Stealing Signals, Week 14, Part 2
Biggest Signal and Noise from Week 14
I’m buzzing this morning as we wrapped up Week 14 and the different teams have advanced and all of those things. But there was one particular matchup I was fixating on this week, and it had an absolutely legendary finish last night.
Before I get into that, I did want to start with a reminder for anyone still engaged with these posts at this point in the season, that next week’s edition will be the final regular Monday and Tuesday Stealing Signals of the season. The following week, after Week 16, leads into the Wednesday Christmas games, and as I’ve mentioned before my wife and I both have big families and our schedules get tight around the holidays.
I’ve thought about trying to spin something up Monday morning, the 23rd, that wouldn’t have the full game-by-game stuff (since I won’t be able to get to every game anyway), but maybe whatever would’ve been the intro for that week and then some scattered thoughts on different games. It’ll really depend on how busy the holidays get, and literally while writing this part this morning I took a break to call some family and check in on some stuff. (We’re mostly all still located in the same area, so the schedule isn’t necessarily set, but we’re fortunate to have a lot of people who love to see our kids, and that stuff is obviously very important.)
So next week will be business as usual, and then the following week will look a little different, just before the championship weekend. Again, my apologies there, but honestly part of it is I’ll need some time to set my own lineups and things before Week 17 kicks off on Wednesday morning that week, and you all might want to start making some plans for that as well, perhaps using the time you otherwise would have trying to read something I won’t have the time to write, ha. We’re talking about the fantasy semifinals finishing up on Monday night, the 23rd, and then basically only having Christmas Eve to set lineups before the fantasy finals start at 1 p.m. ET on Wednesday. If you’re the commissioner in any leagues, it might make sense to remind your people of that as well.
But let’s get back to that legendary finish. On Thursday night on Ship Chasing, and then in the Friday intro to Input Volatility, I was a little preoccupied with a fantasy matchup where I started Jayden Reed and was up against Josh Jacobs on Thursday Night Football, so it started in a major hole. That team had scored 240 points on FFPC the week prior, which is the most any of my teams has ever scored in a single week, and feels like one that has a real shot to win the whole thing. It’s a team with Shawn Siegele and we’ve talked about it on Stealing Bananas — it’s the one where we are carrying four QBs to try to maximize our upside there, and we picked the lowest-scoring of the four in each of the final two regular season weeks to fail to get the autobid to the shootout.
For those unaware of the FFPC setup, the regular season runs through Week 12, then you have a quick four-team league playoff in Weeks 13 and 14, and then Weeks 15-17 are this sprint/shootout where you’re going up against the 800 or so best Main Event teams drafted this year and the overall winner nabs a cool million. In the regular season portion, through Week 12, the top team in your league (of 12) by W-L record gets an autobid to the shootout, and then the top team by total points scored (of the remaining 11) also gets one, so every 12-team league sends two teams to the shootout. However, if you finish third or fourth in your league, you can also earn a bid by winning your division playoff with head to head wins in both Weeks 13 and 14 (and winning that title also carries a nice cash prize). So in leagues where the 3 seed or 4 seed wins the league title in Week 14, they will actually send a third team to the shootout (while other leagues will only send two).
Shawn and I drafted five teams in that contest this year, and none roster the major veteran RBs that have crushed like Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, Alvin Kamara, and so on. That gives them a fun element in the shootout, where they are obviously strong but also aren’t reliant on players that a lot of other advancing teams have. If those players go bananas, we’ll be screwed anyway, but if they don’t, we have some really interesting paths.
Two of our five teams got autobids — I also got an autobid with my team with Evan Silva, and another on a Ship Chasing team — and then Shawn and I had this third team narrowly miss the autobid, and thus need to qualify for the sprint by winning in Weeks 13 and 14, or that team’s season would be done after Week 14. Unfortunately, that fate befell a couple other Ship Chasing teams where we finished third or fourth but weren’t able to win the league playoff.
On this Stealing Bananas team, we fell behind early, and then because of my new game-watching technique, I wasn’t going to be able to sweat the matchup live. But I was nervous enough about this particular matchup that I did the entirely psychotic thing of copying over the lineups Sunday morning, and then roughly filling in the stats by hand as they were accumulated in each of the games I went through. I couldn’t even check the official stats, because I’d certainly see results to games I hadn’t watched yet, so this was all me guesstimating through Sunday, which proved to be a miserable experience given our team had Bucky Irving, Brock Bowers, and a few other players I was hoping for a little more out of, knowing we were chasing so many points after the Thursday night debacle.
But our opponent had a rough early slate, as well, and working through the Eagles’ game was a better experience as an anti-sweat of Saquon Barkley (this is where part of yesterday’s intro came from), and then Will Levis posted a dud game at QB (this manager’s initial QB start was going to be Russell Wilson, but they made a swap after George Pickens was ruled out, which unfortunately for them was one way the outcome of the game could have gone different because Wilson did score enough for them to win).
As I got into the afternoon games, we weren’t in horrible position, and that’s all I’d really been hoping for, since we had Trey McBride and Kyren Williams to match just two remaining players for our opponent, and then on Monday night we also had the final player on either side, our ace in the hole, Ja’Marr Chase. I watched the Cardinals and Seahawks first, and McBride had a quiet first half, but did wind up with a solid line for TE Premium. Then I got to the Rams game, where Kyren was just holding on for dear life from the jump against our opponent’s Puka Nacua. Kyren performed admirably, but we’d needed to claw points back in the afternoon (our opponent’s only other player was his kicker, Tyler Bass), and as Nacua exploded, it was clear not only did we not do that, but we lost ground.
I’m telling this as a saga because I was pretty frustrated about the way the whole matchup had gone. Jacobs had the three TDs with just 66 rushing yards. Najee Harris got a short TD for our opponent to mitigate a poor performance in that lineup spot, and Cade Otton had gotten loose for a late catch to outscore Bowers in that Tampa-Vegas matchup. Though Barkley hadn’t scored, our opponent also had DeVonta Smith, and he got a TD there. Aaron Jones scored late in Minnesota’s win, after it seemed like his day might be done. Until Kyren scored two TDs, the only player on our team outside our QB to have recorded a touchdown was Jerry Jeudy, but every player in our opponent’s lineup except Otton had reached paydirt (if you count Barkley’s conversion, so there were two players who hadn’t scored a TD).
So we entered last night down 37.5, and it seemed this team was not going to advance because of those QB decisions, and that was a bummer because it’s a really fun team. I got Part 1 of Stealing Signals out to you guys while the game was in the first half, and then worked up to live. Chase had a big start, including a TD early, and it very much had the same feel the Nacua game had when I was rooting against that. He felt open every play. Still, as halftime approached, I’d need another half that matched his monster first half of I believe 18.4, and then some. I did the math when I was caught up to live, put down the number I needed in my notes doc, and then went and spent some time with my family as I let a little more of the game play out. Normally I want to watch games live if I can, but after a day of writing, and while expecting a bad outcome, I wanted to be able to work through the game quickly.
After playing some games with my kids, I came back upstairs and started on the second half. Chase was still uncoverable, and with every catch I was removing points off the number I needed. But the second half was also moving sort of quickly — between halftime and Chase’s eventual late TD, the Bengals only scored 3 points, as Joe Burrow threw an early interception and they punted twice in the early fourth quarter.
When they took back over in a tie game late, I still needed 7.2 points. He caught a 16-yard pass on the first play. It was immediately down to 4.6. Two more catches.
Two plays later, a ball off Chase’s hands, and a DPI flag came in. I thought that was it. They were now around midfield because of the penalty yardage, and I thought they were going to work into a field goal and I was ultimately going to have needed that catch. Two plays later, a Chase catch called back for holding. At this moment, I wasn’t sure whether the reception counted on that play, but I think it did go down as a 1-yard reception because the hold happened beyond the line of scrimmage.
So now I’m not even sure on what I need. I know 4.6 would be enough. But the Bengals are forced to punt, and I’m left wondering if I can get enough in overtime. And then chaos breaks loose as the punt is blocked, but then touched, and the Bengals get a new set of downs. I have new life. Right around this time, I also caught up to live, so now instead of working through the downtime between plays quickly, everything slows down, and I’m very much in the moment.
Burrow hits Andrei Iosivas. Boo. Chase Brown runs for 10. The Bengals are across midfield and up to the 40. That sinking feeling is back. Even if Chase gets a catch, they’ll be squarely in field goal range, and then I’ll just need them to really want to get into better kicking range, and for that to also go to Chase. It’s possible he has something like a 20-yard catch, which won’t be quite enough, but will also get them to where they may just run from that point forward. There’s a minute left. Maybe I’m rooting for overtime again. It’s not really clear what the best path is.
One thing I’m certain of is that I’ve been counting all 32.9 points he’s scored so far in this game, but time’s going to run out, and I’m going to be reminded that you don’t actually get 37.5 points when you need 37.5 points, because 37.5 points is ridiculous. This was just prolonged torture, and this super fun team that now seems even more untouchable as Chase in this very game is starting to look like the first-round pick you’d most want to have for the next three weeks — it’s going to get eliminated.
And yet, for as much of a doomer as I am, I’m not certain of that. I am hopeful. I’ve done this for 25 years now, and while it certainly feels like it never goes the way you want it to when you really need it to, I do know that’s not actually true. I’ve experienced those moments. They’re really what we’re all chasing here.
And while I was juggling all these thoughts, and questioning everything about this whole hobby, and not even really sure if I wanted the Bengals to gain more yards or just take a sack and punt — that’s when it happened, a play I won’t soon forget. Chase caught a pass, and my mind immediately clicked into, “OK, I just need one more.” Except wait, they aren’t going to be able to tackle him. Wait. Is he hurt? Why is he running so slow? OK, it’s just because he’s caught literally nine million passes in this game. He knows he’s not going to be caught. That’s a touchdown. Joe Buck is talking like there are no flags. I’m not seeing or hearing anything about any flags. That’s going to count. That just happened. That just happened!
I sort of floated downstairs to tell someone, even though my wife and daughters don’t much care for my fantasy football stories. But as I got to the bottom, my oldest was laughing at me, and said, “Oh good, that was a happy sound.” Apparently I’d let some sort of noise out, though I couldn’t tell you what. She then asked me what happened, and I tried to explain what it meant to score 40 points, and she nodded and smiled and shared in my enthusiasm, as best as she could. My younger daughter was listened in, too, captivated. My wife’s a seasoned vet. She didn’t look up from her phone.
But man, what a moment. I’m sorry if you’re reading this, and Chase’s eruption didn’t go the right way for you. And I was laughing later because in the grand scheme of things, the only reason I cared so much was I latched onto that specific team this week, because I really liked the construction (it’ll be my only advancing team with Chase, and I believe one of two with McBride, and it also has Bucky and Bowers), and because it had to win to move on. Now that team will get three more weeks to try to do something even more improbable and win some massive sum of money. It had Jordan Addison and Jameson Williams and Tank Dell and Sincere McCormick on the bench. It has paths, for sure.
But really, it’s just that it’s what I was sweating. I could have just as easily been sweating a different game, where I was fading Chase, and been miserable. The sweat is what we’re all in it for, and this week, since that Thursday night runout, I’ve fixated on this one team. I fixated on them through a rocky Sunday, and I decided to shut my game-watching down after the Rams game (for the first time since I switched viewing modes, I didn’t get through all the late Sunday window on Sunday, and instead did more watching Monday morning). And then I tried not to think about the possibility Chase could actually go for 37.5 points while writing all day yesterday, because that’s absurd.
And yet the sweat for this team will live on. What a fun one.
Let’s get to the games. You can always find an audio version of the posts in the Substack app, and people seem to really like that. You can also find easier-to-see versions of the visuals at the main site, bengretch.substack.com.
Data is typically courtesy of NFL fastR via the awesome Sam Hoppen, but I will also pull from RotoViz apps, Pro Football Reference, PFF, the Fantasy Points Data Suite, and NFL Pro. Part 1 of Week 1 had a glossary of key terms to know.
Seahawks 30, Cardinals 18
Key Stat: Zach Charbonnet — 80% snaps, 63% routes, 12 HVTs (tied most this season, league-wide)
The Seahawks built an early 10-point lead after two Kyler Murray interceptions gave them short fields, and they cashed in touchdown drives of 19 and 46 yards. Zach Charbonnet (22-134-2, 7-7-59) pushed that lead to 14 just before half with a 51-yard TD run, and Arizona never really threatened from there. Charbonnet was fantastic again without Kenneth Walker, consolidating all the work into an HVT-rich role and also adding some real explosiveness, for a massive week.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba (5-5-82-1) was also very integral int he early going, and looked like the clear top option for most of the way. D.K. Metcalf (6-4-49) did wind up with one more target, but the matchup was tougher for him on the outside. It remains a two-man passing game, with Noah Fant (4-3-18) the only other WR or TE to catch more than one pass.
Trey McBride (14-7-70) had a tough first half where he was open several times but it just didn’t work out, including Kyler going another direction on a couple, at least one tipped at the line, etc. The Cardinals did call a play for him int he red zone for an end zone target that was closely defended and went incomplete. He got another late end zone target in garbage time, that went just off his fingertips. It has seemed pretty clear to me in recent weeks they are trying to get him his first receiving TD, and I feel good about the possibility he’ll have a couple over the course of the fantasy playoffs.
Marvin Harrison (8-4-49) struggled again, while Michael Wilson (3-2-57-1) hit on another of those efficiency plays with a nice 41-yard TD. Kyler struggled with the surging Seattle defense.
James Conner (18-90, 4-4-32-1) caught the other touchdown, and keeps getting big work. Emari Demercado (4-4-15) also caught four passes, while Trey Benson (2-15, 1-1-4) only got three touches. This loss did dramatically hurt Arizona’s playoff aspirations, and they very well may get Benson some more work in a couple weeks, assuming things don’t turn around.
Signal: Zach Charbonnet — 80% snaps, 63% routes, 12 HVTs (once again consolidated into a massive role without Kenneth Walker, and was very efficient)
Noise: Trey McBride — still no receiving TDs (multiple more red zone opportunities in this game, as Arizona seemingly tries to get him at least one, plus the 14 targets overall signify how much of a focal point he is right now)
Rams 44, Bills 42
Key Stat: Amari Cooper — 14 targets, 0.91 WOPR, 254 air yards (most in a game this year, league-wide)