Stealing Signals, Week 5, Part 1
Thinking about FAB, plus TNF, London, early Sunday games
I’ve been having a hard time with the introductions this year, in part because the macro stuff has shifted in a way I wasn’t totally on top of, and I’m just watching and learning, and in part because the fantasy-related stuff — it feels like I’ve written it all before, through the three years we’ve done this as a newsletter.
One topic that always comes up a lot is FAB strategy, so I finally wrote about it at length in an intro last year. Here is a big chunk of that:
So as to that first piece of context, what you’re trying to do with your FAB strategy is not necessarily guarantee the most impactful players off waivers, but make the best series of bets. You have $100 or $1000 or whatever; that total budget can be thought of as a series of bets. If you spend a great deal of that on one player, you better be pretty sure that player is one of the better bets you’ll get a chance to go after in a league of the size you’re playing in. If it is — if that bet locks up one of the five or so best probabilistic bets that will be available to you in this league all year — it’s worth committing a strong chunk of your overall series of bets to.
That ties into the second piece of context. You have to recognize you’re one of 12 (or 10 or whatever) managers. It’s not a certainty you get anything off waivers, at any point. There is a natural reluctance to spend FAB early in the season, in part because managers often want to save for whatever big splash presents itself. Sometimes, that splash never comes. Even when it does, everyone is going to be bidding. That strategy only really makes sense if you’re very certain to recognize and also be the one that will win that bid when it does come, which could mean saving basically every dollar and being willing to go 90%+. I say go 90%+ because if your whole FAB strategy is predicated on getting that one guy, then you want to make a bid that gives you better than a coinflip shot of getting him, basically.
What I was trying to urge in this section is that spending FAB early in the year makes logical sense; that holding back puts you in conflict with everyone else who has yet to spend, since only one person can win each big bid, so naturally not everyone can spend. It’s always sharp to be zigging when others zag, and employing strategies that keep you in your own lane, in anything. With FAB, it is inherently the case that saving your budget will have you swimming the same direction as at least some of your league, and the hypothetical payoff of having the money to win some major bid later won’t even necessarily materialize.
This isn’t a great lesson to be going over in Week 5, but for many it’s a multi-year struggle so maybe now is exactly the time to be thinking about it to make that mental adjustment for future seasons. Puka Nacua and Kyren Williams were in all likelihood the best waiver adds of the season, even if they can’t continue producing like this until the playoffs. Their trade value is there, for example. They’ve already provided big points and increased in value in a major way.
I bid pretty big on these guys in some cases, but if I could go back and do anything differently, I would make an even bigger point to get them in every league possible. One of the things I talked about at that time was even if someone else came available, they wouldn’t be the same type of bet Week 1 provided, which was knowledge that these players were a much larger part of the Rams’ plans than expected. Players can get freed up by injury and project for big usage going forward, but there is no other week where we can learn a player was a major part of the offensive plan like the information we got on Nacua and Kyren in Week 1 this year.
Anyway, I often get asked to add features here, and I’ve actually added a ton to what Stealing Signals used to be. The “Biggest Signals” and “Biggest Noise” were a request, and do take a bit of time to put together. The HVT (and now PROE) recaps were by request. The usage graphics this year. The intros — I’ve heard that they aren’t necessary, and then from others that the only reason they still subscribe is for them. The Input Volatility post started from consistent calls for a late-week post that spun the writing forward.
Obviously I really appreciate that you guys would love to hear my thoughts on basically any fantasy-related angle, and I do my best to add where I can. It’s also a lot easier to add features than take them away, and it’s just simply the case that there are limits to what I’m capable of.
One of the key things I get asked every year is for more waiver discussion. That’s something I try to hit with the “Biggest Signals/Noise” sections (in Week 1, I ranked Nacua as the top Signal, and Kyren second, with Jerome Ford as the top Signal in Week 2, etc.). But this is not a waiver column. It can’t be. There are whole pieces of content that are dedicated to waivers and trades and those things. I’m doing an entirely different type of content, and trying to add waiver-specific content, or rest-of-season rankings (another popular one), isn’t the simple and easy addition some of you believe it is (my favorite note added to requests is “it won’t take you much time!”).
I do have the Signals Gold feature for direct Q&As on Tuesdays, and those are super fun. I’ve been enjoying those so much I think the end game for Input Volatility is to flip it into a late-week video session eventually. I love the back and forth with commenters, and it allows me to think out loud a bit more, and talk through process, which I know many of you enjoy.
But I also want to shout out one of my favorite new pieces of content, Stephanie Miller’s free waiver-focused newsletter. Stephanie’s great — over at Ship Chasing, we hired her to run our in-season waivers across all our teams, and let me tell you she crushes this stuff. It’s been better than I could have imagined; for the first few weeks, I was reviewing some of that stuff, but amid a ton of waiver decisions that need to be made every week, I don’t think I’ve had really any changes to how I would have done things. She thinks and plays very much like I/we do, and while her waiver column is probably a little more focused on high-stakes leagues than some of you in home leagues would like, it’s a great resource if you’re looking for ideas of how I might specifically apply some of my research. You guys know I don’t recommend stuff loosely; I’d meant to rec this earlier (I blame getting sick for missing it last week) but genuinely can’t rec it enough if you’re looking for more waiver info. (She’s even breaking down our teams each week in that newsletter if you want to track how some of my rosters are doing, on top of the great waiver advice she brings.)
So make sure to sign up for that and support Stephanie. Now let’s get to the Week 5 games. Data is typically courtesy of NFL fastR via the awesome Sam Hoppen, but I will also pull from RotoViz apps, Pro Football Reference, PFF, Next Gen Stats, Fantasy Life, the Fantasy Points Data Suite, 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.
Bears 40, Commanders 20
Key Stat: D.J. Moore — 3.67 TDs over expected this season (per Hayden Winks), 15.6 YPT, 14.7% TD rate
Many were giving me a hard time for D.J. Moore’s (10-8-230-3) eruption now that I wasn’t on him this year (for the first time in his career), but it was honestly a blast. I legitimately got such a kick out of seeing him produce in the ways I argued for years he could and eventually would. The dude has an incredible skill set, has been able to win at all depths throughout his career, and has always been a YAC monster, capable of taking anything to the house. As I wrote this offseason, I wanted to be in on him with Chicago, and openly hoped my arguments would impact his price so I could take some cheaper swings. Moore had a career night on Thursday, ripping off 230 yards on “just” 10 targets. He now has +3.67 TDs over expectation, per Hayden Winks’ model, which is most in the NFL. And even with the Bears looking decent, he’s a possible sell high. My take on Moore, you’ll recall, was that I expected him to be a “small win,” but I just couldn’t justify the price (and associated risk of negative outcomes) while not seeing “big win” potential. The extreme TD efficiency, and the fact that he sits at PPR WR5 despite at minimum 10 fewer targets than every other top-10 WR, makes it still look like — despite the early explosion — that he’ll eventually fall back a bit and wind up that “small win.” The difference between this situation and others I’ve called “outliers” is there’s been no evidence to refute the volume concerns for Moore in this offense, and when someone posts a 15.6 YPT and 14.7% TD rate over five games, that’s your classic efficiency regression situation where you do need the potential for a target volume increase to offset the unsustainability of those rates over a full season. There’s not much in his numbers so far that suggests what he’s done for the first five games will be anything other than an incredible five-game stretch he couldn’t sustain (although I’m sure he’ll have other big games; he looks awesome in this situation).
Cole Kmet (5-5-42-1) is another one that probably fits that “sell high” mantra given his TD rate is also in double digits at 10.3%, and he’s rocking an 8.0 YPT at a 6.0-yard aDOT, well above depth-adjusted expectation. His routes per dropback have been a bit all over the place — by week, they started at 88%, then 58%, 72%, 63%, and 70% in the big win here. Among 20 TEs with at least 20 targets, only Chig Okonkwo is asked to pass block at a higher rate than Kmet has been.
Justin Fields has played much better, and has shot himself up to QB4 or QB5 (depending on scoring) on the strength of two monster weeks since I wrote up all those post-Week 3 results from 2022 and argued we’d see these kinds of turnarounds (although I didn’t necessarily expect it from Fields). Home matchups with the Vikings and Raiders, and then a road date with the Chargers, is an inviting next three games, and RotoViz’s Strength of Schedule app actually gives Chicago the easiest QB schedule through Week 14 (before a tough playoff schedule highlighted by a Week 15 matchup with Cleveland’s tough pass rush). While I called Moore a sell high, Fields feels more like a potential “buy high,” depending on price, where the overwhelming negativity around him through the first three weeks might actually make his price a bit more palatable than it should be. There’s still room for his rushing to make more of an impact on his overall scoring between now and later in the year — the Bears opened the second half of this game with two designed Fields’ runs, although that was influenced by the RB injuries. But the fit with Moore being strong still feels more impactful for Fields’ potential to be a league-winner than Moore’s (although the tandem was monstrous this past week, as well).
One argument in favor of Moore and Kmet is how concentrated things can get here. Robert Tonyan (2-2-10) was the only other Bear to catch a pass in this game, while Darnell Mooney (4-0-0) racked up 95 air yards but couldn’t bring anything in.
The running game got hit hard with the injury bug. Roschon Johnson (3-19) left early with a concussion, and Travis Homer got hurt on special teams before he had any offensive snaps, which really created issues when Khalil Herbert (10-76, 3-0-0) also got banged up. Fullback Khari Blasingame (8-26) was ready to take some carries late.
Washington struggled in this one, but Sam Howell battled and wound up throwing for 388 yards and a pair of scores. Early in the game, he missed a wide open Dyami Brown (3-1-11) on a deep shot that should have been a touchdown — throwing upfield beyond Brown on a diagonal run where there was room to miss on an underthrow, out in front of Brown across the field rather than up it. As the Bears were up 27-3 at half, they sat back a little bit, and it was Logan Thomas (11-9-77-1) and Curtis Samuel (7-6-65-1) leading the team in receiving at lower aDOTs. Jahan Dotson (5-3-30) also had a lower aDOT, but did not have a big game, while dealing with a bit of an ankle thing. Terry McLaurin (5-4-49) couldn’t get much going down the field.
Washington ran the ball just 10 times all game, against 51 passes. Their +17.8% PROE led Week 5, and that was despite massive negative script; their actual called pass rate was 90.9%, highest for any team in a game all year. As a result, Brian Robinson (6-10, 4-4-33) didn’t do much, while Antonio Gibson (6-4-64) continued to not get anything on the ground but he played far more snaps in this one with the heavy pass lean.
Signal: Cole Kmet — 11.5% pass block rate (second highest among 20 TEs with 20 or more targets; routes haven’t been consistently strong, and production has been TD-dependent)
Noise: D.J. Moore — +3.67 TDs over expected, 15.6 YPT, 14.7% TD rate (classic efficiency sell high); Bears RBs — all of Khalil Herbert, Roschon Johnson, Travis Homer left early; Commanders — 90.9% called pass rate, highest in NFL this year (+17.8% PROE, 51/10 pass/run ratio)
Jaguars 25, Bills 20
Key Stat: Travis Etienne — 7 HVTs (tied second most in Week 5, through Sunday; also tied Etienne’s career high)
In a first in the NFL, the Jaguars played two straight games in London, giving them a pretty significant advantage over a Bills’ team that decided to fly in Friday for some reason. We’ve seen a lot of teams show up flat in London over the years, and Buffalo definitely seemed to be in that bucket. I’m honestly not sure what to take from their performance.
Jacksonville looked good. Travis Etienne (26-136-2, 5-4-48) had a huge day after a rough start, where he dropped a swing pass and wasn’t finding much early room to run. He did have an early 2-point conversion, then would score from the 6-yard line and finally on a breakaway from 35 yards out, hitting on all the TD regression at once. James Cook (5-(-4), 4-3-25) had more or less the opposite day on the other sideline, though like Etienne, he retained his clear lead role (though Etienne’s is definitely stronger, to be clear).
Calvin Ridley (8-7-122, 2-14) had a nice bounceback performance, where he got some early rush attempts and saw his first-read rate spike, per Jacob Gibbs and Fantasy Points Data. On a key third down late, the Jaguars went to Ridley on a one-on-one fade route, and he won for a 32-yard reception. His only incomplete target was an end zone shot before half. That’s the good, but it also needs to be mentioned Christian Kirk (8-6-78, 1-6) and Evan Engram (8-4-28) were both also right there at 8 targets, and Ridley’s 0.19 TPRR once again didn’t differentiate. Zay Jones (5-3-23-1) made a phenomenal play for an early TD, but was knocked from the game, opening up some second-half volume which consolidated on the other three main weapons. Ridley’s going to have his moments, and it’s great the Jaguars can consolidate like this.
After I called Dawson Knox’s season-low 48% routes and Dalton Kincaid’s season-high 79% routes Signal last week, things reversed course, with Knox (6-3-17) jumping back to 67% in negative script, and Kincaid (2-2-19) falling to a season-low 56%. I think that’s a pretty big negative mark on any near-term Kincaid breakout hype, and with his hyper-low aDOT, Kincaid might need a Knox injury to really get there. At this stage, I certainly feel good about ranking Sam LaPorta over him straight up in August, despite the much lower ADP.
Stefon Diggs (11-8-121-1) continues to dominate, and he had a long reception that could have been a 90-yard TD but was super underthrown. Gabe Davis (8-6-100-1) had a really nice game, as well, including an early TD after getting one wiped away by OPI the play before (we don’t usually get the “penalty negates TD, same player scores anyway” outcome), as well as a fantastic late catch. It may have come in garbage time, but making a downfield play on the sideline against a defense essentially focused on stopping that is a positive, and it was a reminder that while not all game situations are going to call for the type of vertical aggressiveness Josh Allen showed on that play, Davis is an efficient downfield receiver who can make some really nice plays when the opportunities do present. The issue with his ceiling remains in the target rate, and he’s been on a heater lately with TDs in four straight which can’t continue, but he’s a clear spike-week type of WR who is essentially better in best ball.
Signal: Calvin Ridley — some positive signs, but still didn’t separate in target share (35% first-read target rate, two designed rushes, but only 22% target share, 19% TPRR; more dependent on team volume than elite No. 1s)
Noise: Dalton Kincaid — my hype last week about his season-high routes, after it fell back to a season-low here (given his very low aDOT, inconsistent routes is an especially painful dagger); James Cook — (-4) rushing yards (whole Bills’ offense came out flat after traveling to London Friday, perhaps best exemplified by their inability to win on the line and overall poor rushing attack)