Stealing Signals, Week 13, Part 2
The passing explosion, and Biggest Signals and Noise of the week
I basically have updates on three of the four intros from yesterday. First, I was sharing results in a variety of formats, including some Eliminator and Guillotine stuff, and forgot about the FantasyCares Eliminator leagues I did back in I think June (May?) with some of you guys. Those are best ball and were a wild format where punters were involved, and it’s all Flex spots, and all these crazy elements.
I was in three of those, dropped one early when I had Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown, and David Montgomery all on Week 5 bye (and Cooper Kupp injured at the time, plus a floor game from Deebo Samuel that still didn’t hit that thinned-out lineup), but then had the other two last quite deep into the season in these 18-person leagues.
I finally got bounced in Week 12 in the first of those, by fewer than 2 points against one competitor and 3 points against another, as the field cut to the final six. That was a Rashee Rice team that also had both Dak Prescott and Brock Purdy, who missed Week 12, but still had some juice with two double-digit scorers that didn’t even hit the lineup. Just wasn’t quite good enough to advance, which was a bummer, because it was probably my best chance to win one of these.
My third one is still alive in a league now down to five teams, but has all of Nico Collins, Bo Nix, and Anthony Richardson on bye. This was also a Rashee Rice team, that has both Dallas Goedert and Dalton Kincaid in the TE Premium format, and even has a kicker (Matt Prater) on IR. Barring some miracle brought on by other teams having too many Week 14 byes or something, this one is a goner this week.
Congrats to all of you who hopped in the various Eliminator formats with me, although I’m still holding out hope for that last Guillotine league. We’ll definitely be back with more of those opportunities next year as those are some of my favorite ways to play (as I’ve said, while losing good teams too early on a bad week can be rough, there’s a real joy to moving on from bad teams and not having to keep paying attention to them all year).
Another intro to update is the notes about how heavy of a passing week it was, because Monday Night Football went hard, with the Browns throwing 58 passes (second most by a team in a game this year), and tying for the fifth-most air yards this year at 489. Jameis Winston threw for 497 yards, second only to Cousins’ 504 back in Week 5 in terms of individual passing yardage totals this season. No team has run more plays this year than the Browns’ 84 on Monday Night Football.
The Broncos also racked up over 400 air yards, which was a well above average total from them that places 27th among all team games this season. Just for context, there have been 390 team games this year, so 27th is something like the 93rd percentile.
Let’s break this all down with a quick list of all the teams who finished above the 90th percentile in various stats in Week 13. For reference, there were 32 team games this week, so if everything was perfectly random we would have essentially expected 3.2 team games in each decile (and probably quite a bit of overlap between lists).
For each list, I’ve bolded and italicized the teams that hadn’t been on a previous list.
Most plays: CLE, ATL, ARI, TB, WAS (5)
Pass attempts: CLE, CAR, KC, MIA, ARI (5)
Pass rate (called pass %): CHI, MIA, KC, TEN, MIN, CIN, CLE (7)
PROE (pass rate adjusted for game situation): KC, MIN, CIN, HOU, PIT, MIA, CHI (7, with 2 new)
Total air yards: CHI, CLE, JAX, CAR, DEN, IND, TEN, KC (8)
To the point about maybe expecting overlap, there are 17 different teams listed here. Atlanta, Tampa, and Washington don’t fall in any of the pass-explicit categories, but across those four bottom ones, there are 14 different teams.
I’m trying to make this point as simple as I can, but I look at these numbers every week and Week 13 really stood out. Every time I try to frame what I’m seeing, I leave out other notable teams, so I’m trying to articulate how many different teams did weird stuff.
For example, Indy is only on the air yards list, but what’s crazy is even thought they’ve done the deep passing stuff a lot, their aDOT this week was still notably high even by their own standards (at 16.2 yards of depth per pass attempt, it was the second highest aDOT by a team in a game this year, with Indy’s Week 1 game at 16.4 the only higher number, and their next highest games, in descending order, go 15.3, 13.3, 12.2, 10.9, so it’s not like they are up at or above 15 yards of aDOT weekly).
Screw it, let’s just list out all 14 teams with quick notes about what’s interesting.
CLE: 58 pass atts (2nd most in NFL), 489 air yards (T-5th most), ran a ton of plays but also chucked it when they did call passes
CHI: 524 air yards (3rd most), 81.0% pass rate (4th highest), 13.4 aDOT (6th highest), +7.7% PROE (33rd highest) didn’t run a lot of plays but chucked it, which has been building under Thomas Brown
KC: +15.7% PROE (2nd highest), 78.5% pass rate (14th), 46 atts (T-21st), 385 air yards (33rd), your classic pass-heavy game, especially relative to a modest expected pass rate, and while KC’s always pass heavy, these were all team season highs, and the aDOT was a season high, too, so total air yards were by over 100 (previous season high there was 276)
MIN: +13.7% PROE (4th highest), 78% pass rate (T-15th), didn’t run a lot of plays but threw very aggressively relative to expectation
CIN: +13.1% PROE (5th), 77.2% pass rate (21st), same as MIN, not a ton of plays, but very aggressive relative to expectation
CAR: 46 pass atts (T-21st), 441 air yards (16th), a career high in pass attempts for Bryce Young by 5, and did so with a 9.6 aDOT that was CAR’s second highest this year behind only Week 1, so a huge building block game in terms of him just stacking more and more competent performances to have him drop back this much and have a vertical passing game on big volume
HOU: +10.8% PROE (11th highest), didn’t wind up with absurd volume in part because Trevor Lawrence’s concussion meant they weren’t really pushed until very late, but this was lowkey huge to see from the Texans heading into their bye as they threw aggressively early and relative to expectation
JAX: 473 air yards (10th), Lawrence may miss time but Mac Jones showed a little bit in garbage time and the willingness to get aggressive with him is helpful for fantasy
DEN: 402 air yards (27th), 11.5 aDOT (23rd), season-high aDOT from Bo Nix who continues to get more and more comfortable
MIA: 80% pass rate (T-7th), 46 pass atts (T-21st), +7.8% PROE (32nd), basically removed all pretense with the run game and just passed short instead of running, and they are passing a ton in the red zone right now which is great for Tua Tagovailoa’s pass TD rate
PIT: +10.2% PROE (15th), very low 5.1 aDOT and not a lot of air yards, but racked up 16 Team HVTs for the RBs, most by any team in a game this year, through a ton of short completions, which isn’t what I’d expect from Arthur Smith but hats off
ARI: 45 pass atts (T-27th), mostly driven by 76 total plays, but had a slight positive +2.6% PROE, and was a team season high in pass attempts by 8
TEN: 78% pass rate (T-15th), 387 air yards (32nd), heavy trail script but obviously leaned into it
IND: 388 air yards (31st), 16.2 aDOT (2nd), wrote it above
I don’t really know what it all means! But it’s crazy in a year where RBs have been scoring like mad and the receiving weapons haven’t been as much. I want it to mean that the WR and TE stacked teams have a shot in the playoffs, if they’ve gotten there. That there’s something that is releasing the pass volume, right at a time when typically weather starts to make it more difficult to do that stuff. One can hope.
The last thing I wanted to write about was the comments I made in the intro about Input Volatility and how we’re at this point where not a lot pops up, which I contradicted a bit later when writing about Sincere McCormick, and applies probably more heavily to Isaac Guerendo in today’s writeup.