The nihilist's guide to fantasy football
It's been a fun first week
My intros to Stealing Signals this week were more depressing than I’d intended, and I looked back on them and had wished I’d been a little more upbeat and optimistic for the first editions.
So I had this idea that maybe I’d write something today, and it would be a much more fun, positive message, spinning some things forward and looking ahead at the rest of the season. The cool thing about the NFL is there’s just so much positive to point to, always, even as potentially other cool things are constantly being ripped away from us. We never would have gotten that Garrett Wilson catch if Zach Wilson wasn’t completely inept at throwing a fade. Bright side.
And yet, as I started to write today, the nihilism did take over. So we’re going to embrace it a bit, because there’s a lot to contemplate down that path, and it impacts the way to play fantasy football in 2023.
It all sucks
I spent a lot of time this offseason trying to signal boost my earlier writing and Stealing Bananas podcast conversations with Shawn about the offensive environment around the NFL. And I got asked about it this morning in the Ship Chasing Discord (which is an elite place to talk shop if you’re not aware), and I kind of surprised myself with how many thoughts I had on the topic.
Early on, one my comments was simply:
There’s a part of me that’s like, “fantasy is just different now and it all sucks” which is fun and not nihilistic at all
I got there kind of quick, because the line of discussion started with a question about the two-deep shell stuff, and mentioned how despite air yards being down and passing-games struggling, WRs shot up draft boards this past year, and yet my response was that it’s not like early RBs or TEs did much better, and I’m not sure early WRs would be the thing I’d be going after right now. We said this all offseason, but the alternative — the old way of doing it — would have meant Najee Harris in Round 2. And Week 1 wasn’t great for that kind of back, either.
No, the new reality is bad for everyone. Running backs often get brought along by good offenses, thrust into more scoring opportunities as they get the touches in close for short scores, or able to run and take short passes for big gains as the passing attack takes the entire focus of the defense away from them.
And yes, the Cover-2 shells have led us to historical rushing efficiency — the collective NFL yards per carry rate was higher last season than ever before — but scoring was still down. Offenses were still down. It wasn’t a high-flying and lucrative environment just because the lowest-value fantasy touches — runs far away from scoring range — were a little more efficient per attempt. A couple 0.1 points per rushing yard aren’t changing anything.
How does this get better?
But we — as a fantasy community, collectively — don’t want to admit what’s happening. That’s why I tried to focus on it so much this offseason. The sport isn’t dying or anything; there will still be positives. But when the Bills, Chiefs, and Bengals combine for the opening weekend they just did, you have to immediately recognize that there isn’t a magic pill for fixing what plagued offenses in 2022.
I heard all offseason about how offenses need a counterpunch. I heard almost nothing about what that counterpunch was. I guessed at some stuff, like the two-TE sets, but that I think just makes you more efficient running the ball. And what does that matter if the defenses want you to run the ball.
I’d hoped we might see the counterpunch, from somewhere, in Week 1. Miami was explosive. The whole coaching tree from The Playcallers podcast series I referenced like 12 times this offseason — and now you see why I did — had an impressive weekend, between Mike McDaniel, Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, and Matt LaFleur. Maybe they’ll be the catalyst for some offensive innovation and copycatting and improvement.
But the tricky part I’m not seeing answers for is why defenses will do anything different. As I went down my nihilistic path in the Ship Chasing Discord this morning, I got here:
That’s the really tricky part because offenses have to find a way to beat this stuff, but I kinda think “prevent explosives at all costs and force long drives, even (and perhaps especially) when per-play efficiency rises” is the end game for defensive philosophy
End game is the operative phrase there. I’m not saying nothing will ever evolve again in the NFL because obviously things evolve. My whole thing is being willing to acknowledge how unknowably chaotic the NFL is, more than the average observer. But I mean, evolution does move toward end points. With the current NFL, until there are perhaps some rules changes, defenses have it figured out.
You don’t want to let Miami do what they did, creating explosives. That’s the thing to stop at all costs. If you can make Patrick Mahomes throw underneath as much as absolutely possible, maybe eventually a wide open Kadarius Toney will just forget how to catch, you’ll get a pick-6, and you can win a road game against the defending champs by 1 because of it. The specific way Week 1 played out continued to enforce that defenses are right to do the things they are doing, and if you frustrate these elite offenses enough, you can even make a Josh Allen really start to force everything until he starts taking unnecessary shots on scrambles, and eventually fumbling the ball away in his own territory. It’s frustrating to always have to take the underneath play and not get to hit the home run.
It was only Week 1, and I’m really hopeful I’m wrong overall. I’m hopeful this was in part due to the shortened preseason and teams being cautious with offseason programs due to the 17-game schedule — which, by the way, if we want improvement of these things, expanding the number of games per year and wearing down the athletes themselves with cheap field turf over live grass and all the business decisions the NFL makes, none of those are helping. Every team should have two byes and opportunities to rest up and get right, at a minimum. But capitalism is working against these trends, as well.
Why do we always assume the good guys will win?
Here’s the real scary thought. What if the idea offenses would find a counterpunch wasn’t just hopelessly optimistic; what if defenses are the area where there’s still room for innovation? What is this relatively new “take away explosives at all costs” philosophy has just scratched the surface in terms of ways it can be executed? A Ship Chaser in that conversation earlier today asked about the increased investment in interior defensive linemen, and I theorized that with the Wide 9 defensive stuff where edge rushers are getting further away from the QB than ever so as to help defend against the outside zone run, that maybe these defenses do now see the interior defensive linemen as more important.
With wider defensive line splits, they are more on an island in the run game, and need to be good enough to not just get moved off their spot. And with the width of the edge guys, the up-the-middle pressure is that much more important. We all saw Myles Garrett doing his through the legs dribble on his stand-up, walk-up rush right through the A gap — that dude is ostensibly an edge rusher, but maybe Cleveland is saying on obvious passing downs, “We don’t want Garrett way out wide on the edge, we’ll throw someone else out there and let Garrett rush where we most need to generate pressure.”
So maybe it’s more of a focus on DTs in the draft and in contracts, but also moving the really versatile edge guys inside as well, and doing some things differently that way that is the next innovation for defenses. That’s just one minor theory, and I’m always talking about not knowing this stuff nearly as good as real Xs and Os analysts. But the point stands: it could get worse before it gets better, and even as the industry wet blanket talking about macro issues all offseason, even I didn’t consider that.
Just how nihilistic are you going to go here?
I’m not even sure I’m making the arguments it absolutely sounds like I’m making. I’ve been out on a limb before — more optimistically! — and been reminded about that word I hate, regression. Things do work back to the middle. The NFL itself is eventually going to step in and make some crazy rules changes, if things never get better.
But one of the major things we should have been looking for in Week 1 was evidence that offenses had some new answers. That a counterpunch could come swiftly, and the whole league could be on the rise offensively.
And that just did not happen. It couldn’t have happened any less than it did, for a sample of one week.
And I’m writing this because that’s relevant. Week 2 could be different. I’m hoping to be the idiot in the room this time next week. Seriously. It’s a lot better for me as an analyst when fun shit happens, and fantasy football is enjoyable. But I wanted to write this today to emphasize that if the league’s offenses do have a counterpunch, it very much looks like that will take time to build up. Maybe a haymaker will come eventually, but right now we’re just starting to wind up. The league’s best offenses and its most talented quarterbacks and players almost universally struggled this week. About the only things that looked easy were Tyreek Hill and Puka Nacua.
How to play it
I had like four or five good bullet points on how to play this, but naturally I’ve forgotten them. I’ll try to pull a few together here before I wrap things up, because there’s gotta be a point to what you just read.
Fade deep threat WRs who haven’t shown target dominance. I still think Tee Higgins can be different, but you can see now why I wasn’t super high on Mike Williams and Gabe Davis. These high-aDOT WRs who might be kind of one-dimensional take the biggest value hits from what’s happening.
Consider floor a little bit in lineup decisions. I’ve long talked about prioritizing upside at all turns, but the frustrating part of 2022 was how floor chasers were not really at a disadvantage, because there were so few ceilings to punish them. I would be wrong to say to ignore how bad it can get and only pursue ceilings. You have to consider what a player’s offense can do to his ability to succeed.
Running backs in the Flex. I had this one mentioned to me, and especially in 0.5 PPR and Standard, I do think some of these trends push you toward wanting more RB exposure in the Flex. Again, at least in the short term, I think considering floor (and RBs are the floor plays because of more guaranteed touches) can be a useful tiebreaker.
Take what’s there. I made some big bids this week on Puka Nacua, with the tiebreaker for me being that I felt pretty good about projecting him for another 8 or so targets this week. Rather than waiting for some of the longer-term plays — that I’ve always favored, and you guys often ask about how long to wait on — to develop, we have to be willing to play a bit more week-to-week right now. I love playing rookies for their late-season upside, but especially in shallower leagues where they might not get grabbed and you can maybe circle back and try to add them again when their playing time ticks up, I’m OK cutting them to maximize my scoring potential in the short term. You can’t just dig yourself a hole and then hope 200-point weeks will come to help you dig out of it, because, again, the ceiling play payoffs might not be as large in this environment.
Eat Arby’s.
That’s going to do it for today’s very fun look at this great hobby we all enjoy. I know I bitch a lot, but let me be perfectly clear: I wouldn’t be anywhere else than in front of a TV watching this dumb league tonight, this Sunday, and every other chance I get this year. To that point about tonight, I have a really cool new thing this year where on Ship Chasing, we’re going to do weekly watch-along streams every Thursday night. Tonight’s will be right at this YouTube link — you can come hang with Peter Overzet, Pat Kerrane, and me as we digest the game in real time.
Even if you can’t make that, I truly am very grateful to get to write about this stuff for you guys. Until next time!