Stealing Signals, Week 10, Part 1

Teams evolve, plus TNF, and early Sunday games

It’s been a fascinating year around here, and there’s been a lot that I’m excited to consider doing differently in the future, mostly because I’ve been too willing to allow outside elements to impact my work here. A good way to describe this newsletter would be that it reacts to and analyzes other research, and I do feel like the fantasy space is moving in a direction that is frankly inviting inaccuracies. I think the league and the sport is moving one way, and the way people play — and the things they believe — is in many ways moving the other direction, creating a gulf.

But today’s intro is one of those types of things where I’ve tapped into something I independently believe, and isn’t really influenced by other factors. And that’s this idea of how NFL teams’ seasons evolve. We do have some coaches who are pretty static, but one thing we definitely don’t talk about enough in the fantasy space is how most of these coaches see their rosters as fluid.

We talk all offseason like there are correct answers for who will play what roles, and in some cases there are some pretty obvious answers when we get into the season. But in other cases, the only logical analysis is the teams were never really confident, and were open to multiple paths.

Certainly injuries are a big part of this, and teams make contingency plans with their rosters because they are well aware of the nature of the sport. But also, how well guys perform in real game settings will impact the coaching staff’s perception of what they have and what they need to do. 

When we look back on player career arcs from a fantasy perspective, we so often focus on the different seasons. What a player did as a rookie, then in Year 2, then in Year 3, etc. When a player’s data gets better one year to the next, we talk about how they took a step forward. But in a lot of cases, it’s not an offseason step. In a lot of cases, the player actually took a step forward during the season, and then his final data includes some production from before the step forward, and other production from after. But he’s becoming something as the season goes along.

Which all makes a ton of sense. If you think for a second about the idea that teams would always make their determinations about who is going to play a larger role or those types of things over an offseason, it doesn’t really track. Say you have a guy going into Year 2 who didn’t have a great rookie season. Maybe he’s having a great offseason, even. Do you as a coach really feel confident depending on him to play at a high level for a four-month season? Or do you go into the season wanting to see what you’ll get in actual games, and whether he can parlay the strong offseason into better results in the moments that actually matter for the success of your team? Obviously it’s the latter, so then your actions will be simple — you won’t thrust him into a huge role, but you’ll be very open to the role expanding as he shows himself capable.

I’m thinking about this concept with respect to guys I’ve liked, that haven’t panned out. Prior to this week, I’ve been writing for weeks now that Javonte Williams’ days were numbered. There was nothing there in the data, because he continued to play relatively the same number of snaps every week. But the thesis on him was he needed to be better in Year 2 off the major knee injury and he’s just not. And it is clear that the Broncos were willing to have a long leash on him — longer than even I thought made sense — playing him more than half the season as the clear lead guy through continued struggles and a lack of burst that was frankly holding the offense back. We finally saw here in Week 10 where the shift occurred, as Javonte played just 17 snaps, his first game below 35 all season.

That wasn’t a change that occurred in Week 10, 2024. That was a fluid situation. Javonte has offered a specific element to what Sean Payton wants, and even through struggles he stuck in that role. I’ve said this before but I’d make that bet again, pretty easily. I think the analysis that can lead to success was correct. Javonte didn’t even need to be great to be the lead guy; he basically needed to be Rico Dowdle. There was reason in his profile — outside the major injury — to believe he could frankly get back to being more than that.

People will look at his injury and say that wasn’t possible, but then they would have said that about J.K. Dobbins and Cam Akers and Nick Chubb and Breece Hall last year and a number of other spots, if those players failed. The risk factors were known, and were priced in — in all those cases — and in some cases they paid off and in others they didn’t. If you’re hyper-focused on Javonte’s specific injury versus the others, I’d suggest you’re missing the point a little bit, particularly when you consider the Year 2 element, and the data points like Payton himself outright saying that the expectation with Javonte’s injury was that it was a two-year healing process. He also said some things that were a little concerning, and in hindsight it’s pretty clear Javonte just never got back, but again, I’d be OK making that bet again given the opportunity that has been there.

Javonte’s a tangent, though. The guy I wanted to talk about was actually Kimani Vidal. I referenced in Input Volatility last week that people will tell you that Vidal was a bad stash-and-hold RB at this point, because it appears to have not worked out (there’s still a sliver of potential if there are injuries in front of him, for the same reasons I’ve talked about holding Sean Tucker as these No. 3 RBs that can still sometimes pop in the fantasy playoffs — the Damien Williams or Justin Jackson outcomes — but Vidal’s cuttable in nearly all formats, if you’re still holding). But I brought up that people will tell you he’s a bad hold in relation to Tyrone Tracy, who people will not necessarily grapple with. That dude turns 25 in a couple weeks, in the middle of his rookie year, barely played RB in college, and had no draft capital. People love to be like, “Vidal was a sixth-round pick” and ignore a dozen RBs were drafted ahead of Tracy, who is one of the best late-round picks you could have made, right now. Oh, and that obviously ignores that the Chargers and the Giants were expected to be on opposite ends of the spectrum for potential RB fantasy scoring.

But the Vidal thing is another one I feel pretty OK about. The bet was on the starting RBs being unsettled. Gus Edwards actually looked pretty OK in his in return from IR this week, but that ankle injury that popped up over their bye that hadn’t really been reported on — I’ll probably always believe they sent him to IR while being overly precautious, in part in an effort to get Vidal active. And the door was open for Vidal, but he just didn’t take it. For this kind of stuff, it includes what the coaches are seeing at practice. For a month, Vidal has been running alongside Dobbins, presumably mixing in with the first team at practice, since he’s also played with the first team in games. In his first NFL game, he got a target on a wheel route and made the play for a long TD. I wrote at the time that it wasn’t all that impressive, necessarily, but it was a good start that he made the play he was called on to make.

But yeah, there was always the potential that this Day 3 rookie wouldn’t actually look the part when he got his opportunities, and I’ve been writing through the season how that’s more or less been the case. Short of pretending I had the ability to see the future in August, the best I can have done with my decision-making was to prioritize a player in a situation where an opportunity might have arisen through the season, as the coaches saw what they had in their roster and allowed things to develop, and where the rookie uncertainty of his talent level — like Tracy’s — created the potential for a pretty big hit. One part of this miss was that Dobbins has held up very well, and that’s been a super cool story.

But what happens next is predictable. People will start to pretend that with Gus back as the clear No. 2 and Vidal inactive again, that it was always going to work out this way — that Gus’ IR stint was a straightforward injury and now he’s healthy. It will ignore how bad Gus looked early, or what might have happened if Dobbins got banged up while Gus was on IR. Obviously the Chargers were prepared to be in a position where Vidal playing an awful lot was one play away. That’s why I still say the Vidal thing isn’t even dead, necessarily, and I reference those names like Damien Williams and Justin Jackson where two players in front of them were no longer available in quick succession, and they stepped up with hugely impactful fantasy playoff performances.

I don’t necessarily believe that will happen for Vidal, to be clear, because I’m no longer confident he has the skill-based potential to force himself into a big role and perform when in it. That was there in his rookie profile, and I thought I saw it in the preseason. But the Chargers haven’t seen it since, even as the opportunity arose.

But that type of double-contingency thing is still very much a situation that gets overlooked by most fantasy analysis, and especially with the benefit of hindsight. Most analysts want to be closer to the median expectation with their predictions, and that’s understandable. But as we’ve talked about, there are two sides to the EV equation — the potential for something to happen and the payoff if it does — and people emphasize that first thing far too heavily and don’t think enough about the second.

I’d argue that’s true even after the low-probability event occurs. Pretty much since the moment both Mike Evans and Chris Godwin went down in the same week, I’ve been pushing Cade Otton. He’s a great example of this phenomenon outside the RB landscape. John Metchie last night was another example, with both Nico Collins and then Stefon Diggs out, and I very clearly said in Input Volatility last week that he was the name to watch. I’m not even sure I can explain why I was so confident in that — it’s one of those tacit knowledge things — but it includes elements of Tank Dell being less consistent this year, and Dalton Schultz not being the TE most have probably thought he was, and the way C.J. Stroud is playing, and the routes Metchie was likely to run, more in the intermediate range and over the middle, and off movement at times, relative to say Xavier Hutchinson who was going to be pretty clearly in the Collins role as an outside WR needing to win on more difficult routes and throws to the boundary, which is a higher bar to clear for a guy who doesn’t really have the pedigree. And Metchie does have a better pedigree, but also was going to be getting easier opportunities.

Anyway, this isn’t about me victory lapping, and in fact the point is the opposite, which is why I’ve mostly focused on failed predictions like Javonte and Vidal. The point is we’re all just speculating, and then after the fact we’re all just finding convenient ideas to fit what happened, in a way that makes sense to us. For me with Vidal, that includes Gus’ injury not really being that serious, and the IR stint being a bit of overkill, but then also Vidal not taking advantage of the opportunity that arose for him. Based on the way that situation played out — and situations like it have played out across the league for years, where teams often create opportunities for young players while sitting down older guys who are struggling — I find that narrative a lot more plausible than the stuff that suggests the final outcome where Vidal is back to being an inactive and potentially won’t play another snap this year was inevitable.