In my projection process, I wasn’t really buying Josh Allen might run less, largely because his 7.6 rush attempts per game last year were a career high despite us hearing similar last offseason. I do expect his rushing to dip when I look several years down the road, but it’s probably a slow decline, though as I’ll note below we might see some formational stuff that leads to more power running with the bigger backs they’ve brough in. Allen’s rate of designed rushes was a career low last year, while his scramble rate was up at its highest since his rookie season, so we might have started to see some dip just on the designed side.
Devin Singletary’s departure does shake up the backfield rotation, as he’s been a consistent piece of the equation. One sign of his consistent role is he averaged 2.4 receptions per game in all four of his Buffalo seasons (he also hit 11.1 rush attempts per game in each of the past two, giving him identical touch averages down to the tenth of a yard in both 2021 and 2022). This is one of the very few instances where it makes some sense to consider “vacated opportunity.”
That Singletary has averaged 3+ targets per game in each season of his career is particularly interesting, because while it’s not massive receiving work, he’s always posted really low TPRR rates, even compared to the other backs in his backfield. That receiving volume is largely a product of his pass protection and just being on the field on passing downs. In my projections, I’ve mostly passed that work off to James Cook, who also showed intriguing rushing efficiency in Year 1 and becomes a very interesting Year 2 pick at the back end of the RB Dead Zone. One potential issue there is the Bills only used Cook for 18 pass-blocking snaps last year (Singletary had 93). It’s not out of the realm of possibility they view Damien Harris as a direct replacement for Singletary and keep Cook in a similar change-of-pace role as the one he was in for 2022. The concern on the Harris side is Latavius Murray, and recent speculation has the much older Murray as a potential threat to Harris. I’m not really buying that, largely because of Murray’s age and Harris’s solid rushing efficiency, plus the Bills’ familiarity with Harris as a long-time in-division foe, which I think gives him a certain stability despite a relatively cheap contract. The stuff with Singletary’s role — particularly in the passing game, and then also in terms of how they would lean more heavily on him in big games, something I wrote about in Stealing Signals last year — tells me the Bills value consistency and reliability in those RB snaps. That they let Singletary walk and didn’t view him as indispensable despite how they used him furthers the idea of valuing a floor of competence over elite traits, which for Buffalo does make logical sense when their offense lives and dies on Allen, both through the passing game primarily and then also in the ways he elevates the rushing attack. To me, Damien Harris more or less embodies that floor of competence, and there are upside scenarios to him taking some short-area work from Allen or playing more on passing downs than Cook that have me targeting him the most — at cost — out of this backfield, despite also liking Cook, as noted.
Despite a down season, Gabe Davis still posted above average after-the-target efficiency for the third straight year, even controlling for his aDOT (his YPT and TD rates should be higher with a higher aDOT, but I use a depth-adjusted RACR metric and he has been solidly above average all three seasons in that, as well). The issue for his 2022 was earning targets, and his decline in TPRR might have had to do with more safeties rolling over the top in Cover 2 shells after his breakout in the 2021 playoffs, or it might have had to do with an early-season ankle injury lingering all year. Or maybe his ceiling just isn’t that high, particularly as it relates to earning volume in the short and intermediate ranges. Still, he’s really easy to project for 100 efficient targets even without the TPRR spiking (he had 93 in 15 games last year), and at his current cost that still makes him a viable pick for me as a “small hit, big miss” type. I don’t think the “big hit” side of that is particularly likely after the tough 2022, but I do think he’s a good enough downfield weapon that the “small miss” side is a near lock; he’ll be a solid option at his later-single-digit-round cost, as a worst-case healthy scenario. The only concern when clicking him is the opportunity cost, and whether you’re passing up a player with a better upside profile.
I gave Dalton Kincaid more of the departed Isaiah McKenzie’s work than Dawson Knox’s on the talk that Kincaid will be more of a stand-up slot option than a consistent inline TE. In my NFC East writeup, I talked about the Giants’ acquisition of Darren Waller as a schematic edge, where defenses are running far more nickel and dime packages with more defensive backs on the field, and you can understand why offenses might combat that with multi-TE formations that either force the defenses out of those (bringing on an extra linebacker) or allow the offense a significant advantage in the ground game with this power formation against a light defensive look. The Harris and Murray RB acquisitions further the idea Buffalo might be expecting to do a little more power running, and it may be a lowkey concern for the passing volume consistency I noted above, though my expectation is it will be more of a token thing than a seismic shift. Kincaid is obviously intriguing as a guy the Bills were willing to take in the first round, but he’s also been priced up in a range where the rookie TE trends (slow starts) worry me, and I haven’t been getting a lot of Kincaid. Meanwhile, Knox was one of my bigger TE fades last year in the back end of the top 10 at the position, and now you can get him very late in drafts with a fairly similar profile where he isn’t a good bet for big volume but should have efficiency spikes. Obviously the Kincaid pick impacts things, but I’m mostly arguing you were never drafting Knox for huge target volume anyway, and that he also isn’t suddenly going to be unused. When you look at their WR depth and just their pass-catching weapons as a whole, Knox pretty clearly should mix in, and I’ve liked him in the later rounds (particularly in best ball) as a result. I expect Kincaid and Knox to be closer in production this year than their prices suggest, though Kincaid pretty clearly has the wider range of outcomes which does include some tantalizing upside paths.
Khalil Shakir was an interesting name after a 5-3-75-1 Week 5 with McKenzie inactive, but Shakir would finish the year with just 10 receptions on 20 targets for 161 yards and the one touchdown, which is lighter than I would have guessed. He’s still an intriguing late-round WR option, as is probably Deonte Harty, on the expectation one could consolidate routes in three-WR sets and both are at least mildly intriguing. But the lack of depth at WR here is part of why I do buy that Kincaid and Knox will be on the field together some.
I noted in my TPRR writeup earlier in the offseason that looking at Stefon Diggs’ three years with the Bills together, “there’s probably more downside to his 2022 data than additional upside.” I’m still pretty in on him given the high floor of the offense in terms of passing volume and overall production, though he’s priced at the high end of the tier I’d probably put him in (as a late first-round pick in a tier that runs into the early second round).
Signal: Josh Allen — haven’t seen any real rush volume decline yet; Bills — adding two bigger backs and a first-round TE might lead to some bigger packages to force defenses out of lighter fronts, which could mean a bit more running overall; Bills TEs — Dalton Kincaid likely a bit overpriced on Year 1 upside hopes, while Dawson Knox is probably now a value
Noise: Bills RBs — role configuration (difficult to parse with Singletary gone, but also not super relevant to making James Cook and Damien Harris viable bets at their respective ADPs, with Harris being my favored cost-adjusted option); Gabriel Davis — downside concerns (stayed efficient playing through ankle injury last year, price has adjusted to palatable range)
Miami Dolphins
Key Stat: Tyreek Hill — 0.85 wTPRR (led NFL by 0.08 over second place)