Week Two Takeaways
Exploring the fantasy football storylines from the week two actions
Expected Fantasy Points Update
This xFP model is such a nice thing to have. It immediately gives you some idea of the player’s usage, which is really the most important thing in fantasy. So I’m featuring that data. There’s a new Google Sheet to display (link in the Resource Glossary).
I’ll be mentioning those figures a ton for the rest of the season. And I’ll be adding onto it. I want to add things like xFP Per Snap, xFP Per Team Play, and so on and so forth. I’m really taking the NFL tools to a new level this year. There are a ton of columns in the NFL FASTR data set (which powers all of this) that I haven’t even explored.
Offensive Landscape
We have just a two-game sample on every team. It’s early, and things will change. But here’s our first look at the offensive efficiency plot. This plots yards per pass attempt against yards per rush, and colors the dots by average expected points added per play.
You want to be in the top right.
The Ravens are running away with it. The Raiders, Steelers, P:anthers, and Browns are not where you want to be.
There’s some good news to find here for the Dolphins. They looked a lot better in week two at home. So the Achane bags are looking pretty good, and there’s some hope for Tyreek and Waddle as well.
Defensive Landscape
Same thing the other way around. This is very noisy though. So much of this is about who you’ve played. The Bills don’t grade super well because they had that one game against the Ravens who lit them up. But it’s worth checking.
It’s flipped in this situation. The upper-right teams have been bad defensively, and vice-versa. So the Packers are looking like a stud defense to avoid with fantasy players early on. Those are impressive marks, even through just two games.
The Bears, Steelers, Cowboys, and Dolphins are the ones sending us bad signals early on.
Situation Neutral Pace
It’s good to understand how fast teams play. More pace = more plays = more fantasy poitns. But pace can be skewed by game environment.
To get a good feel on how fast or slow teams are playing, we can filter the play-by-data to only situations where the game is close. In the dataset we have, every single play is marked with what the current win probability of that team was when the play was run.
So we can take the Team Offense data from the Tableau, and slap on this new ‘NeutralSituation’ filter.
Your ten slowest teams:
Ravens
Chargers
Lions
Eagles
Jets
Patriots
Cardinals
Panthers
Titans
Chiefs
Your ten quickest teams:
Bengals
Cowboys
Bears
Saints
Bucs
Broncos
Seahawks
Raiders
Commanders
49ers
We should wait a few more weeks to feel really confident in the signal of those numbers, but it’s useful here early on nonetheless.
Bengals
Cincinnati has lost Joe Burrow until mid-December. That’s a big loss. It will be imperative for us to figure out what that means for the rest of these weapons. The Bengals had three skill players drafted inside the top 40 this year, so there are a ton of implications here.
Jake Browning came in and targeted the receivers like this:
Chase: 11 targets, 10-128-0, 6.5 ADoT
Higgins: 5 targets, 1-42-1, 17.4 ADoT
Gesicki: 4 tarets, 3-18-0, 11.5 ADoT
Iosivas: 4 targets, 1-12-0, 11.8 ADoT
Fant: 3 targets, 2-3-0, 1.7 ADoT
Brown: 2 targets, 2-18-0, 4.0 ADoT
Tinsley: 1 target, 1-13-1, 13 ADoT
Sample: 1 target, 1-7-0, 4.0 ADoT
So he was throwing it downfield. The ADoT with Browning in was 8.8. It was 6.9 on Burrow’s 36 attempts between week one and two. I’m not sure if that’s something that will stick, but it’s something to consider. It doesn’t seem like a hugely bad news for Ja’Marr Chase. It’s reasonable to think that the less competent and confident QB in Browning will lean heavily on his best player.
Time will tell. You downgrade them all, but for now you’re probably downgrading Higgins and Brown a lot more than Chase. Brown’s downgrade is mostly about expected point total. We expected the Bengals to be a top three scoring offense with Burrow, and that’s certainly not the case with him out of there. But what do you do? You’re not going to be able to get a return in a trade or anything like that. We’re probably just hanging in there and hoping that Browning can impress some people.
Rams
This is about as concentrated as you’ll find a passing game. Davante Adams and Puka Nacua both went off here. Adams led with 13 targets and a 6-106-1 line, while Nacua went 8-91-0 through the air and added a 45-yard rushing touchdown.
Those two now have a 68% share of the targets and a 78% share of the air yards.
They’re both super viable in fantasy. Nacua could end up the WR1 now, and Adams might prove to be a steal where you got him (round fiveish?).
Lions
There were some concerns about the Lions early on this year. But I don’t think we have those now. They erupted for 52 points.
After averaging 3.7 yards per play in week one, they went for 8.7 in week two. Amon-Ra St. Brown was the player of the week with a 9-115-3 line. They scored all those points with a -8% PROE%, but still neither David Montgomery nor Jahmyr Gibbs exceeded 12 carries. They both had fine games, but the huge games went through the air to the receivers.
Steelers Backfield
Jaylen Warren saw 11 carries and two targets in week one, ceding seven carries and four targets to Kenneth Gainwell. But he took over in week two. He played 58% of the snaps and took 14 of the 20 RB carries and grabbed four targets. Gainwell was still a factor, but it was Warren out there on the big downs, and he was clearly Pittsburgh’s best player with 134 all purpose yards.
Kaleb Johnson made a huge mistake on a kick return and probably cost the Steelers the game. It’s been a disaster start to the season for him, I wouldn’t expect to see him ont he field very much going forward. He saw just a 3.4% snap share in week two.
Quinshon Judkins Debut
This one was surprising. The guy has hardly practiced with the team, but he led the backfield during his NFL debut. He took 10 of the 21 RB carries and played 26% of the snaps. You could say it was a three way split between him, Ford, and Sampson, but he took enough of it to not want much to do with Ford or Sampson next week. But we’ll see how that plays out.
Jets and Vikings Disaster
It was ugly for these two teams. They were both under 50 plays run. And you can’t do much on offense when you’re running that few plays. That’s not all in an offense’s control, it depends a lot on what the defense is doing against the other offense. But it does also mean they aren’t converting first downs.
Week Two Most Plays Run
DAL 89
CAR 82
CLE 73
NOR 71
JAX 71
IND 71
BUF 71
Week Two Least Plays Run
MIN 47
NYJ 47
BAL 53
ARI 54
NWE 56
MIA 57
Justin Fields threw just nine passes. He was hurt, and it was a blowout. So he didn’t finish the game, but I think now we’ve seen the ceiling and the floor for this Jets unit in the first two weeks of the season. It’s a scary thing to start Jets players, but they’ll have some big games as well. The Bills got shredded by the Ravens in week one, but then locked down the Jets.
Cheap Tight Ends Show Up
Ja’Tavion Sanders (CAR) and Jake Ferguson (DAL) are showing some value at the tight end position. With George Kittle on the shelf, the position is pretty weak at the top. So you might be searching for a tight end for your squad, and these two are both in consideration.
Week Two
Sanders: 15.3 xFP, 9 targets, 7-54-0
Ferguson: 19.6 xFP, 12 targets, 9-78-0
The Cowboys ran a ton of plays and put up big numbers as a team, but Ferguson is clearly a key point of this pass game. He now towers above Pickens for #2 on the team in targets with 18, and he’s grabbed 14 passes in two games.
Those two both now rank in the top seven in TE xFP (although this data was prior to the MNF double header).
I’m not saying they’re suddenly top ten TE options, but in the case of Ferguson, I’d say he should be a starting TE in most leagues, and Sanders is worth a look in deep league situations.
Danny Dimes
Daniel Jones could not have asked for a much better start to the year. And the Colts seem to have clearly made the right choice going with Jones over Richardson.
Jared Goff is the red dot below “Justin” that I didn’t label. The elite cluster at the top is
Justin Herbert
Lamar Jackson
Daniel Jones
Jordan Love
Jared Goff
Matthew Stafford
On the other side are, predictably, young QBs just getting their feet wet. Not a good start from Cam Ward nor JJ McCarthy, and we see Bryce Young continuing to struggle early on. Patience is required with rookie QBs. Being a rookie QB might be the toughest situation in professional sports. I find it best to just avoid those offenses entirely (except for in the case where I drafted Tony Pollard in my home league…).
Stud Wideouts
I like checking the Air vs Actual Yards plot every week. This gives you an idea of which guys are getting a ton of opportunity and which are converting on it.
There’s regression to the mean to spot here. Brian Thomas is on the “bad luck” side of that. He has 258 air yards, but has turned that into just 60 actual yards. His dot will move to the right soon, as inevitably he and Lawrence convert some of those passes.
The sneaky name, which I guess isn’t sneaky anymore, is Rome Odunze. He’s played like a WR1 so far. You could say the same for Zay Flowers, and Wan’Dale Robinson is a nice deep PPR league target. He’s having a nice time with Russ Wilson there.
Javonte Williams RB1?
There was this groupthink among the experts that Javonte would quickly lose the job in Dallas. He was just too bad a player to keep it! But so far, Javonte has 33 of the 42 RB carries and has averaged 4.6 yards per tote. He’s added ten targets and a nice 8-43 line in two games. That puts him #3 on the RB xFP leaderboard.
Role is everything, and this Cowboys offense is a good one to be a part of. Williams is looking like a super steal with his triple-digit ADP.
TreVeyon Henderson
The rookie has played just 32% of the snaps so far and has taken eight carries for 37 yards. He has added eight targets to that, but so far it’s been Rhamondre Stevenson’s backfield.
Stevenson has averaged 3.6 yards per carry, and that’s after being a poor running back last year. The main thing you hear about Stevenson is the fumbles. He fumbled a ton lats year, so he’s always a couple big fumbles away from losing the job. I tend to believe that fumble stuff is random. There’s probably some skill involved, but I bet it’s mostly luck and variance and stuff. That is to say there’s absolutely no guarantee that Stevenson will have a fumble problem this year just because he has in the past.
I think you should hold Henderson. I don’t think anybody is considering dropping him right now. It’s a long season. Henderson’s workload is likely to tick upward as we go, and by the end of the year you would have to imagine he’s the favorite to be getting the bulk of the work.
But if you’re 0-2 right now with Henderson on the roster, you might have to consider shipping him to a 2-0 team who will give you something useful for him in the short term. Those 2-0 teams have been more wiggle room for being patient with a guy like Henderson right now.
Texans Backfield
I don’t have the snaps and routes data for last night, yet. But this backfield has been a two headed situation between the veteran Nick Chubb and the rookie Woody Marks. Joe Mixon probably will enter the picture at some point, but it could be awhile. And who knows, maybe Mixon is really, really hurt and we won’t see much or any of him this year.
Marks went 3-14-0 on the ground last night while Chubb played very well with a 12-43-1 line on the ground and a 2-29-0 line through the air. Neither guy are fantastic fantasy plays right now, but both are likely to beat their draft cost this year. And Marks could be a guy who is really nice down the stretch if Mixon doesn’t come back and take this full role.
Jaguars Backfield
In the first game with Tank Bigsby out of the picture, here’s how it went:
Player: % of snaps, rushing line, receiving line
→ Etienne: 66% of snaps, 14-71-0, 2-18-1
→ Tuten: 26% of snaps, 8-42-0, 2-32-1
LeQuint Allen plays the third-down snaps. But this was a good development for Bhayshul Tuten. He took over the Bigsby role, and showed some of his big play ability with 74 all purpose yards on just ten touches.
Tuten probably isn’t playable in fantasy leagues right now, but he could eat more and more into Etienne’s role. And any injury to Etienne would make him at least an RB2 in fantasy leagues of all sorts.
Those are the situations that most stood out to me in week two. Let’s turn the page to week three and try to have a profitable week!