I’m a huge basketball fan (& nerd). I listen to and read a ton of real basketball content not related to fantasy sports, and some particular content that’s always in my rotation is from Zach Lowe of ESPN. I highly recommend The Lowe Post podcast to any other hoop heads, but he also writes a weekly article on ESPN called “10 Things”. In 10 Things, he discusses various different relevant topics across the NBA for that time period or different things that he’s been thinking about or researching.
Funny enough, I’ve sort of been searching for that kind of mechanism to document my thoughts in this Best Ball space. As you might expect, my silly brain is constantly thinking about tons of random ideas revolving around Best Ball. The problem is that most don’t really need some lengthy article or podcast. Often times they’re just one simple thought or idea or new strategy I haven’t fully fleshed out, even some statistic I saw or uncovered that I found interesting.
I don’t really believe in re-creating the wheel, and frankly I don’t know what took me so long, but I’ve decided to steal the ’10 Things’ concept here at Spike Week. Starting today, I’ll be posting 5 things from Best Ball each weekend that I think are particularly interesting. I think 10 might be a little big over the top for every single week, so we are going to stick to five. But who knows, we can always adjust later when training camp picks up if need be.
Last week we touched on some shocking 300 yard passing stats, Jameson Williams & Kendre Miller hype, George Kittle’s best ball profile and how much CJ Stroud loves Tank Dell.
Let’s get into this week.
5 Things in Best Ball This Week
1: Should we be more worried about the Bills and Cowboys?
It seems like every podcast, show or even discord conversation I have with absolutely anyone ends up with at least some discussion about players from two offenses – the Cowboys and the Bills. And it makes sense. These have been two elite offenses for quite some time, with elite QB play, and there is a ton of theoretical production up for grabs in both offenses. Naturally, we feel safe assuming these offenses will continue to be awesome, and thus there are some undervalued assets available in drafts, or at least some valuable skill players in general.
But the funny thing is that nearly the entirety of the conversation surrounding all the skill players, sans CeeDee Lamb, ends up not about the player at all. It’s almost entirely about the offense.
“Well, someone has to catch passes now that Diggs and Gabe are gone…” is the type of framing you’ll hear a lot, and I’m sure i’ve even said it. I’ve definitely said something similar in regards to the Cowboys running backs.
If you run down all the skill players, outside of CeeDee Lamb, on both of these offenses, the individual player profiles are not ones we would typically be excited to draft. Some of them we’d probably even laugh at others for drafting, especially at these costs.
Ezekiel Elliot is clearly a corpse at this point. Rico Dowdle has done zippo in 4 NFL seasons, which follows up doing zippo in 4 seasons at South Carolina.
Brandin Cooks masked a terrible season for the Cowboys last year with 8 touchdowns. Jake Ferguson was awesome, but the Cowboys selected Luke Schoonmaker in the 2nd round in the 2023 NFL Draft. Will he steal any snaps?
Jalen Tolbert earned his way on the field over Michael Gallup halfway through last season… and was absolutely putrid.
If all of these Cowboys individual profiles are so concerning, it’s a pretty peculiar situation where we still just assume the offense will be as elite as it was last year. Obviously Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb can elevate a lackluster supporting cast, but Jerry Jones and Cowboys leadership are making it pretty tough on them.
The craziest part? The Bills look even more bleak.
Josh Allen is awesome, but if the Bills are going to continue to be elite, it may take a Herculean effort from him in 2024.
James Cook was *fine*, despite some brutal dropped passes, and I’m bullish on Ray Davis. But Cook wasn’t exactly a hyper productive college prospect, and Ray Davis turns 25 in November of his rookie season. He’s almost a full year older James Cook.
Diggs and Gabe Davis are gone, and the profiles of those attempting to replace them are not ideal. Curtis Samuel is a solid real life NFL player, as Matt Harmon points out in his Reception Perception, but this is a soon to be 28 year old who has never topped 851 receiving yards in a season in the NFL.
Dalton Kincaid was a 1st round pick in 2023, but he didn’t exactly show us star level talent as a rookie. He was just 13th amongst qualifying TEs in the NFL in yards per route run at 1.51. He was tied with Dalton Schultz and behind the likes of Darren Waller, Tanner Hudson and Jonnu Smith. His PFF receiving grade was even worse at 15th amongst TEs.
Khalil Shakir had a bit more inspiring 1.75 YPRR last year, but he earned a target on just 14% of routes and is heading into year 3 with just 65 total regular season targets in his career.
I understand people are excited for Keon Coleman given the opportunity here, but his college profile is about as bad as it gets for an early round NFL Draft pick. His inability to separate has been noted everywhere, but even more concerning was his lack of efficient production or target earning. He was at the bottom of this rookie class with a 1.74 yards per route run. Theoretically, if a player is going to be a star in the NFL, we want to see them dominate college competition, especially in the ACC. Keon was being outproduced on a per route basis by his own teammate at Florida St., Johnny Wilson (2.42 YPRR).
All of this is to say, every time I’ve had a conversation with basically anyone about any Bills or Cowboys skill players outside of CeeDee, it basically turns into continual highlighting of how bad their individual profile is. The problem is that they are ALL bad (to varying degrees).
If we are drafting bad players because we expect the offense to be elite, how is the offense going to be elite when it’s made up of bad players?
2: On/Off Splits That (Maybe?) Matter
I mostly just wanted to give a shoutout to Jacob Gibbs for a fun thread on Twitter with a boatload of interesting On/Off split data from across the NFL.
We don’t want to get too carried away with this type of data because it’s often very small samples and lacking additional context that might be important. It also descriptive and not necessarily predictive of what will happen in the future. But, there are several data points in that thread that I thought were particularly important for explaining some things in Best Ball this year. Or not even necessarily explaining, but adding a potentially different view than the market.
Nico Collins, for instance, is being handed the WR1 spot for the Texans by ADP, but the data for him with Tank Dell On vs. Off the field is eye opening. He was still excellent with Tank, but my goodness those numbers without Tank.
Nico Collins with Tank Dell on the field:
– 210 routes
– 22.9% target per route run rate
– 2.88 yards per route runNico Collins without Tank Dell:
– 258 routes
– 30.3% TPRR
– 3.32 YPRRFull list of WRs to hit the +30% and 3+ mark with 250+ routes run over the past 10 seasons: pic.twitter.com/EKaJ84twPP
— Jacob Gibbs (@jagibbs_23) May 31, 2024
I’ve also heard a fair amount of George Pickens skepticism. Sure, I understand the Arthur Smith hate (even though he was the OC for AJ Brown’s breakout to superstardom), but Pickens was absolutely elite when Diontae Johnson was off the field. And Diontae is now in Carolina.
George Pickens had some crazy splits with Diontae Johnson on/off the field in 2023
Target per route run rate
24.3% – Johnson off
18.3% – Johnson onYards per route run
2.93 – Johnson off
1.64 – Johnson on— Jacob Gibbs (@jagibbs_23) May 31, 2024
3: Darren Waller Dropped a Music Video.
I’m not going to lie, this one doesn’t have all that much relevance to Best Ball. It was just hilarious. Waller got divorced from WNBA star Kelsey Plum, and he had been silent on all subjects. The first we heard from him this summer… was with a music video he made.
Giants Darren Waller just dropped a music video about his divorce with a Fake Kelsey Plum in the video.
It is um…. Interesting.
What do you think? pic.twitter.com/wvaYkeQlK2
— Robert Littal BSO (@BSO) May 30, 2024
Obviously the music video doesn’t really matter (other than how hilarious it is every time these athletes do something like this), but in some totally bizarre way, it feels like the first step towards us finding out if Waller is actually playing this year. Specifically, Dan Duggan had some interesting nuggets and thoughts on the situation.
We’re officially past June 1, so if Darren Waller retires or is released the Giants will gain $11.6M in cap savings with $2.5M dead money this year and $4.9M dead money in 2025.
Know there’s been a notion from some that the Giants and Waller had a handshake agreement not to…
— Dan Duggan (@DDuggan21) June 2, 2024
Waller was clearly not great least year, and he’s likely not a difference making talent at this point in his career. But in Weeks 1 through 7, prior to his injury, he was certainly still a useful fantasy TE role wise. In that span, he was 2nd amongst TEs in target share, behind only Travis Kelce. He was also 2nd in air yards share, 5th in receptions and had a 29% red zone target share. The final counting stats weren’t great, but he had the role of an elite TE.
If Waller doesn’t retire, I understand it doesn’t feel fun making that click, but he’d pretty instantly be the best cheap TE on the board in terms of upside and role. He also is not being drafted in most drafts right now. I have no idea if he’s coming back, but he’s someone I definitely think we should monitor closely.
4: Braelon Allen has a stranglehold on the Jets RB2 job.
Breece Hall is the unquestioned RB1 for the Jets, but their backup situation has been one of the murkiest in the league after drafting Izzy Abanikanda last year, and then adding Braelon Allen and Isaiah Davis in this year’s draft.
While I don’t actually care about the pass catching hype here, we are getting plenty of word that Braelon is in fact the front runner for the RB2 job.
Will have more observations later, but Braelon Allen impressed me as a pass-catcher today. Made a couple nice catches and looked pretty shifty in the open field.
The early favorite for RB2. #Jets
— Zack Rosenblatt (@ZackBlatt) May 29, 2024
I particularly love these kind of backup situations in Best Ball. We have an unquestioned first round pick running back (Breece), yet none of his backups are drafted. Clearly, if something were to happen to Breece, there would be a lot of value created for the other backs, but even alongside Breece we can benefit with someone like Braelon. Breece, like 99.99% of RBs in the modern NFL, is not going to play every single snap. That means you’re going to have something like 25-30% of snaps and touches in a very valuable backfield available at a super cheap cost. Braelon specifically is the exact archetype that could steal some goal line touchdowns, and we know Aaron Rodgers isn’t going to be sneaking at the 1 yard line.
Braelon is becoming even more of a priority target for me in late rounds, and I was already way higher on him in our rankings than the market.
5: Josh Jacobs is not a workhorse, and never was.
The fantasy space seems to do this constantly with running backs in new situations. A player like Jacobs moves to a new team, and we are excited about the Packers offense. Jacobs has been a highly drafted RB in fantasy before (including last year), and had a big season two years ago. So the market just anoints the player a workhorse and top pick in fantasy drafts, ignoring pretty clear context and evidence to the contrary.
We are not excited about AJ Dillon, even though he’s back with the team and has gotten carries every year of his career alongside Aaron Jones. The team spends a 3rd round pick in the NFL draft on RB Marshawn Lloyd, making him the 4th RB overall to be selected in this year’s draft. And the Packers history under Matt LaFleur is that of a rotation at running back. Even guys like Emmanuel Wilson and Patrick Taylor have gotten touches instead of turning the backfield into a workhorse role for one palyer.
I honestly wish we hadn’t gotten this quote from LaFleur, but it was probably inevitable. It does, however, paint a very clear picture of what the Packers RB plans are. And while we really already knew that based on all these other context clues and data points, this can help alleviate any concerns you may have about it.
#Packers HC Matt LaFleur on Josh Jacobs:
“I do think he’s very capable of being a high volume feature back where he’s getting the bulk of the carries, but we’ll see how it plays out.”
LaFleur on the RB rotation: “Typically, we like to platoon those guys, whether it’s two guys… pic.twitter.com/OrSCyZbIQZ
— The Coachspeak Index (@CoachspeakIndex) May 29, 2024
Jacobs will certainly have the upside to take on greater volume when it makes sense for the Packers in particular games or particular situations. He is the leader in that backfield. But the market was very bullish on Jacobs as a workhorse to start this draft season, and we should see the price continue to dip as folks become more comfortable with the fact he is not that kind of volume bet.
