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| Monday, November 4, 2024 |
| I am done recording the Week 9 Beyond the Box Score podcast -- a weekly Monday recap show that I do with Adam and Dan -- and now it's time to catch FFT Newsletter readers up on everything that I've learned in the past 24 hours! We're going beyond the box score! |
| If you want to check out the podcast version on FFT, you can listen to that here! |
| Beyond the Box Score -- Fantasy football risers following Week 9 |
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| Fantasy riser -- Chase Brown |
| Chase Brown was the only Bengals RB to touch the ball on offense in Week 9. Zack Moss is out indefinitely. |
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| I was too low on Brown in Week 9, I had him ranked as RB15 or something in the range. I was not confident that he would play on passing downs, but we saw him on the field for almost 80% of the snaps. |
| It's worth noting that it was a blowout win. Moss split pass protection reps evenly with Trayveon Williams. And Brown nearly gave up a sack on a pass protection miss. Burrow had to avoid the sack and get rid of the ball. |
| The Bengals dropped back to pass 41 times in this game, Brown was on the field for 28 of those plays. He was only on the field for 5 of 15 third-down plays. |
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| He's clearly a Fantasy riser after touching the ball 32 times and collecting 157 scrimmage yards. Those may prove to be career-highs for Brown, though. He might not total 150+ scrimmage yards across his next 2-3 games. |
| Fantasy riser -- Jaxon Smith-Njigba |
| Speaking of Fantasy risers who aren't the easiest to believe in from a sustainability standpoint, do we believe in JSN this time? It helps to have Matt Harmon considering jumping on board. |
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| Long term, this was clearly an encouraging development. It's one thing to be a psycho like me and watch all of JSN's routes and continually pound the table about how he is a downfield winner who is being criminally misused by NFL play-callers. |
| (To be clear, I suspect that Ryan Grubb's propensity for short horizontally breaking routes in 2024 has more to do with the limitations of his offensive line than his actual preferences) |
| It's another thing entirely to have actual evidence to point to. JSN shredded as a downfield route runner for the course of a full game for the first time in his pro career. He had 180 yards and another 70 called back on holds. |
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| Fantasy risers -- Browns pass-game pieces |
| Jameis Winston's second start did not yield nearly as productive of a statistical output as the first, but massive receiving volume was again produced. All three of Cedric Tillman, Jerry Jeudy, and Elijah Moore finished with 9+ targets and 115+ air yards. David Njoku has five catches and seven targets in each of Winston's starts. |
| The remaining schedule for Cleveland is not inviting. With the Browns on a bye this week, maybe it is an opportune time to consider selling high on Winston or some of the pass-catchers if in need of immediate help in making a playoff push. After the bye, Cleveland faces New Orleans, Pittsburgh, Denver, and Pittsburgh again before we hit Week 15. Not only are those less-than-ideal matchups, it's also possible that all four games are low-scoring. |
| On paper, all of the underlying data from Winston's start have certainly elevated the Fantasy value of the pass-game pieces. This may be the peak of the perceived value, though. |
| Fantasy riser -- Tank Bigsby |
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| Travis Etienne returned, and still, Tank Bigbsy was the RB who played the most in Week 9. Even in a loss. |
| Fantasy winners -- C.J. Stroud and Tank Dell |
| Stroud being here is contingent on Nico Collins returning to full health in Week 10, which I have been praying for every hour of every day since he suffered his hamstring injury. |
| Tank Dell is here because he balled out on Thursday vs. the Jets, did you forget?! |
| Fantasy risers -- Bryce Young and Ja'Tavion Sanders |
| Bryce played one of the best games of his young career, and he's found some trust in rookie tight end Ja'Tavion Sanders. Over the past month, Sanders has a super solid 23% target per route run rate and 2.46 yard per route run rate. |
| Fantasy riser -- Darnell Mooney |
| Even in a game where Drake London ran only six routes, Kyle Pitts drew one target. That exemplifies exactly why first-read target data is important. You know whose targets did not evaporate? Fantasy football's late-round lottery-winning ticket Darnell Mooney. |
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| Mooney's 53% first-read target rate in Week 9 was the highest in the NFL. And the Falcons offense worked! That's a really bullish long-term signal for Mooney! |
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| Fantasy riser -- De'Von Achane |
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| Achane scored a goal-to-go touchdown following the Mostert role reduction. It's possible that he'll be even more involved when in scoring distance going forward. Previously, the two had split that work evenly, but since Mostert had recently returned to the lineup, Miami was getting him heavily involved near the end zone. That may change. |
| I bring that up because it's possible that Achane hasn't even hit his real ceiling yet. He's not contributing a whole lot of Fantasy production on the ground. He's just pouring it on as a receiver. |
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| I do want to point out that matchups may have impacted the target distribution in Miami. |
| Fantasy riser -- Tyrone Tracy |
| Not only did he clear concussion protocol and play on a short week, but Tracy continued his takeover of all of the expected Fantasy points (XFP) in the New York backfield. Beyond the Box Score listeners are lit. |
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| Next up is a matchup against the Panthers. After that, the Giants hit their bye and will hopefully plan a way to get Tracy more involved in the passing game. To finish things out, Tracy draws plenty of advantageous matchups. Week 15 vs. Baltimore is the only remaining game on his Fantasy stretch-run schedule that scares me, and it's possible that he's locked into such a high-volume role by then that he's matchup proof. Even as a member of the New York Giants, Tracy offers a combination of high-level usage and yardage creation that could make him matchup-proof akin to what we've seen from Chuba Hubbard or Alvin Kamara. Or maybe Tony Pollard is the closest comparison. The Titans have one of the lowest implied point totals every week, and still we're seeing Pollard regularly push close to 100 scrimmage yards on a weekly basis. |
| Fantasy riser -- Evan Engram |
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| Fantasy riser -- Jakobi Meyers |
| Meyers had a 48% first-read target rate in Week 9, topped only by Mooney league-wide. |
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| Fantasy riser -- Ladd McConkey |
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| The Chargers continue to pass the ball more and more as Justin Herbert has played incredibly well in 2024 and is the clear-cut best option for L.A. to put out a competitive football product. |
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| A lot was left on the field for McConkey in Week 9. Meanwhile, Quentin Johnston and Josh Palmer both scored on busted coverages. On Palmer's, the defense was overcompensating for an inability to contain McConkey and left the sideline wide open. That occured multiple times in this game. |
| And it makes sense. McConkey has to be terrifying for opposing coverage units. I love the way he moves. McConkey and Josh Downs are my favorite weekly watches at the WR position currently. I gravitate towards what's new, of course, Justin Jefferson and A.J. Brown are the actual best weekly watches at the moment! Can I please just have some fun and like what I like? |
| I like McConkey. I like him a lot. I'm enamored with him as a player, and it has nothing to do with any self-serving desire to prove that I am predicting things. You may remember that McConkey was one of the players who I was actively not drafting this summer. I like McConkey because he is awesome. He's one of the most exciting players in the NFL. That's where my focus gravitates -- any direction where new and exciting information is to be gleaned. Even when it's about Najee Harris or Jakobi Meyers or DeAndre Hopkins (hopefully tonight!) or Evan Engram, I'm looking for what there is to be learned and then doing my best to relay that information to those who are curious enough to read my ramblings. If you can do that without bugging me with your own weird assumptions and comments about my work, thank you. If not, feel free to bug off, buddy! |
| If you don't know about it already, Dan and I created a second Beyond the Box Score episode that is exclusive to YouTube. We've had a ton of awesome guests help us get the show up and running, and we have both put a lot of work into that podcast project with an aim to make it fun and accessible for any level of NFL fan! You can support the project by watching, liking, commenting, and subscribing. Thanks for being here! |
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