The 2024 TPRR posts — NFC West and NFC South

Puka Nacua, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Kyle Pitts, and the rest of the NFC West and NFC South

You’d think I’d just jump right into the teams now that I’ve already written multiple intros, including one that needed to be broken off into its own post, but I have two quick notes.

First, I know many are super excited about the incoming rookie class right now, after a combine that included some great athletic numbers. I definitely plan to dive in after these TPRR posts, in the month or so until the draft. I’ve never had a set way of covering incoming rookie, so I’m not sure exactly how that will end up looking, but expect more rookie-focused work from me between now and the draft than in prior years.

Additionally, I’m going to do some livestreams over at the relatively new Stealing Signals YouTube channel this offseason. I got that channel fired up last fall to do the weekly Signals Gold Q&As (which were always unlisted videos that are unfortunately not findable on that channel, if you wanted to look back). But I really enjoy the Q&A structure, and have a great time talking ball with people in a live setting like that. Because it works best for my offseason schedule, these will be weekday streams while my kids are in school.

(As an aside, if you are interested in doing some graphic/production work for this, let me know. I’ll also ask you to go subscribe to that YouTube channel like a dozen times, and so let this be my first. It’s free and doesn’t inundate you with notifications, at least in my experience.)

Alright, let’s get to the NFC West and NFC South, after covering the NFC East and NFC North yesterday. The intro yesterday talks more about what this is, including the scale of what is good for different stats, and I recommend reading through that to be able to contextualize the analysis below. The data will be displayed in this format:

Player Name - TPRR, wTPRR (total routes)

I’m including anyone who ran at least 100 routes in the regular season. All routes numbers are on PFF’s scale, and the data is regular season only (which isn’t the best way to look at the efficiency, but does normalize the routes volume for us, and we have a better immediate grasp of fantasy scoring in the regular season than regular plus postseason).

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NFC West

Arizona Cardinals

• Trey McBride - 0.26, 0.56 (406)

• Zach Ertz - 0.23, 0.51 (186)

• Michael Carter - 0.21, 0.35 (151)

• Marquise Brown - 0.20, 0.56 (460)

• Emari Demercado - 0.18, 0.31 (164)

• Greg Dortch - 0.16, 0.38 (245)

• James Conner - 0.15, 0.25 (201)

• Michael Wilson - 0.14, 0.40 (415)

• Rondale Moore - 0.13, 0.28 (479)

• Geoff Swaim - 0.11, 0.23 (100)

I talked about Trey McBride a couple times in yesterday’s post, including how my initial inclination back in December was he should be the TE1 in fantasy drafts this year, even ahead of fellow young star Sam LaPorta. This data is a big reason why — after languishing behind Zach Ertz for the first stretch of his career, McBride fully broke out with an extremely impressive 25.9% TPRR, a strong 7.9 YPT, and a 2.03 YPRR. He not only put up the numbers, but he looked every bit the part of a target-dominant TE who was the best weapon in his team’s passing game. McBride only started two of the first seven games in 2023, but was an every-week starter for the rest of the year beginning in Week 8, just before Ertz was shipped out. Across those final 10 games, some of which he got to play with Kyler Murray, he averaged 8.5 targets, 6.6 receptions, and 66 yards per game. The QB play should be better throughout 2025 than it was in 2024, and the expected addition of Marvin Harrison, Jr. could thread that needle of drawing some heat off McBride without necessarily cutting him off from seeing plenty of volume, given we typically don’t see rookies — even ones as good as MHJ — immediately command target volume among the very top WRs in the NFL (see: Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson, who were both immediate stars as rookies, but both added more than 2.0 targets per game in Year 2 over their rookie-year volume). But to be perfectly clear, apart from what the numbers say, some of this is a film take: McBride was fantastic to watch last year, a transcendent talent consistently overcoming a less-than-ideal situation, looking like a future superstar if not one already.

In fairness, McBride was not dealing with much target competition. At a 20.4% TPRR, Marquise Brown was in his typical range, but his YPT was a career low, leading to a disappointing season. There’s potential for some bounce back, but he’s not a guy you’d expect to approach a 25% TPRR after five years and a current career high of 22.2%.

Zach Ertz still showed an ability to earn volume even as his YPT was catastrophically low; his decision to join back up with Kliff Kingsbury in Washington, to be the outlet for a rookie QB — and crucially an outlet that defenses won’t be super concerned about covering — probably means at least 50 catches in 2024 (for like 300 yards).

Rondale Moore did not get the same designed touches as he had under Kingsbury, but seeing his TPRR fall all the way to 12.7% is still alarming, and even I can’t spin that. Michael Wilson’s 14.2% at a very high 14.1 aDOT and with a 9.6 YPT is far more interesting, especially considering it came in his rookie year. The 14.2% and his poor collegiate production argues he’s not much more than a late-round best ball flyer, but he’s draftable as an efficiency/splash play kind of guy.

Los Angeles Rams

• Puka Nacua - 0.27, 0.65 (574)

• Cooper Kupp - 0.23, 0.55 (397)

• Demarcus Robinson - 0.17, 0.48 (224)

• Tutu Atwell - 0.16, 0.43 (405)

• Kyren Williams - 0.15, 0.24 (323)

• Tyler Higbee - 0.15, 0.32 (454)

I want to start the Rams with Cooper Kupp, who missed the first four games after a hamstring injury that led to wild speculation about retirement due to nerve-related issues. He did return, but was pretty clearly not 100% at times in 2023. His production was still solid, and there’s a difficult-to-parse question of how much it reflected current-year physical limitations, or how much was age-related decline for a 30-year-old WR. When projecting forward, I’m looking at 2023 as something of a healthy floor, with health being the obvious caveat. I do think there’s room for him to put up better numbers in 2024 than what we saw with the 23.2% TPRR in 2023, after years of 30.2% and 28.1% in two previous seasons with Matthew Stafford. Prior to those two years, he was a 23.7% and 23.0% TPRR guy in 2019 and 2020, so 2023 was back on those levels even as he pretty clearly gave up some first-read stuff to the rookie.

I started with Kupp because he’s a big part of the Puka Nacua story. On Nacua, it’s important to recognize his collegiate TPRR, plus his rookie year, creates a stable floor for his career where I’m confident he’s a very good WR. On the other hand, his current ADP in early Underdog drafts in 9th overall, because he’s a Year 2 WR who just put up roughly 300 PPR points as a rookie and finished WR4 overall. In my intros, I’ve talked about pulling back on impressive early-career numbers in the past with players like Christian Watson last year, and if you’re reading this column looking for my 2024 version of that, it’s probably Nacua. That’s not to say Nacua isn’t good, or won’t be impressive going forward, which were larger concerns for me with Watson. But so much went favorably for him in 2023, and I’d consider his rookie outcome a high-end season not just for his rookie range, but likely for his career. Stafford stayed healthy. This iteration of the Rams didn’t have the pass-catching depth to deal with Kupp not being 100%; they gave up on and moved Van Jefferson in-season, and eventually benched Tutu Atwell for Demarcus Robinson because of Atwell’s physical limitations. Nacua himself stayed healthy, and ran 574 routes, after never hitting 250 in a college season. (It’s easy to say that was coaching malpractice at his colleges, and it probably was to some degree, but I’d quite simply feel better about projecting him to be a perennial 550-route WR if he’d previously done anything close to that.) Again, the headline on Nacua is that he’s obviously good, and because his 2024 situation could be very similar, I’ll have exposure to him regardless of price. But the early 2024 ADP reflects that his rookie season was legitimately an all-timer, and I do believe his data was one of those positive-variance situations I wrote about last week. What I’m saying is while some will put him in rarified cohorts with legit superstars, the best comp for me is very clearly Siegele’s Anquan Boldin call — like Nacua, Boldin posted an incredible rookie season, seemingly out of nowhere, and like I expect from Nacua, that foretold a productive career from a player who was clearly good. But the part about the Boldin comp I think fits most is that his incredibly strong rookie season turned out to be one of his three best seasons across 14 productive years. That’s loosely what I’d expect from Nacua, where we’ll see more good years, and perhaps as soon as 2024 when conditions should be most similar to what he did in 2023 (for Boldin, his best career year came in Year 3, so not far removed from that rookie season). But what happens with rookie stat lines is we dream on how the player can build on them, and for Nacua, it’s a lot harder for me to see how he does that. Now, just matching 2023 would be fantastic for him, and that means his first-round price isn’t some massive mistake (he already produced like that ADP). But it’s not a price I’m itching to pay, when I think about the balance of ceiling outcomes and risk for the types of players he’s drafted around.

The Rams were otherwise very concentrated, which is the nature of McVay offenses, and is a big reason you can’t aelly discount anyone who is going to play in this offense, and why even if Nacua ran hot last year that probably makes him a “small miss, small hit” type rather than having “big miss” potential (assuming health). But Tyler Higbee continued to be below-average while running plenty of routes, and the flashes Atwell and Robinson showed were also mostly due to route volume.

Tyler Higbee continued to be below-average but run plenty of routes, while the flashes Atwell and Robinson also showed were mostly due to route volume during those periods of the season. The big lesson there is more evidence we should take stabs at players in McVay offenses because if we get the guy that’s in the role, he’ll max out volume in a way that’s a real advantage for his fantasy production range.

San Francisco 49ers

• Brandon Aiyuk - 0.23, 0.65 (446)

• Deebo Samuel - 0.23, 0.51 (385)

• George Kittle - 0.19, 0.48 (460)

• Christian McCaffrey - 0.19, 0.35 (417)

• Jauan Jennings - 0.13, 0.34 (231)

• Ray-Ray McCloud III - 0.12, 0.27 (122)

• Kyle Juszczyk - 0.08, 0.16 (207)

The story with the 49ers is obviously about there only being one ball and a lot of mouths to feed. As always, a good rule of thumb is to lean into that if the players are all talented — you get discounts to true ceilings, are more likely to hit on efficiency on the low volume, and the big note is there’s always contingent upside where volume can spike if teammates miss time and things get more concentrated. We know the NFL is a war of attrition.

George Kittle rebounded a touch from 2022’s 18.1%, but at 19.3% was still below an elite area for TEs. His 11.3 YPT did help offset that some, and he’s an obvious star player whose talent will provide a floor of production. There are obvious reasons to have exposure.