Analytics & Advanced Metrics

Before Tony Pollard got to town, Ezekiel Elliott was a highly-drafted running back in his early 20s who had put up composite scores of 84.6, 52.3 (in that suspension-shortened 2017 season), and 89.7. When healthy and in shape, he was consistently one of the best pure runners in the league as a young player. The decline has come quickly for Zeke. He’s recently only added value in short yardage and against heavy box counts relative to Pollard’s output.

We’re left playing the same game we’ve been playing with the Ezekiel Elliott-Tony Pollard duo for the last three years. Except the value that Pollard’s youth added to that equation is nearly gone.We’re approaching the moment of truth on this backfield. The most likely outcomes for Pollard all end in disappointment for dynasty gamers. Cash out and get off the ride while you still can.

Consistency is highly sought after by many in the fantasy football community. Since it’s human nature to avoid risk, we feel more comfortable putting a player in our lineup if we know he’ll reliably score 12-15 points compared to a player ranging from 5-25 points. But is consistency a trait we can predict from year to year? Follow along as I use the power of statistics to better analyze the relationship between fantasy points and the consistency with which they’re scored. 

Mike Williams in 2021 finished as the WR14 in PPG by averaging 15.4 PPR points per game, but conversations about his outlook in 2022 are centered on his inconsistent production. His six games with more than 20 PPR points and seven games with fewer than 10 PPR points are worrying many drafters, yet his CV only checked in at 0.687, on the slightly inconsistent end of our “average” bucket. History would suggest that Williams’ CV will improve and he is likely to stay productive in fantasy.

The Bengals have a good quarterback and good skill position players. And they just invested heavily in their offensive line via free agency after going to the Super Bowl. They should be a good team again in 2022. And while we should expect them to continue letting Joe Burrow sling it, they should be nursing enough late leads that a league-average finish in rushing attempts doesn’t seem unreasonable.

You could make a good argument for Joe Mixon being among the few best pure runners in the league. While he turns 26 this July, he doesn’t show any sign of slowing down. It’s tough to trust running backs past age-25. But his dynasty valuation hasn’t fallen off too much. The Bengals are a good team with a good offense. Mixon should be able to take advantage of that situation as one of the league’s best running backs. He’s slightly underpriced relative to other similarly-aged runners in dynasty.

While notoriously a run-first team, the Seattle Seahawks were actually No. 27 in the NFL in rushing attempts in 2021. Their finishes in this category have fluctuated wildly in the last half-decade. It seems that much of that up-and-down is due to Pete Carroll’s internal struggle between letting Russ cook and sticking with his personal preference to establish the run. Now, Russell Wilson is gone. And Carroll’s comments this offseason make it clear that the Seahawks intend to be a run-first football team going forward.

Rashaad Penny is a low key win-now piece that can be had in the relative scrap heap of dynasty startups. And I don’t think it’s out of the question that he’s more productive in 2022 than guys like David Montgomery or J.K. Dobbins. The Seahawks want to run the ball. Penny has a consistent history of positive team-relative efficiency. He’s at the age apex and presumably healthy at the same time that Chris Carson seems to no longer be either one. If it’s ever going to happen, 2022 is the year.

Only once in the last decade has a Doug Pederson-led offense been willing to run the ball more often than league average in neutral Game Script situations. Pairing that pass-friendly philosophy with the strong possibility that the Jaguars are once again trailing in most of their games next season probably means that we shouldn’t expect high carry totals out of Jacksonville in 2022.

James Robinson is a legitimate talent and one of the best pure runners in the league. Last season marks the second straight year that he’s led an NFL backfield while posting positive team-relative efficiency numbers. His BAE Rating and RSR marks in 2020 were in the 54th and 90th-percentiles, respectively. There are a lot of moving parts in this backfield that make it difficult to navigate in dynasty, but I view that more as an opportunity than as a problem.

Recent news from the Combine regarding Kenny Pickett’s small hand size has rekindled the flame of the hand size argument. Pickett’s hands measured at 8.5-inches, which puts him in the 1st-percentile of hand size among NFL QBs. There has been recent success of small-hand quarterbacks. However, the concern comes in because Pickett would have the smallest hands among all 32 starting quarterbacks.

To answer the question of how much hand-size matters, it depends on the athlete. A small-hand QB does carry a 10-percent higher chance of fumbling, but what can he do to make up for that? Michael Vick’s answer was mobility. Patrick Mahomes’ answer was improvisation. Small hands are by no means a disqualifier, but there is a learning curve for sure. It remains to be seen what Kenny Pickett’s answer will be to make up for his hand size, but it will be intriguing to watch.

James Conner was not good as the lead runner. Largely due to his performance in short-yardage and other obvious running situations, he posted a quality Relative Success Rate, but he was pretty bad otherwise. His YPC+ is in the 15th-percentile. Given his basically seeing the same box counts as the team’s other backs, there’s not much excuse for his inefficiency. The Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating he posted is a 21st-percentile mark; the lowest in the entire league among backs who led their teams in attempts.

A bet on Conner as a high-end fantasy option in 2022 is a bet on two unlikely developments coming to fruition at once: having an elite touchdown rate in back-to-back seasons, and bucking the trend of running backs over the 25-year mark suddenly losing their effectiveness and then fading into the ether. Neither of those are bets I’m willing to make on their own, and I’m certainly not going to parlay them. A better wager would be on Eno Benjamin, a guy who was both productive and efficient in college, to bounce back from a disappointing small-sample rookie year and play well in the RB2 role.

The Steelers are simply a pass-happy team in general. Ben Roethlisberger is gone, Mitchell Trubisky (or maybe a rookie?) is in at quarterback. And more changes are sure to come for the Steelers offensive personnel. Maybe, maybe, we’ll see some shift in play-calling and overall philosophy as a result. However, this pass-heavy approach is something we’ve seen for years now in Pittsburgh. So it seems unlikely that they’d swing their pendulum fully toward a high-volume rushing attack.

Leave the Stone Age. Stop citing Najee Harris’ low raw efficiency numbers as a reason why he was overrated as a prospect or should be faded in dynasty. He was a great player in college and he’s a great player now, from both productivity and efficiency standpoints.

Game Scripts are clearly important in determining who to start each week in seasonal leagues. But understanding players’ roles in offenses are pivotal in drafts to determine just how dependent score is to fantasy performance. In this article, we identify some players who were affected in extreme fashion by specific Game Scripts.

In the future, we can analyze historical data for this issue. Is a player’s role in an offense sticky from year to year if they stick with the same team? Does that correlate highly with their fantasy efficiency as it did for some players in 2021? Play-by-play data and the resulting fantasy splits, available to us at PlayerProfiler, can help answer these questions to get ahead of teams’ game plans this offseason to avoid the narrative-dependent stat padders and to buy into the sustainable situations.

D.J. Chark didn’t play much in his rookie season. But, he broke out in 2019 to the tune of 73 receptions on 118 targets for 1,008 yards and eight touchdowns in 15 games. After finishing 2019 as the WR16 in fantasy football, he tumbled to a WR50 finish and was the WR42 on a per-game basis. That is not going to get the job done at all.

I personally believe that the 2019 D.J. Chark is closer to the real thing. Though his 2020 season was concerning, the 2019 season is the one we’ve seen him start and finish without a myriad of injuries. If he really is a receiver of the caliber he showed that year, and lands in a situation conducive to fantasy success, he will get back to putting big-time numbers. That scenario is very much in his range of outcomes, making him a buy in dynasty and best-ball leagues before free agency kicks off.