I’m incredibly excited to write this article for the 2023 season. Each week, I’ll be discussing team-specific trends and highlighting player talent to help you dominate your fantasy football leagues. There will be a lot of graphs. I’ll take a broader view of the upcoming season for the first week’s edition. But once we have real football games to analyze, I’ll focus more on the upcoming week. Let’s start by looking at the best position in fantasy football: wide receivers.
Brandon Aiyuk: WR Talent vs Situation
A great resource for receiving talent is ESPN Analytics and their Receiver Tracking Metrics. They have player tracking data from NFL Next Gen Stats for 2017-2022. They look at every route a player runs and split a receiver’s play into three parts: getting open, making the catch, and getting yards after the catch (YAC). The biggest benefit to these Receiver Tracking Metrics is they isolate a player’s performance from their offense. They let us focus on the talent of the receiver.
I created clusters out of these scores and found one particular cluster where you want your WR to land. The list of 2022 receiver seasons in this cluster matches who you would name as the best receivers in football. Think AJ Brown, Justin Jefferson, Tyreek Hill, and Travis Kelce. The most interesting name that popped up was Brandon Aiyuk. Aiyuk had an open score that matched Justin Jefferson, a catch score that matched AJ Brown, and an above average YAC score.
The problem is the elite level of competition around Aiyuk. You have the best YAC WR in the world in Deebo Samuel, the most talented TE in the league in George Kittle, and a RB with WR skill in Christian McCaffrey. The bet on Aiyuk in redraft partially feels like a bet on one or more of Deebo or Kittle missing time during the season, as his median projection is below the WRs around his ADP. I’m looking forward to seeing if Aiyuk can overcome his situation in 2023 and join the rest of the receivers in his talent cluster.
RPOs and Target Consolidation
Ben Gretch noted the connection between offenses that use a lot of run-pass option (RPOs) and target consolidation. In the graph below, you do see a loose relationship forming, where teams with a higher share of pass attempts coming via RPOs have more consolidated targets.
The theory is that RPOs have a pre-determined receiver built into the play design. They remove the QB going through progressions and target the pre-determined receiver if the RPO turns into a pass play rather than a handoff. This leads to the consolidation of targets among a smaller number of receivers.
Justin Fields and Sack Avoidance
The downside of target consolidation from RPOs is that they tend to reduce the number of pass attempts in the offense. You see some of the run-heaviest teams in the league claim the top spots in RPO pass attempt share, including the Falcons, Ravens, and Bears. As a result, what the receivers are gaining in target consolidation they are losing in total passing volume.
The Bears seem like a bit of an outlier on the graph, with the addition of DJ Moore suggesting that we’ll see their target consolidation rise in 2023. A common narrative I’ve seen is that DJ Moore to the Bears is the equivalent of AJ Brown to the Eagles. That the Bears obtaining their top receiving weapon will unlock this offense like the Eagles in 2022.
For that to happen, we’ll need the Bears’ pass rate over expectation to rise from the doldrums of the league. An underdiscussed problem standing in the Bears’ way is Justin Fields’ propensity to take sacks. He is pulling a lot of pass attempts out of the offense through both QB scrambles (which we like) and his insane sack rate (which we don’t like). He has been worst in the league among starting QBs for two consecutive seasons in the component of EPA derived from sacks. Can we see some growth from Fields in this area in 2023?
Eagles Get an Extra Quarter
Speaking of the Eagles, I’m looking forward to AJ Brown and Devonta Smith getting the chance to put up fantasy points for the entire game. Last season, the Eagles averaged north of 20 pass attempts in the first half of games. This dropped to 14 pass attempts in the second half, with an especially dramatic drop in the fourth quarter. For example, they averaged about half as many pass attempts in the fourth quarter compared to the second quarter. With a more difficult schedule on the horizon, a volume boost at the end of games can counteract any expected efficiency regression.
Dolphins Counterpunch
Tua Tagovailoa and the Dolphins offense were a pleasant surprise in 2022 as shown by Tua’s career EPA per dropback spiking throughout the year. Yet, we did start to see a dip closer to the end of the season. A common thought on the cause was injuries to Tua and I’m sure that was a part of the story. But, defenses adjusting to the Dolphins offense also played a part.
For most of the season, Tua crushed from clean pockets throwing to the middle of the field. The Chargers in Week 14, as an example, forced Tua to throw more to the boundaries and made the intermediate routes for the Dolphins more difficult. Tua finished that game with a 36% completion rate and 145 yards passing. I’m looking forward to a healthy Tua and the next evolution of the Dolphins’ offense.
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Pace and OC Changes
Offensive pace, or how fast an offense runs, is crucial for fantasy projections. Along with a team’s pass rate, these are top-down metrics that influence the number of opportunities for everyone on the offense. A few weeks back I looked at who has a stronger influence on a team’s pace: a new offensive coordinator or the quarterback.
What I found is that while changes in offensive coordinators have an influence on pace, it hasn’t been dramatic relative to normal year-to-year fluctuations. Yet, it’s been more likely for a team’s pace to change sharply when they have a younger QB. Moreover, there have been some notable exceptions, particularly when Kellen Moore arrived in Dallas. With Kellen Moore now joining the Chargers, do we see the lines in the graph below pass like two ships in the night?
Rashid Shaheed: Breakout or Small Sample Size Trap?
There is a strong correlation between target share and yards per route run (YPRR) for receivers. As you can see from the graph below, Rashid Shaheed had an outlier YPRR mark in 2022 despite a low target share. The reason for this is he only ran a relatively low 181 routes. There is risk in extrapolating efficiency on low volume to higher volume. Not everyone can be Tyreek Hill and maintain elite efficiency with a massive share of the offense. We also can’t be sure that a player with low volume will be able to earn the higher volume needed for a breakout.
Additionally, the track record of these kinds of players hitting in a big way is lacking. Doing this same analysis in 2021 would’ve highlighted Deonte Harty and Kadarius Toney. To be fair, Harty only ran 14 routes in 2022 and is getting buzz in Bills camp, while Toney finished 29th in YPRR if you hand-pick a snap filter that includes him. This seems like the last call for one of these small sample YPRR darlings to smash in fantasy football. I’m in on Shaheed as a late round flyer anyway, though.
RB Talent: Rushing Yards Over Expected
Similar to wide receiver open scores, my favorite metric for RB talent is rushing yards over expected (RYOE). NFL Next Gen Stats sets an expectation for how many rushing yards will be gained on a carry using player tracking data. If the RB exceeds this number, they have positive RYOE, while the opposite is true if they fail to exceed the expectation.
The graph below shows RYOE per carry on the x-axis and also the percentage of carries where the RB exceeded the expectation on the y-axis. You can think of the y-axis as a version of success rate. The size of each RB’s bubble represents their number of carries in 2022.
The graph explains a lot of the discourse around Kenneth Walker this summer (bottom-right on the graph). His explosive runs resulted in a strong RYOE per attempt but he also had a lot of runs that failed to meet expectation. It’s the most compelling reason I’ve seen for why the Seahawks drafted Zach Charbonnet.
Khalil Herbert has been my favorite late-round RB pick during 2023 drafts. Among qualifying RBs, he led the league in RYOE/attempt in the 2022 regular season. The concern is the lack of receiving, both for Herbert specifically and in the Bears’ offense generally (as discussed above). But, he’s been getting a lot of camp buzz and made a very fun 56-yard receiving touchdown in the preseason. I’m betting that Herbert is the lead-back in Chicago and pays off handsomely at his current ADP.
League-wide Rushing Efficiency
Speaking of RBs, league-wide rushing efficiency has been on the rise over the past half-decade. A common explanation is the increase in two-high coverage from defenses with the goal of taking away the explosive passing game. Defenses have been willing to concede more efficient runs if it means they’re stopping long passing plays.
Yards per carry isn’t a perfect stat but it gets the point across in the graph below. You can see this shift toward lighter boxes and an increase in yards per carry. Another explanation is the rise of QB scrambles. Over this same time-period, QB scrambles have increased from 5.0% to 6.3% of rushing attempts. And even with this increase, yards per carry on these runs have increased from 7.26 to 7.42 yards.
13 Personnel
These points can be clearly seen when offenses are in 13 personnel (one RB, three tight ends, and one WR). This heavier personnel grouping has meant an offense wants to run the damn ball. The graph below is one of my favorite Patrick Mahomes graphs. The Chiefs faced the lowest number of defenders in the box when they ran 13 personnel in 2022.
And they used this opportunity to double the next closest team with regard to EPA from 13 personnel. Defenses are daring the Chiefs to run in these situations and they’re doing it effectively. I’m excited to see if defenses figure out any way to slow down the Chiefs in these situations in 2023.
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