I’m hoping a lot of you had the chance to watch NFL Redzone last weekend. All eight games in the early window were in the red zone at the end of the first half. We had scoring and explosive plays unlike in Week 1. With that in mind, let’s start this week by looking at the upcoming Thursday night game between the 49ers and Giants.
Thursday Night Focus: Giant Air Yards
The graph below shows the top half of the league in terms of air yards per pass attempt. The Giants barely squeeze into the top half but that doesn’t tell the full story. Nearly 45% of their air yards in the first two weeks came in the second half of Week 2. This ESPN article does a great job explaining the sudden shift. The Giants at that point were down 60 points to zero on the season and decided to get their deep threat Jalin Hyatt involved. Daniel Jones also looked particularly sharp on play-action passes, where a large portion of their air yards stemmed. This is great news for Hyatt, Waller, and the Giants offense as a whole if they can keep up this aggressiveness. Here’s hoping for a healthy Aiyuk and the continued involvement of Hyatt for some fun deep passes on Thursday night.
Air Yards by Season Buzzkill
Yet, even with the optimism above, the league-wide trend of declining air yards per attempt has continued. Defenses are focused on taking away explosive pass plays, allowing rushing efficiency to rise, and forcing offenses to not make mistakes on long drives. The commentators for the Dolphins-Patriots game referenced this a few times. They mentioned how the Patriots’ defense looked like an umbrella opening up whenever they broke the huddle. With this context, it’s less of a surprise that Tyreek Hill finished the game with 40 yards receiving, while Raheem Mostert averaged 6.7 yards per carry. Offenses generally were able to find some solutions with the creative use of motions that I discussed last week, but I don’t see defenses changing their general strategy in the near future.
Pierce and Walker: Tough Sledding
Not every RB found the going easy in Week 2, though. Two that come to mind are Dameon Pierce and Kenneth Walker. Take a look at the graph below. The x-axis is Week 2 rushing yards while the y-axis is the percentage of rushing yards that came after contact. Nearly all of Walker’s rushing yards came after contact in Week 2, while Pierce’s yards after contact exceeded his actual rushing yards. Injuries on the offensive line certainly didn’t help Walker, while the Colts were constantly in the Texans’ backfield, generating six sacks on C.J. Stroud. There will be easier days ahead for both RBs, as they were more efficient in Week 1, but we’ll need the blocking to improve quickly in Houston and Seattle.
Joe Burrow Quick Trigger
Prior to Burrow stating that he re-aggravated his calf injury in Week 2, something was obviously rotten in the state of Ohio. Burrow’s 2.40-second average time from snap to throw is the second fastest in the league. As you can see from the graph below, he’s throwing nearly every pass from the shotgun, up from already very high numbers in previous years. And after averaging nearly 5 carries per game in 2022, Burrow has run twice for 4 yards thus far in 2023. The Bengals are clearly protecting their star quarterback, keeping him away from the pass rush with fewer dropbacks, getting the ball out quickly, and not relying on his legs in the slightest. It hasn’t been pretty so far. Burrow has the ninth lowest completion percentage over expected according to Next Gen Stats to go along with the ninth-lowest TD rate. It doesn’t seem like things will improve dramatically without some positive news on Burrow’s calf injury.
Sam Howell Under Pressure
Sam Howell has actually looked alright so far this season. He’s currently 16th in EPA/dropback among qualified QBs. Yet, sacks have especially hurt his efficiency. Excluding Rodgers who played only a handful of snaps, Howell is second-to-last in the component of EPA derived from sacks. Similarly, Howell is last in the NFL (also excluding Rodgers) in terms of the percentage of pressures that turn into sacks. Unfortunately, pressure-to-sack ratio has historically been sticky, and this is exactly what has been brought up against Justin Fields. Among FBS quarterbacks with at least 100 pass attempts in 2021, Howell was 7th in the percentage of pressures that turned into sacks according to PFF. This is most likely something the Commanders will have to accept but it does pull pass attempts out of the offense, harming skill players like McLaurin and Dotson.
Unsustainable Love
Continuing the discussion on QBs, Jordan Love is second in fantasy points at the position in 2023. Digging deeper, though, it looks a bit fluky. The graph below shows the TD rate on the x-axis and the completion percentage above expectation (CPOE) on the y-axis. The dot by itself in the bottom right is Jordan Love. His TD rate, or the share of his pass attempts that result in touchdowns, is about three times the NFL average. That’s not sustainable. According to NFL Next Gen Stats, he hasn’t been particularly accurate either, landing behind only Justin Fields in CPOE. If you have Jordan Love and anyone in your league is completely bought in on him, I’d be selling now.
Let Marvin Mims Cook
Speaking of being unsustainable, Marvin Mims ran six routes in Week 2 but generated 113 receiving yards. With a large number of routes, any yards per route run (YPRR) number above 2.5 puts you in truly elite company. Mims reached nearly 19 YPRR in Week 2. Yet, unlike with Love, this is a purely positive sign moving forward. The hope is that route number spikes in the coming weeks on this massive performance. Russell Wilson has also been above average in CPOE for the season. More generally, I’m buying Mims and Jeudy with this monster game hopefully increasing Mims’ routes and a quiet box score for Jeudy masking the larger story of his health. Jeudy was close to a full-time player in Week 2 coming off of injury and I’m buying the talent on an improved Broncos offense.
Let James Cook…Cook
Depending on your scoring settings and league size, James Cook is either a low-end RB1 or a high-end RB2. He’s looked good so far in 2023, ranking eight in rushing yards over expected according to NFL Next Gen Stats among RBs with ten or more carries. What holds James Cook back from becoming a true RB1 in fantasy is his complete lack of goal-line work. If you’re like me, you’ll be surprised to learn that James Cook does not have a single goal-line carry in his career. You read that right. His closest carry to the endzone was from the 7-yard line in Week 8 of 2022. That is one of his seven carries that have started within the opponent’s 10-yard line. I can understand this a bit from the Bills’ perspective. They have bigger, complementary RBs for a reason, plus Josh Allen can take it in himself. But from all fantasy managers to the Bills, let’s give the guy a chance!
Let Quentin Johnston…Well You Get It
Joshua Palmer is currently ranked 270th in PFF’s receiving grade metric. He’s managed just 17 yards on his six targets thus far. Quentin Johnston, who the Chargers drafted with the 21st overall pick in this year’s draft, has just 25 routes on the season. It’s not a surprise that the Chargers have slow-played QJ to start the season, as reports from camp indicated this would happen. It’s worth checking in with the QJ manager in your league to see if this aligns with their expectations to start the season, though. You’d just have to think things will improve as the season progresses.
Zay Flowers’ Target Depth
I know the box score stats for Zay Flowers were not as flashy in Week 2 compared to Week 1. His target number dropped in half, going from 10 to 5. One promising thing for the sustainability of Flowers’ performance, though, was the target depth he saw in Week 2. His average depth of target (aDoT) in Week 1 was only 2.6 yards. That low number feels a little gimmicky and reminds me of someone like Rondale Moore. Obviously, getting him involved as much as they did is a positive sign, but you’d like to see that involvement come on actual NFL routes. That changed sharply in Week 2, where Flowers’ aDoT jumped to 12.6. Despite the drop in box score statistics, this is a positive sign for Flowers’ versatility as an NFL WR.
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