Week 2 Review: Looking Back At Projections
All is right with the world again after week two isn’t it? Week one was clearly an anomaly and week two is what we can trust as being the norm from now on isn’t it? Nope. And to make it worse, we had a horrific week of injuries that shakes up rosters, strategies and game plans across the land.
What we do get from week two is the start of some patterns emerging. We can see which teams are playing in a consistent way, and which ones differ under the different gamescripts. There are still plenty of question marks though, after some wild swings in approach from week one to week two. It’s going to take another week or two to really establish what teams are trying to do and get a good grip on how that impacts projections, but we’re getting closer.
As always, I’m not going to spend time working through waiver wire adds, or buy low/sell high candidates, but instead I’m going to take a retrospective look at the assumptions I used for my weekly projections. I’ll pick out where I was significantly different, where I was close, and some of the players that sit at either end of some key stats on the week. Let’s get into the Week 2 review.
Week 2 Review: Team play counts
Key Stats
- Highest: Cincinnati Bengals (88 plays)
- Lowest: Minnesota Vikings (47 plays)
Last week I noted that the Buffalo Bills’ 81 plays was massive so the Cincinnati Bengals said ‘hold my beer’ and ran 88 plays. Not only that but after the week one count of eight teams running 70 or more plays, that count jumped to 12 in week two. The Chiefs and Chargers went to overtime so we should take them out of this list, leaving 10.
I’m interested to see whether this continues and what the reason for this trend is. Most of the teams were in high-scoring affairs where they needed to keep throwing the ball. 21 of the 32 teams hit the over on their vegas implied totals, 13 of those by more than a touchdown. So we have faster-paced, higher-scoring games leading to more plays. Going in to the season there were question marks about rusty defenses and based on what we’re seeing here, I’m inclined to believe it. What do we do next week? I’m tempted to bump the play volumes up a touch for most teams. But I’m also going to assume that defenses are starting to shake off some of that rust and those fast-paced, high-scoring games are going to start to come down.
Related | WEEK 2 DRAFTKINGS MAIN SLATE RECAP
At the bottom end, I noted last week that the 2019 low-bar was an average of 55 plays per game and that three teams managed fewer plays in week one. For week two, only one team falls in to that zone, the Minnesota Vikings. With a measly 47 plays to add to their 49 plays from week one, the Vikings are struggling to get their offense on the field and are getting absolutely dominated on time of possession. Expectations are starting to lower for this team and if they don’t do something against the Titans in week three (which won’t be easy) then this team could be in real trouble.
Having hit the bottom of the pile in week one, the Jaguars jumped from 47 plays to 74 plays in week two and put themselves in the top five for week two play volume. At the other end, the Titans came back close to their 2019 pace with 60 plays after running 77 plays in week one.
Key Takeaway – some normality starting to return to expectations after a wild week one. The final play counts of 23 of the 32 teams were less than 10 points from projections
Week 2 Review: Pass Attempts
Key Stats
- Highest: Cincinnati Bengals (61 attempts – 72-percent passing)
- Lowest: Cleveland Browns (23 attempts – 40-percent passing)
As noted in week one, New England’s 31-percent pass ratio was crazy low and likely to be unsustainable. So in week two it was good to see the lowest marks were closer to 40-percent. Although the Browns had the lowest number of attempts, the Colts and Ravens managed a lower ratio with 38-percent and 39-percent passing respectively. There shouldn’t be any surprises here, both are run heavy teams that like to dominate the play clock with their ground game, and both were allowed to do it by their opponents in week two.
At the top end, as already mentioned, the Bengals and Joe Burrow went nuts in week two. You only need to look at them being top of the pass attempts list and their opponent, the Browns, being bottom, to see that this was the gamescript. The Browns controlled the game on the ground and attempted to burn the clock, while the Bengals were slinging the ball to keep in the game.
Related | Week 2 Injury Report
This metric continues to be gamescript driven. The Vegas over/under and implied team totals are what I use to drive my projection totals at this stage of the season, and once again the biggest differences in projected pass-ratios were in line with the biggest differences in the Vegas expectations. It’s been difficult to get a real grip on team expectations without a pre-season so both the Vegas expectations and my projections are getting closer as we learn more.
One of my big misses this week was the Atlanta Falcons. Thanks to some dodgy ball-handling and play-calling from Dallas early in the game, the Falcons got an early lead and leaned more on the run game than they typically do. I don’t expect this to be a regular occurrence from one of the most pass-heavy teams in the league. Likewise, the Patriots had to throw more in week two to keep up with the chef (let Russ cook? Come on people, keep up…) so their 64-percent pass ratio is likely to be on the high side of what we’ll see in future.
Key Takeaway – as we get a better grip on team tendencies, the Vegas lines are likely to get better and the gamescripts are becoming more predictable. That should lead to much closer results on the projections
Rush Attempts
- Highest: Los Angeles Chargers (44 attempts)
- Lowest: Houston Texans (17 attempts)
I’ve covered the ratios above but if we look at some pure numbers, the Texans’ 17 rush attempts is really low and shows what’s going to happen in games where they are thoroughly dominated by their opponents. The 44 attempts from the Chargers came in five quarters but with only one rush attempt in OT, the 43 rushes through the first four quarters would still be the highest on the week. As with the Patriots’ 42 rush attempts in week one, this is a higher 16-game pace than the Ravens managed in 2019. If Herbert can get back under centre again, we might see this become a more regular occurrence as they use their run game to take the pressure off the rookie.
Key Takeaway – some dominant ground games are starting to emerge now and we can see which teams are looking to use it in the right gamescript. Conversely, we are starting to see which teams are going to abandon the run when the going gets tough
Intended Air Yards per Attempt (IAY/A)
- Highest: Jeff Driskel (12.4 yards per attempt)
- Lowest: Sam Darnold (4.4 yards per attempt)
Ok, so technically Driskel isn’t top. Technically Russell Gage is. His lone 38 yard attempt downf…. wait, I’m not doing analysis on Russell Gage’s air yards sorry, I just won’t.
Drew Lock was also slightly above Driskel but based on the limited pass attempts prior to injury, I’m going to discount him as well. So I definitely didn’t have Driskel projected and the impact across that whole team was therefore different to anticipated. But we did see that he wasn’t afraid to throw downfield and it will be interesting to see how this develops during Lock’s absence.
Also near the top of this list are a couple of gunslingers in Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers but some surprise entrants with Kirk Cousins and Josh Allen. Allen in particular is an interesting one, we know he has a cannon for an arm but in week one he reigned that in for the sake of his accuracy. In week two he went back up again, and remarkably didn’t sacrifice that accuracy. This is a very intriguing development indeed.
Week 3 Fantasy Football Rankings
At the bottom of the scale, Sam Darnold did not have a great game and had an IAY/A of 4.4, a season low so far for the league. Last week it was Minshew who threw shortest but he had a phenomenally high completion rate and a very low volume that contributed. With 32 pass attempts and a 66-percent completion rate, the same can’t be said for Darnold. He just doesn’t have anything around him and he’s dumping it off short.
The aforementioned Gardner Minshew, low guy in week one, jumped up to 8.7 IAY/A attempt this week, putting him in the middle of the pack. This shows us not to over-react to one week of data and also helped to highlight to me that Minshew can play – he doesn’t just need to rely on short throws to make his money. Last week’s high-flyer Carson Wentz also came crashing back down and actually dropped below average to 6.5.
Pleasingly, when I compare the results against my projections, I can see that 80-percent were within 2 yards of expectation. 47-percent were within a yard and I nailed Ryan Tannehill.
Last week, I laid out some specifics around Patrick Mahomes and his IAY/A. I noted his career low IAY/A of 4.6 and that his lowest IAY/A games were against teams with elite DBs (Jalen Ramsey, Derwin James, Chris Harris Jr, Stephon Gilmore) and in some cases elite DEs (JJ Watt, Myles Garrett). As the Chargers now have Chris Harris Jr in their secondary, I predicted another lower IAY/A game which came to fruition. This unhealthy obsession with Mahomes will continue for a little longer. I’m expecting it to bump up again this week against the Ravens who, despite having a top level defense, haven’t negatively impacted Mahomes’ IAY/A previously.
Key Takeaway – results are stabilising around expectations already. Some injuries will impact this over the next few weeks but hopefully the predictability will return
Targets
Top Targets
| 1 | Darren Waller | 16 |
| 2 | Travis Kelce | 14 |
| 3 | Stefon Diggs | 13 |
| = 3 | DJ Moore | 13 |
| = 3 | AJ Green | 13 |
| = 3 | Diontae Johnson | 13 |
Target Market Share (Percentage of Team’s Target Share)
| 1 | Darren Waller | 42 |
| 2 | Stefon Diggs | 37 |
| 3 | Diontae Johnson | 32 |
| = 3 | Allen Robinson | 32 |
| 5 | DJ Moore | 31 |
| = 5 | Adam Thielen | 31 |
What a week for some of the tight ends. Darren Waller and Travis Kelce were the two most targeted players in week two. Waller was head and shoulders above everyone else as the most targeted player on his team.
Stefon Diggs has answered the critics early in the season, making light of any suggestions that Allen’s accuracy was going to cause him problems. Letting him slide in drafts is starting to look foolish at this stage.
Similarly, Diontae Johnson was a pre-season breakout darling of many analysts. But it was tinged with uncertainty about what this Steelers team was going to look like and how Big Ben was going to perform on his return. No such concerns so far as Johnson is clearly establishing himself as the number one receiver in this team and a trusted target for Big Ben to go to.
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Both DJ Moore and Allen Robinson look like great buy-low targets. They’ve not yet put the points on the board but they’re getting the volume opportunities. The problem with both, particularly Robinson, is the volume of uncatchable targets at this stage. If they can start to get better connections with their quarterbacks, these two could start popping off very soon and any kind of buy-low window will slam shut.
With little other pass-catching options on the Vikings, it’s no surprise to see Thielen getting the target share that put him in many pre-season top 10 lists. The Vikings are struggling though and really need to start putting some points on the board to make Thielen worth his pick.
Finally, AJ Green is one who seems to be suffering from inefficiency. He’s getting the targets and doing nothing with them. If he can improve now he’s had time to settle back in after his extended absence, then he’s about to hit big. But if he can’t then those targets are quickly going to evaporate and Burrow will be looking elsewhere.
My one big miss in this group was Waller. Of course no-one would have projected the volume he got on Monday night, but I was down on him coming in. I expected Ruggs and Edwards to provide a more balanced attack. But if Monday night is anything to go by then the rest of this team are decoys while Carr feeds Waller.
Key Takeaway – key number one targets are starting to emerge and while not too surprising, there are definitely some upticks in projections coming for the alpha receivers
Carries
Top Carries
| 1 | Josh Jacobs | 27 |
| 2 | Jonathan Taylor | 26 |
| 3 | Derrick Henry | 25 |
| 4 | Joshua Kelley | 23 |
| 5 | Ezekiel Elliott | 22 |
Carry Market Share (Percentage of Team’s Carry Share)
| 1 | Dalvin Cook | 78 |
| 2 | Josh Jacobs | 77 |
| 3 | Miles Sanders | 77 |
| 4 | Christian McCaffrey | 75 |
| 5 | Derrick Henry | 74 |
One of these things is not like the others. Joshua Kelley is really starting to grab that ‘Melvin Gordon role’ and turn it in to some significant workload, propelling him in to the top 5 carry leaders in week two. A fantastic start to his rookie career but this heavy rushing volume likely resulted from a rookie quarterback being thrown in to the game at the last second and relying on his backs to shoulder the workload.
Related | Week 3 Rookie Stock Take
For those concerned about a slow start from Dalvin Cook, he’s clearly still the dominant back in Minnesota. He’s simply impacted by their defense’s inability to get off the field and give the offense a go.
And for those who are still hanging on to the ‘Doug Pederson uses RBBC’ narrative, I’d like to refer you to third place in the second table above. Sanders is the guy in Philadelphia and as long as he stays healthy, this isn’t going to change.
There were a few other takeaways in the numbers, with concerns over Benny Snell eating in to James Conner’s workload a complete non-event; and Melvin Gordon taking 73-percent of the carries in a Broncos backfield missing Phillip Lindsay.
James Robinson is still the dominant back in Jacksonville. And CEH is still the lead back in Kansas City. But both saw a hit to their market share of carries in week two. Baltimore’s backfield is going to change every week depending which way the wind blows. As will the 49ers, Rams and Dolphins.
The biggest issue in the next couple of weeks is the impact of injuries. With CMC and Barkley out, in addition to the others that are already out (e.g. Bell, Lindsay, etc), there’s going to be some uncertainty on how these backfields are going to shake out.
Key Takeaway – more tweaks to the rookies required but much attention needed on the backfields impacted by injury
Summary
I was careful not to over-correct after week one and that proved to be a smart decision with plenty swinging back to centre in week two. There are some patterns and team tendencies starting to emerge as the depth charts and target leaders are beginning to set themselves apart. The Vegas implied team totals are starting to make some more sense so the bumps will start to smooth out over the next few weeks.
With all the injuries, I’m dreading what week three is going to look like. When we get some better injury updates, I can really start to get a handle on how things look. I’ll start with 100 pass attempts for Burrow and a 70-percent target share from Waller, and go from there…
