We need to talk. Something’s wrong with your team. The scenario you were envisioning for your RB1 or your WR2 or the offense you targeted — it’s not going right.
I have news. That’s true for basically every situation around the league. There’s like Amon-Ra St. Brown and Cooper Kupp and (amazingly) James Robinson, and after that basically everything else is confusing. Even a lot of the players who look like hits have had one great game and one that was less than ideal. Then there are the ones who basically have two bad games but at least they scored a touchdown, which is why I haven’t heard D.J. Moore’s name nearly as much as Kyle Pitts’ in the past 24 hours. I’m actually more worried about Moore, but let’s talk about Pitts.
There are exactly two TEs who have scored at least 30 PPR points, through Sunday. That’s Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews, and they are both right around 36, so about 18 points per game. Then there’s Darren Waller and Gerald Everett, and they are both in the 25-to-30 range, and then five more guys in the 20-to-25 range. That means only four TEs averaging more than 12.5 PPR points per game, and nine total that have averaged at least 10.0 through two weeks. The TE10 right now is O.J. Howard with 19.5 points through two weeks, and he has three targets on the season.
The position sucks, which was the whole point. Pitts has had two bad games, and it has been a bummer to see him lined up inline a decent amount, but he was always going to have some tough outcomes in the offense he’s in. He’s also still 21 years old, as I write this, as he’ll turn 22 next month. Growing pains happen. Down games happen.
Last year, Pitts had six games with 35 or fewer yards. More than a third of his sample. He still broke 1,000 yards, becoming one of just three TEs to do it, and one of just four TEs to have more than 830. Am I thrilled that he started out this season with two straight games like this? No, absolutely not, it’s not ideal at all. But I saw a comment that said the individual was going to start Evan Engram over him next week. To what end? Evan Engram has been crazy efficient, catching 11 of his 12 targets, and has averaged 9.2 points per game. Maybe he has a little more juice than that even, but he’s not Kyle Pitts. I know that sounds like hand-waving, but there’s no other way to say it.
If you followed my rankings, you might have Pitts, and you might also have had Garrett Wilson’s 30 points on your bench this week, which didn’t help you, but is what we’re trying to get into our lineups. Real talk: I don’t care how annoyed you are about what someone like Pitts did in your lineup the last two weeks, or even that you started 0-2. This time every year, it feels like my biggest job is just to talk people off the ledge of making decisions that will harm their ability going forward. What’s done is done; I’m definitely not saying it’s fine to be 0-2 and everything will work out roses for every 0-2 team, but regardless of your record right now, you have to make decisions to win in Week 3 and beyond.
And every other team in your league is worried about something right now, too. We have two data points, and they’ve been pretty wild weeks, and not much has been stable anywhere. That’s just been the nature of the first two weeks of 2022, and it’s created an absolute ton of kneejerk reactions. But regardless if you’re 0-2 or 2-0, what you’re trying to do is have the next 30-point week in your lineup. That’s overwhelmingly how you win fantasy games — big upside scores.
Pitts was the perfect example for this intro because he’s one of about a handful of TEs who has the ability to do that, or even to put up 20. Maybe the better way to say it is to put up 20 points in a game multiple times over the rest of the season. O.J. Howard almost put up 20 in a game — crazy stuff can happen in one football game, and that’s part of my point (that crazy stuff can also happen over two football games). But Kyle Pitts could still have four or five 20-point games in this season, and that’s why you drafted him. That’s why I would still rank him as a top-three TE going forward. There is not much about the reason to target a player like him that has changed. It absolutely sucks that he’s performed poorly, I’m not denying that. But looking forward, you want Kyle Pitts on your fantasy football team. If he has another bad week next week, I’m going to get questions about “How much is too much?” and “When will you just admit you were wrong?” and I’m going to say the same damn thing.
I talked last year about sequencing, and about the emotional impact of bad games from players after you’ve already seen their ceilings. Guys have down games! As I mentioned, Pitts had six of them on the yardage side last year. Other pass-catchers will have down games, too. Receiving stats are volatile.
The deal with sequencing is we are wired to react much more strongly when those things happen at the beginning of a sequence, or when they happen in succession, in a way that we believe there is a trend when there very well might not be. Davante Adams had two catches for 12 yards, and I will readily admit that I would have had a way different response to that if it came in Week 1 than if it came in Week 2, after what he did in Week 1. I’m as susceptible as anyone, and I’m quite sure I would have had a bad take if Adams did what he did in Week 2 in Week 1, because it would have confirmed some of my priors and concerns. Instead, I almost couldn’t care less, because I saw Week 1, and I had a whole new set of expectations formed. To that end, if Pitts catches that 52-yard pass from the preseason in one of these first two regular season games, the worry about him is halved, at least. (Pitts actually got a deep shot in one-on-one coverage this week, and drew a defensive pass interference; that came at the start of a possession when the previous one ended with an end zone target for Pitts in double coverage, with one of the defenders being Jalen Ramsey.)
Fantasy football is a game played on a weekly level that we’re somewhat helpless to influence while the contest is actually happening, and then we have to sit and think about it for a week. It’s naturally an emotional thing, where you have regrets about decisions you made, or you wish things in the games went just a little different than they did so you didn’t lose by five points, or you just don’t like that the guy you thought you drafted is producing in a way that you definitely did not want him to when you drafted him (or the guy you almost drafted but didn’t, is producing in the way you thought he could but maybe wouldn’t). And then there’s stuff like Trey Lance’s injury, which frankly kind of broke me. He was probably the player I would have liked to stay healthy more than any other in the entire NFL, just due to a combination of excitement for him and what he could accomplish, and my own player exposures (which got quite high on him in a way I was actually pretty concerned about, but his price falling in the late drafting period made it tough to not wind up that way).
But if you’re having a rough go of it, all I can offer — having been there before — is those emotions negatively impact your ability to prevent this same feeling after Week 3, and then also after Week 4 and Week 5 and Week 6, until you just stop caring about a lost season. This is also why I play in a lot of leagues — I’m not writing off my Lance or Pitts teams by a longshot, but I have some other teams that look really great and that part of it is exciting. There’s luck in this, and diversifying bets can help.
But what we’re trying to do to improve any roster that is having issues is recognize we’ve only seen a small sample so far, and more importantly make level-headed decisions amid an emotional and at times outright frustrating game. Every year about this time is the absolute hardest time to do that. There’s a push and pull between the feeling of desperation if we did start 0-2 and the pretty easy understanding that we have a tiny sample size. We might think our season is on the brink of being over before it started, and it’s not helpful that it’s extremely common around the industry to talk about 0-2 starts like they are a death knell. My position on that is I’ve had a ton of teams start 0-2 that went on to be very successful.
Yes, your margins become thinner, but even an 0-3 or 0-4 start can be overcome if your team is strong. One of the issues with stats that look at how many 0-2 teams actually turn it around is the sample includes a bunch of bad teams. You have to make an honest assessment of your roster, but if you’ve hit some bad luck and your team still has juice, you have to get back to that idea of sequencing, and that any team can have a two-game losing streak, and it sucks that yours came in the first two weeks of the season. But if your team was good enough to go 10-4 or 11-3, and it plays to that level for the next 12 weeks, an 0-2 start might mean it trends toward 9-5.
I’m not sure if I’m articulating this well, but here’s an example. I have a home league team that lost in a high-scoring Week 1, then had Lance, James Conner, and Jerry Jeudy all leave Week 2 early due to injury. I actually had some other big scores in that lineup, but I’m facing a team that had St. Brown and I’m going to fall to 0-2. I have Garrett Wilson on the bench and plenty of reason for optimism going forward. I also have Drake London and Treylon Burks behind A.J. Brown and Diontae Johnson and D.J. Moore, and I have Skyy Moore and Kadarius Toney stashed, so maybe I’ll try to deal from this WR depth to target some RB stability because it probably does make sense to optimize a bit more for Week 3 to try to prevent from moving to 0-3, but otherwise I’m mostly staying the course and accepting that if this roster is what I think it is, I’m going to be fine.
I guess the point is there’s only so much you can do, and to accept that. Emotional responses aren’t going to change outcomes. Starting inferior players because of what they did last week isn’t the way to play the percentages in the future. This is a probabilistic game, and there’s plenty of luck involved when it comes to stuff like points against in head-to-head matchups, or even just whether your good player hits his 20th percentile or 80th percentile outcome on a given week. So much of that can be driven by factors not even within that player’s control, like some key special teams play that created an unexpected game script and flipped how much both teams might run or throw the ball.
The sport of football is what it is, and we love it for that. But right now — not just about players like Pitts that I was on (and am thus more inclined to hear about), but also from people on social media talking about a whole bunch of players I definitely wasn’t on — I’m sensing a lot more hate than love. And that’s because we’ve had two games, full stop. It’s the perfect sample size to drive everyone nuts. Some stuff feels like a trend, even when it’s not. And in 2022, when you look around the league, the two games we’ve had from most NFL teams haven’t been that similar, so it’s just a year where there’s not a whole lot to trust yet.
Chaos is reigning supreme right now. Week 2 was very on the excitement level scale, and the back-and-forth nature of many games led to some wild results. We need to be level-headed and come up with some answers, which is not an excuse to just “wait and see” in every situation, but rather an invitation to think critically, not emotionally. Let’s get to it.
Data is typically courtesy of NFL fastR via the awesome Sam Hoppen, but I also pull from RotoViz apps, Pro Football Reference, PFF, RotoGrinders, Add More Funds, and I get my PROE numbers from the great Michael Leone of Establish The Run. Part 1 of Week 1 included a glossary of important statistics to know for Stealing Signals.
Lastly, I’m going to try to switch up the formatting of the stats this week, as I got a lot of positive feedback about the audio version of this post that you can find in the Substack Reader app, but one issue it had was reading receiving lines like 4-3-44 as a date (e.g. “April 3rd, 1944”). If you’ve been hoping for an audio version of Stealing Signals, I recommend that app, though as I understand it is only currently available for Apple users.
Chiefs 27, Chargers 24
RB Snap Notes: Jerick McKinnon: 47% (+8 vs. W1), Clyde Edwards-Helaire: 44% (+5), Isiah Pacheco: 9% (-14), Austin Ekeler: 63% (+14)
WR Snap Notes: Skyy Moore: 4% (-15), Josh Palmer: 91% (+16), DeAndre Carter: 65% (+28)
TE Snap Notes: Gerald Everett: 67% (+1)
Key Stat: Chiefs — +14.7% PROE (Chargers — +10.8%; top two rates in Week 2, through Sunday)
Thursday night was a bit of a disappointment, but it wasn’t for lack of trying, as both of these offenses lived up to their aggressive reputations with PROEs in the double digits above expectation. The Chiefs looked out of sorts all night, but stole the win with a fourth-quarter, 99-yard pick-six that turned a potential go-ahead Chargers drive into points for Kansas City, and a lead they wouldn’t relinquish.
Travis Kelce (5 receptions for 51 yards on 7 targets) was held down a bit by the tough Derwin James matchup, and that was a big issue for the new-look Chiefs’ passing game. Kansas City’s offseason shift to a deeper receiving corps looked brilliant in Week 1, but we saw the opposite side of that argument in Week 2, as the ancillary pieces just weren’t good. Marquez Valdes-Scantling (2 for 13 on 7) isn’t as bad as he played, but he ran an empty 86% routes, struggling to get open and looking downright uncompetitive at the catch point when he drew the target. JuJu Smith-Schuster (3 for 10 on 3) went from one of the bigger positive Week 1 storylines in my estimation to looking like the disappointing player of the past few seasons in Pittsburgh, totaling just four (4) air yards on his three targets at a disgustingly low aDOT of 1.3 yards. He ran routes on 81% of dropbacks.
Behind them, Mecole Hardman (3 for 49 on 4 and 53% routes) felt like the most consistent WR, which is definitely not a good thing for the offense, and Justin Watson (2 for 50 and 1 TD on 2 on 22% routes) hit on a long touchdown thanks a ridiculous throw from Patrick Mahomes to give them a little life. Skyy Moore was notably absent, and probably just doesn’t have a lot in the gameplan for him yet, but my biggest takeaway was his days have to be coming soon. That can feel like wishful thinking, but I have to keep pointing to Garrett Wilson to emphasize what can happen when we’re right on these things. Moore wasn’t the prospect Wilson was, to be clear, but his path to a big role did not look blocked this week.
The Chiefs’ running back situation was pretty unchanged. Clyde Edwards-Helaire (8 for 74 rushing, 4 for 44 on 4 receiving) had a strong stat line, but he was out-snapped by Jerick McKinnon (4 for 12, 2 for 4 and 1 TD on 2), who caught a short touchdown on an extended play. Both backs ran routes on 39% of dropbacks, which kept McKinnon in the lead for the season so far, and argues not to get too excited about CEH’s seven catches through two games. CEH also hit for a 52-yard run on his final carry, and it came on a well-blocked play where he was running free while trying to protect the football with both arms, before finally actually starting to sprint about 20 yards downfield. That was certainly a positive, but his other seven carries had gone for just over three yards per carry, and the bigger note is he had only eight carries. I’m not concerned I called him a sell high last week after this stat line, and if you didn’t get a deal done, I think it just extended your window. You can also hold him — he should be fine — but I do expect some five-point games from him. Isiah Pacheco (2 for 6) played sparingly and didn’t do anything to improve his situation. Similar to the pass-catchers, the lack of rushing efficiency outside CEH’s one long run was probably a net positive for Ronald Jones. Jones is worth a stash in deeper leagues while we get through these early weeks, because there exists a possibility he’s a surprise activation at some point, and if that does occur he might play a decent role in a way that it could all happen at once and make him a popular waiver target the next week. Once we get through about four weeks of him being inactive, though, burning a roster spot wouldn’t be advised. And to be clear, that does seem like the most likely scenario.
Austin Ekeler (14 for 39, 9 for 55 on 10) had another disappointing game. The big knock was Sony Michel (4 for 13, 1 for 6 on 1) getting a carry from the 1-yard line after a long completion to Mike Williams down to the goal-line. Michel got stuffed on the final play of the first quarter, and then when the game resumed after the quarter break, Michel was still out there for a play that became a Justin Herbert passing touchdown. Ekeler did rack up four catches on the team’s final drive, including two down in the green zone, and he ran 62% routes, a significant jump from the 37% I called Noise in Week 1. That PPR ability will keep his floor high, but the jump Ekeler took to first-round value last year was largely predicated on his 20 TDs, which were themselves predicated on getting the bulk of the goal-line work. Michel’s inability to score in close, and the overall lack of exciting No. 2 options for the Chargers, could push Ekeler into the next goal-line touches, given he was effective as a green zone rusher last year, scoring 10 times on 25 carries. So in short, this wasn’t all bad for Ekeler, and the routes bump was definitely good to see, but there are some things to monitor including his efficiency and his goal-line work. Michel split the backup work with Joshua Kelley (4 for 22, 1 for 3 on 2).
Williams (8 for 113 and 1 TD on 10) had a big day with Keenan Allen out of the lineup, which was maybe to be expected but also could have been a major cause for concern if it didn’t happen, given his Week 1. He pulled in the aforementioned 39-yard pass despite defensive pass interference, and later made a fantastic play to bring in a 15-yard touchdown. A high-level contested catch guy like him can hit in these ways, but there’s also some variance for obvious reasons. Behind Williams, Gerald Everett (6 for 71 on 10 and 68% routes) was the next most consistent pass-catcher. Everett may have finally found the right place for him to thrive, as I wrote about on Saturday, and you can basically treat him as a version of Jared Cook from last year that runs more routes and has more overall upside.
The pick-six intended for Everett at the goal line came after he tried to sub out, but he still has to make a better play on that ball as he drifted from Herbert and allowed the DB to undercut the play. Luckily for his fantasy value, the note about him trying to sub out should save him from too much criticism, and it’s probably on the coaching staff more than anything that they weren’t managing personnel well, given they were focused on hurrying up to the line to throw a pass. Teams often hurry up to call a quick run in those spots, and they were trying to keep Kansas City from being able to substitute but probably got a bit too cute thinking the Chiefs would expect a quick run and they would have an advantage hurrying up to throw. Everett had caught passes on each of the previous two plays, including a 26-yard catch-and-run down to the 3-yard line on the play immediately preceding the interception, so winding up in a play call where he needed to be physical to the ball was a tough ask, as much as I will note he still has to make a better play. You can understand his exhaustion and still expect more when the alternative is a disastrous outcome (broadly, my stance here is informed by a belief that receivers in a lot of spots don’t wear enough criticism for interceptions; bad throws are going to happen — and this one from Herbert wasn’t even a bad throw; he’s the element that carried the least blame here, behind the coaching staff and Everett, but he also wasn’t blameless as he could have been more aware in that hurry-up spot that his TE was gassed — but even on bad throws receivers have an obligation to be a disruption to defenders breaking on balls). (That was an absurd digression with parenthetical asides in my parenthetical aside. We’re in midseason form.)
Josh Palmer (4 for 30 and 1 TD on 8 and 98% routes) was mostly disappointing until a garbage-time TD. My guy DeAndre Carter (3-3-55) also disappointed a bit, struggling to earn targets on his strong 74% route rate in Allen’s stead. He’ll lose that work when Allen returns. Jalen Guyton is a dude that ran a lot of routes last year but hasn’t even been getting those early this year, which is a net positive for the Chargers.
Signal: Skyy Moore — benefitted from poor consistency from the other WRs, despite Moore’s own lack of involvement being a disappointment; Austin Ekeler — routes rebounded, but we need to watch the goal-line work; Gerald Everett — 29% TPRR, looks like a hit as a good fit in this offense
Noise: Clyde Edwards-Helaire — 7 receptions through two weeks (only 7 targets, 27 total routes as he splits pass-catching duties with Jerick McKinnon)