Don’t really have an intro planned for today, but I’m going to throw a quick subsection at the bottom where I tier the teams into “haves” and “have nots.” It was a fun exercise to consider as I was writing yesterday’s intro, and I’m going to have some gray area tiers.
As far as how I’m ranking those and what I’m looking at, two big factors are pass rate/PROE and pace/play volume. But not every offense has to run fast or be pass heavy because efficiency matters, and there are offenses like the Packers for example who have long been a slow-paced and somewhat run-leaning team that still very much work for fantasy because of the efficiency of their passing game. They aren’t the best of the best fantasy offenses, but they aren’t a “have not,” and they instead sit somewhere in the middle.
I also wanted to just mention I see the requests for additional features, and I think they would all be great, but it’s just a matter of time commitment. Among the great suggestions so far have been rest of season rankings (would love to have the time to sit and get this organized just to ask myself the tough questions), weekly requests for the best RB stashes (definitely something I’m trying to do in the below HVT section and throughout the Stealing Signals team writeups themselves), a great question recently about tough drop decisions in shallower leagues (there’s the “endowment effect” that makes us tend to overvalue the bird in the hand, i.e. the player we have on our roster, and if you make a tough drop and that player goes off, it’s miserable, but I always try to think of it like “if I were drafting right now, and I had the rest of this roster set, would I draft that player on my roster or the one on waivers for this particular team” and that helps me realize they are valued closely and the bet I’d make in a draft where I didn’t have a bias toward one already being on my roster would often be the freely available player), and then a whole host of good questions about trades and comparisons of “Player A vs. Player B”, etc.
For most of these questions, the answer is more or less that I’m trying to weave this stuff into Stealing Signals. I recognize that there is so much here that boiling it down to more concise and actionable advice would be very useful, and I’ve considered better ways to do that every year I’ve done this, but the truth of the matter is Signals is a piece of content that aims to give you the ability to make these decisions on your own, and have conviction in those decisions. For most of the specific players I get asked about, it’s players I’ve in Signals more or less said, “It’s tough,” and I feel like to expand on that player would be to write 1,000 words discussing the pros and cons and upside and downside outcomes through the lens of the new information we have, and then I’d feel pretty good about having their specific value in a place I liked, but then that’s relative to the specific value of every other player at the position and also at other positions.
This is why you guys read such a long piece every week, and are constantly looking for good fantasy football content, because for as much as it’s just silly content about a hobby we do, the reality is that to do this well you have to be considering a lot more than we frankly have time to consider about each player on a weekly basis. I mean the depth to which you can sink your teeth into any one player or one team from an analytical standpoint is what makes this all so enticing, and makes the debates and arguments so much fun. And yet the goal is and should always be to relate that back to concise and actionable information.
One shortcut we use — as an industry — is relating players to their preseason expectations, and how they have shifted, because at least that gives us an anchor. In the offseason, we probably did have a general consensus, or at least August ADP gave us something to anchor to that represented a Wisdom of the Crowds reflection of market sentiment at that time. But as the chaos of the NFL season rages on, every week, anchoring back to our August expectations is often a shortcut that leaves out too much new information. And I’ll always note the value in conviction, and the risk of paralysis by analysis negatively impacting the way you manage your rosters, because we do ultimately have to make decisions. But my goal here has been and remains to give you the tools to make those decisions for yourself. I’m not even particularly good at the conviction part of managing my own teams, but my hope is that if my content accomplishes anything, it’s among the very best in the industry at preparing you do make your own decisions, armed with the right factors to be considering, and allowing you to build teams that you feel strongly about.
That noted, I do offer a weekly Q&A where at 5 ET every Wednesday I spend an hour or so going through questions in Discord for a small subset of people who enjoy the process of thinking through difficult decisions. That’s an entirely separate subscription, and I created it last year by request. I don’t advertise it a ton because I frankly don’t want it to get too crowded, and that’s also why it’s $35/month. Sometimes we’ll go 90 minutes or close to two hours in those Wednesday Q&As, but I’m pretty sure I’ve been able to get to all the questions asked each week, at least so far.
You can join the Discord here and get access to that subscription through the LaunchPass add-on in the Discord server that I believe you’re immediately messaged about upon joining the Discord. (If you just want to join the free Discord and not be in the premium channels, ignore the LaunchPass message.) My weekly in-season schedule is incredibly busy — the best way I’ve heard it described is a weekly “Race to Sunday,” which I believe came from Sharp Football’s Rich Hribar — so I have to focus my specific help to a scheduled part of my week. This is also my apology to those of you who have sent the emails, DMs, and comments with questions about your specific team — I get dozens each week, and I truly do wish I had more time to be able to respond to each and every one, but I learned in past years that holding myself to that standard runs me into the ground about halfway through the season. This Q&A service is the best alternative I can offer right now.
Let’s close up Week 4. One thing I want to note about yesterday was I hadn’t seen the news on Rashod Bateman’s foot injury, which clarifies the point I made there about his routes being down and I would no longer call that Signal.
It was a rebound week for some RB HVT stuff we’ve discussed, so make sure to check out the HVT leaderboards at bottom, including Sam Hoppen’s awesome visuals. And of course, stick around for the ranking of fantasy offenses at the very bottom.
Data for Stealing Signals 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.
Cardinals 26, Panthers 16
RB Snap Notes: Christian McCaffrey: 87% (+2 vs. season average)
WR Snap Notes: Rondale Moore: 86% (debut), Greg Dortch: 36% (-35 vs. previous season low)
TE Snap Notes: Trey McBride: 42% (+36 vs. previous season high)
Key Stat: Christian McCaffrey — 9 HVT (season high, tied third most in Week 4)
Arizona didn’t play great, but you don’t have to to beat the Panthers. Kyler Murray got a rushing TD, though he threw for just 200 yards, and we’re mostly just in a waiting game for his weaponry to get better in a few weeks to see if his weekly upside can reach that next plateau, which I suspect it will.
Rondale Moore (5-3-11, 1-(-4) rushing) made his debut and immediately ran a pretty full set of routes at 92%. That was super encouraging to see, as was his 11.6 aDOT. He didn’t do much statistically, but was a great prospect and there’s a reason we’ve been discussing him for so long. He was somewhat surprisingly lined up on the outside quite a bit more than in the slot, but their willingness to move him around the formation is probably not a bad thing, other than the reality that he probably won’t get this many outside snaps when DeAndre Hopkins is back.
Marquise Brown (11-6-88-1) was in his typically big role, as was Zach Ertz (6-6-47-1), who still sucks. Trey McBride (3-3-24) got to run routes on 17% of dropbacks and immediately drew some volume, because he’s better than Ertz. Greg Dortch (1-1-6) saw his routes fall to 44% of dropbacks and appears to be the odd man out even before Hopkins’ return.
James Conner (15-55, 3-3-22) has not had a great start to the year, but he ran routes on 56% of dropbacks here, and he’s quietly in one of the better RB roles in the league. I’m going to talk about Josh Jacobs below; if there’s a back who could have a big game like that seemingly out of nowhere but next week, Conner would be on the short list of guys I’d nominate. Even as the Cardinals are off to a slow start, Conner has at least 5 HVT in all three games he’s finished this year. Eno Benjamin and Darrel Williams continued to split the work behind him.
I’ve said enough negative about the Panthers, so let me note Christian McCaffrey (8-27, 9-9-81-1) getting nine receptions and just eight rush attempts is a huge step in the right direction. McCaffrey’s TD came on kind of a 50/50 ball in the middle of the field where he jumped to catch it over the defender — it wasn’t like a super amazing play or anything, but he has WR skills. I also saw that option route he runs in the first half, but maybe only once — a lot of his catches were RB screens and more traditional stuff around the line of scrimmage, which isn’t necessarily ideal for his skill set, but whatever. This was improvement. We’ll take what we can get. McCaffrey unsurprisingly had a great game with this shift in usage, and the Panthers’ only touchdown drive, which came on their final drive of the game, featured two McCaffrey targets and three for D.J. Moore (11-6-50, 1-11 rushing) across nine plays. When they use their best players, they have had a shot at doing good things. Hopefully they figure that out, because it’s somehow been difficult.
Tommy Tremble (6-3-34) ran routes on 51% of dropbacks, and Robbie Anderson (5-3-26) also participated in the game. Moore was getting fed some volume, which was nice, and I will say I didn’t like his effort on a poorly-thrown ball behind him where he kind of just threw a hand back and deflected it up for an interception, rather than making a real effort to catch it.
Signal: Rondale Moore — 92% routes, 11.6 aDOT (the preseason hope was a full role and some air yards this year, and this seems to validate that, so he’s a strong stash anywhere he’s available); James Conner — at least 5 HVT in all three games he’s finished, production not showing up yet but role is solid; Christian McCaffrey — scores fantasy points when he gets 9 HVTs
Noise: Rondale Moore — 47 snaps out wide against just 17 in the slot (not sustainable when DeAndre Hopkins is back, so hopefully that doesn’t cut into his overall snaps too much, but we’ll monitor how this split progresses)
Packers 27, Patriots 24
RB Snap Notes: Rhamondre Stevenson: 55% (-7 vs. high), Damien Harris: 45% (+5 vs. high)
WR Snap Notes: Romeo Doubs: 96% (+7 vs. high), Christian Watson: 25% (return), Kendrick Bourne: 45% (+10 vs. high)
TE Snap Notes: Robert Tonyan: 44% (-1 vs. avg), Hunter Henry: 84% (+7 vs. high), Jonnu Smith: 29% (injured)
Key Stat: Romeo Doubs — 95% routes, 8 targets, 89 air yards