Stealing Signals, Week 16, abridged version
Quick notes on every game through SNF
You guys know I can’t stay away for long. Congrats to all of you who advanced this week and will be playing for league titles — what an awesome accomplishment! Some of you may still be waiting on Monday night to know whether you’ll move on, while others may be going home.
I had some questions about how my specific sweats were going, so I’ll just say that I don’t foresee anything super exciting this year. I had a total of three BBMV semifinalist teams, two on my account and one from a Ship Chasing livestream, but all three are going to fall short. Unsurprisingly, the ones on my account both had Bucky Irving and Chase Brown, and the Ship Chasing one also had Brown, so I was pulling for those guys to go nuclear. They were good again, but nothing crazy.
I’m still bummed about the FFPC best ball team I talked about last week that had those two guys, plus Bijan Robinson, Brock Bowers, and Brian Thomas, among other good players. That one was my one best ball build with all the dudes, and likely would have advanced this week if it just could have survived last.
And I did very well in the FFPC regular season and the division playoffs that ended in Week 14, so while it’s certainly disappointing to not have any major Week 17 sweats (I do have some dynasty teams and that fun industry league called Going Deep that Mike Clay runs that are still live), it’s still going to wind up being a successful season for me personally. The FFPC teams had a rough enough Week 15 that even though we had a couple approach 200 points this week, that only moved them into a range where another big Week 17 could mean a min cash, I think.
Anyway, I appreciate those of you asking. And as for today, I’m here because I still watched all the games, and I want to just go through the various games quickly and share my notes, mostly on vibes, and sort of as a process-related thing where writing it out helps me solidify how I felt about guys after I go through so much football in such a short amount of time. I’m not going to make the visuals, nor look deeply into stats, so no Key Stat, no Signal and Noise section — just me firing off some quick notes about all 15 games that have been played. You’ll have to make your own observations in Packers-Saints.
Other than that, make sure to enjoy the holidays! This time of year can be stressful enough without letting your silly fantasy team impact your mental health. It’s good to want to win, but try not to let it impact your whole day if a couple things don’t go your way on Wednesday, and you’re telling yourself you’re going to lose your championship. First of all, there’s always a lot of football left to play on the weekend, and secondly — and relatedly — a few bad outcomes don’t actually dictate things as clearly as they sometimes feel. I had my fun story a few weeks back about how my absolutely disastrous Thursday night with a Jayden Reed goose egg up against a Josh Jacobs three-touchdown game still wound up going in my favor. So what was all my annoyance for? I was feeling sorry for myself before the result was even close to finalized, and I didn’t even wind up losing.
Anyway, be sure to enjoy the ride! Let’s talk about the games real quick. As always, you can find an audio version of the posts in the Substack app, and 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.
Chargers 34, Broncos 27
I didn’t really have notes for the Thursday and Saturday games, so these will be quicker, but did take more notes yesterday.
From what I remembered looking back, Ladd McConkey looked good again, and Quentin Johnston continued to look worse than his touchdowns let on with some tough plays.
Gus Edwards had a bad game until a long run late, and he did get goal line work and the TDs spiked. If I was doing Noise, he’d be the Noisiest Noise, with 28 yards on 14 touches outside the long run.
Stone Smartt matched his 60% routes from Week 15, tying his season high.
Audric Estime was kind of the lead rusher but Sean Payton did a rotation all game. Javonte Williams stayed in his solid routes role and randomly got 11 targets and 7 receptions.
Marvin Mims had the near long YAC TD and also a near long deep shot TD that Bo Nix underthrew. He’s still rotational but was up to a season-high 48% routes.
Chiefs 27, Texans 19
In some quick notes I made Saturday night after the games, I wondered if Isiah Pacheco was hurt because he seemed to barely play. As it turned out, he did tie Kareem Hunt in snaps, and the touch gap wasn’t massive either. Samaje Perine remained involved in the passing game. Maybe they’ll really go back to Pacheco in the playoffs, but this is just a committee right now, and if they don’t in the playoffs, I wonder what it means for 2025 and beyond about how they think of Pacheco.
Xavier Worthy looked OK and had another near miss where his second foot didn’t come down inbounds on a deep catch that he did bring in cleanly. Marquise Brown also looked like a good fit in his first action, and was targeted 8 times on just 15 routes. I thought Brown might cut into Worthy but it was interesting Worthy still got 11 targets and 3 rush attempts, while Brown’s volume came from other places (from a routes perspective, it came from JuJu Smith-Schuster, whose route share was cut in half from Week 15).
Tank Dell was absolutely blowing up before suffering a serious injury, and this one shook me. I wrote last week he looked really good coming out of the Week 14 bye, and watching him in this game stat to really turn that into production had me feeling like he was about to finish this season with a strong stretch, into the playoffs, and we were all going to feel like early 2023 was health-related as he returned from the last injury (and possibly getting shot this offseason). He finished this game with routes on just 47% of Houston’s dropbacks but still had a season-high 132 air yards, which was good for fifth in the NFL this week, through Sunday. Instead of taking that through the fourth quarter of a massive game, he’s embarking on another long rehab, before he even really got to have some fun moments late this season. Just an absolutely brutal injury and I feel for the guy in a major way. It’s also the second time the Texans lost a WR for the season right as I was writing he was starting to come on, and I was expecting his production to tick up (same deal with Stefon Diggs). They have done a lot wrong this year as a team but are also snakebitten.