Stealing Signals, Week 6, Part 1
Injuries make seasonal comebacks possible, plus more Mariners!
The 2025 season has been a rough one in fantasy football land, mostly because of all the injuries. We’re seeing a lot of things that reinforce different ways that different years could be decided, and where we were right and wrong on different players and themes, but those things aren’t actually paying off in 2025 on the level they normally would. What’s paying off in 2025 is player health.
One of the things that happens in these seasons is the high-floor strategies do perform better. I thought I did a solid job of coming up with a fresh way to discuss some of the most important team-building concepts in fantasy this offseason with two summer pieces, starting with when I broke down why comparing end-of-season scoring to ADP is a pretty flawed way to consider player value, and then more actionably talking through this idea of cutting a fantasy draft into quarters, and thinking through where we get the high-end scoring that’s necessary to win fantasy leagues.
If I could boil what I think is happening down, it would be that despite that being good analysis, 2025 has been a year where thinking along the lines of those pieces more or less has not helped you. The idea of trying to stack a bunch of small wins throughout your build, which can become sort of silent killers on a roster that doesn’t have enough league-winning upside, is actually a lot more viable right now, because what people need is to just have points. Guys that are on the field and are “small wins” are actually big wins because of the landscape.
And then the central idea to the quarters piece that you need to pick guys that can move up into the group ahead of their ADP dovetails with that. In Quarter 2, I argued, you want to be almost exclusively targeting guys with upside outcomes to produce like Quarter 1 stars, and then in Quarters 3 and 4 (or off the wire) you want to try to backfill your Quarter 2 ancillary production. But again, if you have Quarter 2 guys performing like Quarter 2 guys, that’s a big win in 2025. There just aren’t a lot of Quarter 1 guys overall, mostly due to health. I argued you needed to stack like 3-5 of these Quarter 1 guys onto a roster; if you have just one, but then the rest of your starting lineup is Quarter 2 guys and you’re not taking a bunch of low scores, you’re probably in playoff position in your league.
What’s complicated about years like this is that — more so than other years, but this is always a little true — the teams that are winning here after Week 6 are unlikely to be favorites in the playoffs on a level commensurate with their current scoring. Most people who are winning are doing it because of performances like Rico Dowdle over the past couple weeks, and Dowdle’s been awesome, but he may not be all that helpful in Weeks 15-17. Dave Canales was noncommittal when asked if he might just be the new starter, which is great if you’re a Dowdle manager, but he’ll still get backfield competition returning eventually, and he’s had two great matchups that have elevated the production. The expectation for his scoring down the line is unlike where it’s been recently.
The corollary is if you are really struggling, keep plugging away. The playoffs might feel like an insurmountable climb, but really you just need to stack wins, and if you get in and have a chip and a chair in a year like this, you’ll find some of the top seeds are more beatable than other years.
As for actually getting in, it’s interesting to think that if you’re going to win your fantasy title, eventually your team’s going to need to be good enough to stack wins in Weeks 15-17 against the best teams in your league. For whatever reason, winning three straight in the regular season feels impossible sometimes, but when we’re in the fantasy playoffs we act like a loss is the most unfair thing ever, and we deserved to win three straight merely by showing up?
That’s all psychological, but I think the specific prediction I’d make about 2025 is a lot of 2-4 teams will wind up winning championships. I’d extend that to 1-5 and even 0-6 teams in leagues with alternate paths to the playoffs, other than W-L.
This isn’t a certain prediction. One of the things about 2025 is with a lot of league-winning types either hurt (Malik Nabers, Brock Bowers, Omarion Hampton, Lamar Jackson, now add Puka Nacua and on and on) or impacted by teammate injuries/issues (Ja’Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, and a lot more), the few league-winning types that are your classic league winners are more valuable. There are guys who are crushing who will still be crushing in Weeks 15-17, and having those guys becomes disproportionately huge in a year like 2025. You’re just hoping you don’t have to be without them due to injury at any point. Thankfully, it sounds like Nacua’s injury is short term, but if you have any Nacua teams, you know what hearing he was injured yesterday felt like. It felt like a team that was going to win the whole thing was now totally done.
But yeah, if in your league the Nacua team is also one that has a bunch of the solid Quarter 2 guys that are producing, that team might just be in good position now, and then they might also be able to capitalize on the very real advantage they’ll have in the fantasy playoffs of a bye, and they’ll win in Weeks 16 and 17, and they’ll take down your league. So understand when I’m predicting teams that are 2-4 are not just going to turn it around and make the playoffs but are going to win the whole thing, I’m predicting something that’s unlikely.
But the main note is I do think there’s more parity in most of my leagues right now than the records and points for indicate. You’d still prefer to be someone who has gotten results to this point, and is at worst 3-3, but there’s a lot of season left. Keep plugging.
Now we enter the portion of the programming where I write about a different sport for thousands of words.
I do know some of you are tired of me writing about the Mariners. I’m cognizant of that. I’ve also only ever been able to write about what captivates me. Fortunately, that’s usually football. I’m passionate about it, and that passion never seems to waver, even when fantasy annoys me. Football is life, as Danny Rojas said.
But right now, I’m captivated by another sport. My passion lies elsewhere. The heart wants what the heart wants.
The vibes in Seattle for Game 5 of the ALDS were not high. We were facing Tarik Skubal, and all anyone could talk about was how hard it is to beat a Cy Young winner for a fourth time. That’s right, we’d faced him three times already and won every game. I kept telling people we didn’t need to beat him four times, we needed to beat him once. Yes, he’s a great pitcher, but the fact that we’d already won three games he started against us doesn’t make it any harder to beat him one more time. But Seattle is such a self-defeating sports town that instead of framing that as having their number, the local media just kept saying we couldn’t do it.
We’d lost Game 4 after building an early lead, but the Tigers had tied that game up by the bottom of the fifth, and taken a commanding lead in the sixth. We’d led as much as 3-0, but that was thanks to our second run in the top of the fourth and third in the top of the fifth, which the Tigers answered with three in the bottom of the fifth to even it up. It was tough to watch, because you hoped that lead would hold, but heading into Game 4, Mariners’ pitching had allowed 9 total runs across the first three games, and 3 of those came in the ninth inning of a Game 3 win where the score was 8-1 entering that inning and finished 8-4.
So anyway, the pitching staff had been amazing, but in then in Game 4 the Tigers hit, and went out and won a game in their home ballpark with their backs against the wall, 9-3. You tip your hat to your competitor. This was a road playoff game, after the Mariners had wont two straights in Games 2 and 3, and the Tigers didn’t roll over and forced a Game 5. Instead of framing that as respect for the opponent and the Mariners still having everything in front of them, this is the kind of trash Seattle media offers in these situations:
Our opponent played like they were also a playoff team worth respecting, and our great pitching wasn’t able to completely shut down an opponent for a whole series, and we got this self-defeatist nonsense where the piece starts with “mammoth meltdown” and the framing of the promotional post uses verbiage like “stand up or stay down.” This stuff is constant with Seattle media. Impacts the way everyday people talk about the teams. Drives me nuts.
My main point is it was completely inconsistent with what this team actually is. Mariners fans have a lot of memories of teams that did “stay down,” if you will, but this core of players, and the way it’s built over the past few years, has not been the same. This roster is not the same, ranking as a top-five team in expected WAR and those kinds of things after the improvements to the lineup at the trade deadline. This team is awesome, with stars but more important a ton of guys that can positively impact the game, and you need depth in baseball. You need a lineup that doesn’t have easy outs through to the bottom, and you need enough pitchers that a guy can have a tough outing and you can still come back with other guys that are very difficult to hit.
The Mariners have all that stuff, which is really cool, and they have shown they have fight, as well, including going into Houston late in the season to exorcise divisional demons and sweep a team I’d like to call a rival but I’m not sure the Astros would even acknowledge a rivalry with the way they’ve dominated the division for a decade. And for a long time, they owned us in Houston specifically, and we’d been struggling on the road, and with the season on the line, with fewer than 10 games to play in a 162-game season and absolutely needing to win a series down there to win the division, the Mariners went out and swept them. They faced adversity, too, with their best pitcher — their All Star starter Bryan Woo — leaving one of those games early with an injury when he was cruising, and the bullpen picked him up, and the team rallied and all that stuff.
Then after losing Game 1, Mariners fans were down because they had to face Skubal, the Tigers’ ace I referenced above. I was, too. I thought we’d go down 2-0. We beat him. I wrote about this last week.
And then we won in Detroit in Game 3, too. I was just so frustrated by the whole vibe before Game 5. This was the third win-or-go-home, series-deciding playoff game in Mariners franchise history, and I had some extra tickets I had a hard time getting rid of and wound up taking a bath on because the resale market kind of cratered (there was also a Huskies football game Friday night, which didn’t help; I knew a lot of people who have season tickets there and it wasn’t a natural pivot to pay a couple hundred dollars to go to a different sporting event across town, whereas a bunch of other people I reached out to already did have Mariners tickets and were going).
So I went into this game kind of annoyed at what I perceived to be a lack of enthusiasm in the city, and then I got there, and the crowd was insane.
Beating Skubal was never going to be impossible, just really difficult. The simplest path is having a pitcher of your own who holds down the opponent, and matches him. We were starting a guy in George Kirby who is a command pitcher and can really dominate a game when he gets going. Kirby was hurt a bit earlier this year, and didn’t always have his best stuff, but got going later on in the season. The Mariners have a few good, young pitchers — it’s probably the biggest strength of the team — and if you’d asked me a couple years ago who among them was the best, I’d have said Kirby. I’m from that Moneyball era where walks are so significant and this guy just has impeccable control. If you don’t issue walks, you have to get hit to give up baserunners and runs, and Kirby isn’t easy to hit or anything. When they do hit a home run off you, it’s more likely to be a solo home run than putting up two or three runs with a single swing.
Kirby started Game 1, but wasn’t necessarily sharp. I like to watch how many balls he’s throwing to see how he’s doing, because when he’s on, he commands the strike zone so well he basically doesn’t throw any. In Game 1, that number was far too high, and he had a short outing. In Game 5, we made Skubal work a little bit through his first inning, and in the middle of the second, after the Tigers had hit twice, Kirby had thrown fewer pitches through six outs than Skubal had through three. At one point, maybe then, Kirby had like 15 strikes and 2 balls. He was absolutely dialed in to start, going right at hitters.
Cal Raleigh got a single in the first inning, and then he responded with two strikeouts and Raleigh didn’t move off first base. We got one more hit off Skubal all game. That came in the second, when Josh Naylor — our deadline acquisition that everyone in Seattle absolutely loves and hopes we can sign long-term this offseason but who is a lefty facing an ace lefty — had fouled off a two-strike pitch, and then Skubal basically showed hit another fastball off the plate, and Naylor cut off his swing sort of just spoiling another, except he’s so good he was able to get enough barrel on it to slap this pitch off the plate down the left-field line, and keep it fair, and get a double. And then he frickin’ stole third! He loves to read the pitcher, and he got such a huge jump that he actually stopped, and almost started going back, and it seemed like he must have been picked off, but Skubal still never looked back and never stepped off the rubber and Naylor just got going again when he delivered, and he stole third. Mitch Garver came up huge with a sac fly, and we had a 1-0 lead. Immediately after that sac fly, Skubal would strike out seven consecutive hitters across three innings, until Naylor was back up and lined out. Skubal retired 13 straight after giving up that run, including striking out 10. I was surprised they pulled him after the sixth inning.
But at that point, we were down 2-1, because we’d pulled our own pitcher. Kirby was pitching well, but the one guy in the Tigers’ lineup who consistently gave him fits was Kerry Carpenter. Carpenter had hit a pivotal home run off him in Game 1, and already had two hard-hit balls off Kirby in this game. After Kirby gave up a leadoff double in the sixth inning — which was the first non-Carpenter hit he’d allowed in the game — the Mariners pulled him, in a decision I’ll never understand.
I get the matchup element, but Kirby had thrown just 66 pitches, and I’ll never buy that he absolutely couldn’t have gotten this guy out. Additionally, looking ahead, if Kirby did get through him, he’d have been fine for the seventh inning and maybe even into the eighth. He was dealing through the rest of the lineup.
The other thing was Kirby wasn’t the only choice to start that game. Because there were multiple travel days, the Mariners could have gone with either their Game 1 or Game 2 starter on normal rest. Skubal had actually pitched Game 2, against Luis Castillo for the Mariners. If the Mariners were so afraid of this Kirby-Carpenter matchup that they couldn’t imagine letting Kirby face him a third time after having thrown just 66 pitches, they should’ve went with Castillo from the start.
Making all this worse, in my eyes, was that the reliever they went to was a lefty, for a lefty-lefty matchup, except that guy — Gabe Speier — had just been hit hard two days before, including giving up a lefty-lefty home run to a different lefty in the Tigers’ lineup. That’s him in the in picture above, with the “mammoth meltdown.” He came in with a 3-1 lead and a runner on, and gave up a double and a single to allow two runs, and then after getting out of the inning, he went back out for the next inning and gave up a go-ahead home run to a lefty.
Speier’s been great all year, but he’s been talked about as performing over expectations. Love the guy, but after a rough outing in his last interaction with this lineup, he came in and literally on the second pitch he threw he gave up a 2-run homer to Carpenter. My friend captured it well when he messaged me, saying, “Well Kirby could have done that.”
But after Skubal got through six innings, the Tigers took him out as well. I’ve seen a lot of discussion in Detroit on this, and I thought he’d stay in, because their closer Will Vest can go two innings, and you could go seven for Skubal and two for Vest and that would’ve maybe been it. At the same time, Skubal had thrown 99 pitches, and was averaging more than 15 pitches per inning, so not just from a workload perspective but from an effectiveness perspective, are you sending him back out there to get up to about 115 pitches and super confident he’ll hold a one-run lead? I mean, again, I probably am. I don’t know the Tigers well enough. I was happy he was removed, though, which is usually a sign that they should have kept him in, if a fan of the other team is breathing a sigh of relief that he got pulled.
Anyway, it felt like something had to happen in that seventh inning, but after a couple deep flyouts that sandwiched a walk, there were two outs and a runner on first for the bottom part of the order, and it didn’t feel great. But Naylor, who was hitting sixth because he is a lefty and Skubal is as well, got a base hit off the righty reliever, and then after the Mariners pinch hit a lefty, and the Tigers went to a lefty reliever, the Mariners had to pinch hit a second time to get back to a righty, except all their righties were in the original lineup against this lefty ace. So that left utility infielder Leo Rivas, who is 28 years old and just made his MLB debut last year. He has fewer than 200 regular season plate appearances in his career, over the past two years, and hadn’t hit in the entire playoff series. That dude came in, and on the second pitch ripped a single to left to drive in the tying run, for our second improbable run. And then it was 2-2, with Skubal out of the game, and despite him showing up and having electric stuff, it suddenly felt like anyone’s game.
From there, if you’re reading this far, you probably know most of the rest. The game went 15 innings, and there were a lot of situations where it felt like one team or the other would score. It becomes frantic, and panicky, every inning. Logan Gilbert, our Game 3 starter, came into the game in the top of the 10th, on two days’ rest, after throwing 85 pitches in a win in Detroit on Tuesday. His entry song was “Gangsta’s Paradise,” which seemed like a fitting anthem. He threw 34 pitches across 2+ innings, but left with two on and no outs. Eduard Bazardo, who had given up three runs in Game 4, got out of that jam and then pitched two more innings, getting eight huge outs. Our presumptive Game 1 starter for the next series, if we were to get through, was the aforementioned Luis Castillo, who took much longer to get warmed up than Gilbert, presumably because this was Gilbert’s throw day between starts and it was more natural for him to be pitching, but we did eventually have to break glass and bring in Castillo in the 14th, and he went through the 15th.
We sang “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” for the second time in the 14th-inning stretch. I’d done this in 2022, when I went to the only other home playoff game the Mariners have hosted, before 2025, since 2001. That was an 18-inning 1-0 marathon loss to the Astros that completed a three-game sweep for Houston, and ended our season. Game 1 of this Tigers’ series went to 11 innings. I imagine many Game 5 fans, like my wife and I, were at both that 2022 game and also this 2025 Game 1, and were waiting for the season to end here with another extra-innings loss.
The Mariners pitching got out of some jams, and kept getting the job done, but their hitting kept missing golden opportunities. In the bottom of the 10th, Victor Robles led off with a double down the right field line. We didn’t bunt, and never even got him over to third.
In the bottom of the 12th, that guy Leo Rivas got on again, this time on a walk, and then he moved up to second on a pickoff attempt that got away. You feel like in these extra-innings situations, anything can be the moment. The run Detroit got to beat us in Game 1 came on a walk, wild pitch, and then a seeing-eye single through the infield. But we once again couldn’t get a bunt down, and then with two on and 1 out, hit into a double play.
The bottom of the 13th started with two walks. Again, it ended with a Mariner grounding into a double play, after a strikeout for the first out.
Before the bottom of the 15th, something wild happened. The Mariners do a “Salmon Run,” which is basically just stolen from like the Brewers’ hot dog races and all that, as ours is a little newer. But among the four fish that run, one — named “Humpy” — never wins. That’s the bit.
Early in that game, around the fifth inning or something, the Mariners did their Salmon Run. I thought Humpy might win, because they always announce he has never won, and this had a chance to be the last game of the year. He did not win.
In the middle of the 15th inning, after the second rendition of “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” in the 14th, they decided to do a second “Salmon Run,” too. And anyway, Humpy won, and after 14-and-a-half innings of tension, we needed that. The crowd went bonkers. My kids couldn’t believe it in our group text. It was one of my sister’s favorite parts.
The bottom of the 15th didn’t feel like more of the same. It felt like the first inning all over again. Leadoff single. Hit by pitch. Lineout that moved the runners up. Intentional walk. Bases loaded, one out. Jorge Polanco, a guy I wrote about loving last week, hits the game-winner. There are articles about how Humpy helped the Mariners win. This paragraph isn’t wrong:
While the crowd erupted when Humpy won, the reaction when Polanco hit the game winner is something I’ll never forget. Despite my frustrations with the tickets I mentioned earlier, the stadium was packed, and it was overwhelmingly home fans. There were a few scattered Tigers’ supporters, but when the game was over, you heard the entire place erupt in a relief you just can’t imagine, after the previous two playoff extra-innings losses I mentioned before. I lifted my wife so high she said she almost kicked someone in the head.
I’ve been at some huge games, but like when my Huskies beat Texas to go to the National Championship in the final moments, there were a lot of dejected Texas fans in that stadium, too. But I’ve also been at huge home wins, and rushed fields, and all of it. This was nearly entirely Mariners’ fans, about as one-sided as a crowd gets, and anxious, obviously, all game, and all the extra innings. We lost in 18 innings to eliminate us three years ago, in our other postseason trip. We know how it can just end, and that’s it. Anyway, the way that stadium erupted was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I really don’t know how something could top it.
And then after all that — 15 innings, and using three different starting pitchers, and having their flight delayed to Toronto — the Mariners had to start the next series yesterday, two days later. It makes sense, obviously, but me not having had the opportunity to watch a whole lot of playoff baseball, it’s wild how quickly a Game 5 win becomes a Game 1. I needed like a year to process that Game 5.
The big question was who would pitch? They waited to go to Castillo, and he took so long to get up, because he obviously wasn’t supposed to go into that Game 5. Even though he only threw 15 pitches, having to go through the whole process of getting ready and coming into that game to be the winning pitcher in Game 5 was clearly something they were trying to avoid. Castillo didn’t pitch Game 1, and he’s not pitching Game 2, either, for what it’s worth.
They had to turn to the Game 4 starter in Detroit, Bryce Miller. The Mariners basically have four great starters, and then also Miller. That wasn’t always the case — he looked amazing last year with a 2.94 ERA, and it was like we had five stars. But he missed time this year, and when he did pitch, he gave up basically twice as many runs, with a 5.68 ERA supported by much worse peripherals.
Miller probably only pitched in the first series because Woo, who I mentioned earlier, was still out. Woo is expected back later in the ALCS, which is great news for the Mariners, and it also means Miller probably won’t have a spot other than potentially pitching in long relief behind Woo if Woo can’t go super deep into games as he returns from this injury.
Because Miller pitched Game 4 in Detroit, he was on three days’ rest, pitching on short rest for the first time in his career. The Mariners got runners of first and third in the first inning, but Raleigh was thrown out at the plate on a contact play, and we didn’t score in the inning. And then in the bottom of the first, on the first pitch Miller threw, George Springer hit a home run.
It was 1-0, and Miller pitching on three days’ rest seemed like a real issue. He walked the No. 2 hitter, got No. 3 hitter Vladimir Guerrero to line out (fortunately), and then walked the No. 4 hitter. And then with two on, one in, and only one out, he settled in. He got 16 of the next 17 hitters out, giving up no more runs. After the first pitch he threw, he went six scoreless innings on three days’ rest against a lineup the broadcast kept calling the best hitting team in baseball (I think that refers to batting average as the stat they led the league in, and while they didn’t lead the league in most of the key stats, they were up there near the top in all of them).
That start was the stuff of legend. The Mariners’ bullpen was so taxed in the 15-inning game, and for Miller to go out on three days’ rest and get six innings and keep Seattle in the game was absurd. He did it in just 76 pitches, and then all three relievers who came in had pitched in Game 5, and they all got through an inning each, all in exactly eight pitches. For the game, Mariners’ pitchers combined for 100 pitches exactly, which if you don’t know, is very few, and was massive given the context of how much they all had to pitch in the first series.
And though the Mariners’ bats were quiet for a bit, our MVP Cal Raleigh ignited things with a sixth-inning home run, and then Jorge Polanco had two more clutch RBIs, and Seattle went and stole Game 1, 3-1.
And then they played Game 2 while I was trying (and failing) to work on this, and they went out and won that, too. Julio Rodriguez hit a home run, then Polanco and Naylor each added one themselves. I don’t even know what to make of this team anymore. I remember the teams of the 90s, and then the 2001 team, fondly. They never got over the hump, and baseball can be cruel in that way. But the Mariners’ hope of playing in, and then winning, their first ever World Series, is alive.
My apologies for the lateness and brevity of the below. 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 Jay (follow Jay on Twitter at FFCoder or check out his Daily Dynasties site), but I will also pull from RotoViz apps, Pro Football Reference, PFF, NFL Pro, Next Gen Stats, Fantasy Life, and the Fantasy Points Data Suite. Part 1 of Week 1 had a glossary of key terms to know.
Giants 34, Eagles 17
Key Stat: Cam Skattebo — 72% snaps, 36% routes, 4 GZ touches, +23 RYOE
What happens when, “But we’re 4-0!” starts to fall off? What if they fall to 4-4? At what point do the questions become valid? I thought the play sequencing was good in the first half. The Eagles come out with four straight runs, a third-and-long pass, and a FG try. But that set up a much more balanced and textured next few drives. Liked what I saw. But then a bit later, in a key moment, after Jaxson Dart got hurt for a bit and left and a promising Giants’ drive fizzled out with Russell Wilson throwing the worst pass of the season (after probably taking a delay of game that was not called), the Eagles had a possible moment to turn the tide, and went run-run-pass-punt. Just uninspired stuff, too often. It was nice to hear Lane Johnson call them “predictable” after the game, so I’m not the only saying this stuff and there’s a veteran leader in the locker room making a similar point. But they did wind up with a reasonable +4.6% PROE (reasonable in that it wasn’t extreme and there was some more balance).
Dart has looked great early in his career. It’s still early, and he’s been asked to run a ton relative to how much he’s passed (30 rush attempts vs. 85 pass attempts through three starts), but he’s made some big throws, and he’s obviously a gamer. This feels like the same version of Brian Daboll’s offense that got the best New York Giants year out of Daniel Jones in 2022. They ran the ball 39 times, more than any other team in Week 6, through Sunday.
Cam Skattebo (19-98-3, 2-2-12) did Skattebo things. Tyrone Tracy’s (4-6) most extended playing time came when he got a sizable drive early in the second half, but Skattebo played the majority of the first half, had multiple receptions, and a TD. He’d later add two more TDs, dominating green zone touches. He dominated routes at 36%. Tracy also played a stretch early in the game but Skatt came on for the third down. He’s a workhorse but also the situational back for HVTs. Everything about his playing time is bullish.
Wan’Dale Robinson (7-6-84-1) made a couple nice catches with some decent air yards behind them, and the second included some really nice after the catch movement for a long TD. Lil’Jordan Humphrey (8-4-55) also made a couple plays, and was the Darius Slayton fill-in it seemed with 78% routes and 118 air yards. He’s probably a decent deep league option for 5 targets that have some air yards under them. He had an end zone shot but couldn’t haul it in, but his size could play up in the red zone. Jalin Hyatt (5-3-17) got just 49% routes.
Theo Johnson (4-2-27) did not have a great day, including an target where he just wasn’t looking and the pass was nearly picked. This is the kind of stuff you see with the guys whose receiving production hasn’t ever been super impressive, who start to impress, and then you’re like, “Oh, right, whether it’s awareness or drops or skill, there is a reason the production is what it is.”
A.J. Brown (9-6-80) looked good. Had a good one-handed catch on the sideline on a downfield shot. Jalen Hurts missed a wide open DeVonta Smith (5-4-49) early in the third quarter from deep in his own territory, where he had a chance at an 89-yard TD but he overthrew it. Smith had 5 yards of separation and an underthrow in that spot might take the TD of the table but at least gives you a big play. It was a bad miss, and Smith ended up with a mediocre day.
It was a strong spike week for Dallas Goedert (11-9-110-1). Seemed situational, but it comes for him every now and then.
Saquon Barkley (12-58, 3-2-9) also looked good, I thought. I’ve been mildly concerned about his rushing efficiency but the burst has been showing up more and more. He’s going to hit on some stuff, I’d guess. It’s just tough to have that many long TDs, for anyone, ever.
Signal: Cam Skattebo — workhorse but also situational back for pass downs and green zone work; Jaxson Dart — playing a very high level early; Lil’Jordan Humphrey — 79% routes, 8 targets, 118 air yards (Darius Slayton fill-in)
Noise: Giants — 26/39 pass/run ratio (game script, and that’s just a lot of runs); Dallas Goedert — 11-9-110-1 (there’s Signal that he has some real ceiling, but this was a classic spike week more than some new normal)
Broncos 13, Jets 11
Key Stat: Jets — (-18.5%) PROE, 17 pass attempts (fewest by a team in a game this season), 9 sacks allowed (most by a team in a game this season), 82 yards, -10 net passing yards
This game was horrendous. Honestly one of the worst games of the year. The Jets ran a fake punt in their own territory before half, then just ran the clock out. There was talk it made no sense, which was inaccurate. They erased a Denver possession. But despite accomplishing something, it still was extremely odd. That possession was actually one of the better ones through the middle part of this game, for either team. There were three field goals and a touchdown in the first quarter, but after a 10-6 score through one, the Jets had that drive I described where the half ended, one other field goal drive in the third, a turnover on dows on their final drive at the end, and their other seven drives ended in punts. The Broncos from that point has six punts, conceded a safety, one field goal, and one drive that ended the game. Put differently, these teams just punted the ball back and forth for like three quarters. They didn’t even get first downs! Denver had 12 all game, and the Jets had 8. It sucked.
When the Broncos have a day like this where they only have 246 yards — which, by the way, dominated the Jets’ 82 yards for the entire game — you run into a small pie that’s split too many ways. Bo Nix was throwing to a lot of different options.
Pat Bryant (2-2-22) looked good on an early one-on-one route on a fourth down. Easy win for a first. Evan Engram (6-5-42, 1-7) was getting some looks, though he ran just 42% routes. Marvin Mims (3-2-30, 1-(-2)) got a designed swing pass for one of his catches; I comped him to KaVontae Turpin a few times in the preseason and people got annoyed, but it’s probably the most accurate thing I articulated this year. He’s a kick returner who gets specific offensive packages and can obviously be explosive but really doesn’t have enough upside to be fantasy-relevant. He ran 36% routes! Nate Adkins (2-2-23-1) who got lost from a spread formation where he just leaked up the sideline from the slot, after selling a block on what looked like a swing pass, and Adkins got the TD there. It was a great example of Sean Payton dialing stuff up that moves usage to weird places, and it was effective because Adkins blocks in those situations sometimes, and that’s surely on film, and he did a block fake. These are just the types of plays that exist in some offenses and not as much in others.
As for the main guys, Courtland Sutton (3-1-17) caught a ball downfield but wound up with a real quiet day. RJ Harvey (4-4-21, 2-4) had a couple early catches but was also quiet. Troy Franklin (4-3-19, 1-2) had an early fumble, and lost a decent catch later to holding. His routes were down to 64%, which is not great. That’s 10 percentage points lower than any week since Week 1. He wasn’t even scoring all that well when he was getting 75%+ routes.
J.K. Dobbins (14-40, 1-0-0) remained the clear lead early back, but wasn’t great. The game was terrible, if I didn’t make that clear enough earlier.
Breece Hall (22-59) got a bunch of rushes. Isaiah Davis (2-2, 1-1-(-1)) didn’t do much.
Justin Fields completed 9-of-17 passes for 45 yards. He took 9 sacks for 55 yards lost, which meant the Jets had a net passing yardage of -10. This was the bad Fields, where he held the ball, didn’t see open guys until way too late, let defenders back into plays, let the pass rush get to him, etc. His processing really struggles. Kurt Warner kept emphasizing how late the throws were.
Garrett Wilson (8-3-13) was either hurt or mad or who knows what? But his routes went down to 72% as he missed time in the second half. He was still targeted on nearly half of Fields’ throws, as Josh Reynolds (3-3-25) was the only other player on the team with more than one target. Mason Taylor (1-1-2) was quiet. It all goes back to the offense as a whole.
Signal: Evan Engram — 42% routes (just not a full-time player in a rotational offense, cuttable although the 43% TPRR in this one does leave some room for optimism if he can get the routes up); Troy Franklin — 64% routes (fewest since Week 1, and was struggling to really score even with the routes up at 75%+ like they were for a month)
Noise: Jets — (-18.5%) PROE, 17 pass attempts (fewest by a team in a game this season), 9 sacks allowed (most by a team in a game this season), 82 yards, -10 net passing yards
Rams 17, Ravens 3
Key Stat: Ravens — (-14.0%) PROE (second lowest in Week 6, through Sunday), 74 plays (second most in Week 6, through Sunday)
If we didn’t just get done talking about a terrible game, I might say this one was the worst of the day. It wasn’t as bad as that London game, not even close. But it was mostly slow, with L.A. struggling early and Baltimore looking fine running the ball, but Cooper Rush never playing well. L.A. eventually took over 17-3, and then Tyler Huntley entered and it got a little fun, but the Ravens turned the ball over on downs in the red zone for the second time late, and finished with just 3 points, despite a solid 296 yards.
The Rams never really got challenged. Puka Nacua (3-2-28) got banged up, left, and re-entered, but now his status for next week is up in the air. There wasn’t much reason to push him. Davante Adams (9-4-39) instead dominated the volume with a 0.78 WOPR, but struggled with efficiency. We got Jordan Whittington (4-3-23) in that expanded role I sometimes talk about with him as a possible handcuff, as he ran 79% routes. As I’ve said, he had two games over 90% snaps last year and had 8 and 10 targets in them, for at least 6 catches and 60 yards in each. That said, the offense looked much worse without Nacua, and there’s no guarantee they could move the ball if he was out.
Kyren Williams (13-50-1, 2-2-37) had a great catch downfield on a fourth down extended play where the Ravens only sent two and dropped into a shallow zone. Matthew Stafford waited, then went deep to the best matchup he had downfield, which was a running back. We keep seeing the RB routes getting downfield for big plays. Kyren extended for the catch and barely got down inbounds, then scored a rushing TD a couple plays later. Blake Corum’s (5-23) snaps rebounded back to his normal No. 2 role.
Derrick Henry (24-122, 2-1-8) got a ton of work early, and he was running well. The whole gameplan through several early drives was all Henry. Kevin Burkhardt at one point said, “The Derrick Henry show continues,” which emphasized the whole offense in a game where the Ravens’ PROE was -14.0%. Even with the run focus, the Ravens ran a ton of plays in this one (74), in part because the Rams weren’t great on offense.
Zay Flowers (10-6-46) dominated the receiving, though he fumbled at one point trying to make something happen after the catch, then fumbled again on a jet sweep handoff, where it was charged to Rush because it was at the point of exchange and Flowers never had it.
Mark Andrews (6-4-24, 3-2) got back-to-back tush pushes at the goal line after Henry got them all the way down there early, but he got stuffed both times on second and third down, before Henry also got stuffed on fourth. Andrews’ 6 targets tied with Justice Hill (6-16, 6-5-28) for second on the tea. DeAndre Hopkins (4-2-20) out-targeted Rashod Bateman (2-1-8) and Isaiah Likely (2-2-6).
Signal: Davante Adams — 0.78 WOPR (target-dominant No. 1 with Nacua in and out of the lineup); Jordan Whittington — 79% routes (more evidence he’s a WR handcuff, essentially)
Noise: Puka Nacua — 3 targets, 2 catches (52% routes due to leaving and re-entering with injury); Mark Andrews — two tush pushes at the goal line, but got stuffed on both so not a great sign for going back to the play