3 Things I Care About
Chargers’ skill-position battles
The hive mind seems to believe that because Jim Harbaugh and Greg Roman want to come in and establish a physical, effective run game in L.A., the Chargers’ offense is finished. You can build an efficient offense only by pushing the ball through the air as much as possible. Taking the ball out of Justin Herbert’s hands is akin to football treason, never mind the data we’ve received from the quarterback’s career so far.
I don’t agree with that line of thinking at all.
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I believe that the offense that Harbaugh and Co. want to put together in Los Angeles is correctly in line with the current meta of the league and should, in time, produce some of the most efficient units of Herbert’s career. Volume is not everything.
With that thesis in mind, and because Herbert is still one of the five best quarterbacks in the league, I care deeply about who emerges at Los Angeles’ skill positions. All three of the running back, wide receiver and tight end rooms should be a straight competition, with the best options in camp rising to the top of the Week 1 depth chart.
In the backfield, Gus Edwards should be considered the odds-on favorite to lead this backfield in carries. Since we know this is a team that wants to lean into the ground game, that matters. However, I’ll be paying attention to see if a surprise performance by rookie Kimani Vidal pushes him. Maybe the chances are slim to none, but it’s also worth monitoring JK Dobbins’ health because, at his peak, he would easily be the best back on this roster. The days of such hope are likely behind us, but we should still be open to anyone emerging from this group playing a consequential role.
As for the wide receiver room, I don’t think any past performance or former pedigree will matter to Harbaugh and Roman. Quentin Johnston’s status as a Round 1 player under the old regime likely carries zero weight. If he has a down camp, he could play behind a guy like DJ Chark. On the other hand, if Johnston comes out as a much-improved player, I wouldn’t even rule out him taking snaps from Josh Palmer, who was a mildly productive player in the previous broken Chargers offense. Rookie Ladd McConkey is the only player I feel comfortable projecting for clear starter snaps, but he could lose ground if he starts slow. This room is as pure a competition as any wide receiver corps in the league.
The tight end room is full of newcomers, with Will Dissly and Hayden Hurst joining Donald Parham. My guess is that either Dissly or Hurst will take the lead in snaps over Parham. I don’t have a strong lean toward one player or the other, but I could see the TE1 here being a sneaky red-zone threat.
Getting these position battles right matters because you are unlikely to find players tied to a fringe top-five quarterback available this late in drafts ever again. That just comes down to the lack of clarity around how these positions will be sorted out and the lack of understanding about what this staff will install.
Bills, Packers and Texans wide receiver rotation
I’ve written extensively about all three of the Packers, Texans and Bills pass-catching corps over the last month. All three are crowded rooms with quality players — yes, I think the Bills wide receiver corps is misunderstood and not a poor unit despite Stefon Diggs’ departure — tethered to strong quarterback play. We’ve finally arrived at the time where we’ll begin to get some answers as to how the roles play out.
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I’ll keep track of playing time reports with the first-team offense for the Packers wide receivers. Jayden Reed should be due for a role expansion beyond the designed touches he saw in Year 1. On almost any other NFL team, a guy like Dontayvion Wicks would need to see the field a lot more after the flashes he showed on tape as a rookie. And yet, there’s a chance none of that happens and this room is so deep that we almost get a wide receiver by committee rotation at these spots. Any clues to the contrary will be critical.
For the Bills, my guess is that the three-receiver set of Curtis Samuel, Khalil Shakir and Keon Coleman will be set in stone. However, how they’re deployed and who is taking the most slot snaps will matter in the projections.
Down in Houston, Nico Collins is cemented as the X-receiver but tracking practice reports for Diggs and Tank Dell will matter. One of those guys will end up leading the team in slot snaps, which will provide matchup advantages. However, they may also see their route participation dip slightly when Houston goes to 12 personnel.
Xavier Worthy’s role in Kansas City
The first timeline-destroying training-camp highlight is in the books, and the honors go to Patrick Mahomes and Xavier Worthy:
Training camp highlights are a trap, and I don’t want to simplify the analysis to say, “Ultra-fast receiver with Patrick Mahomes is good, nothing else matters.” But then again …
The Chiefs merely need baseline NFL wide receiver play this season after last year’s mess to push back into the top five of offensive efficiency metrics. Adding Marquise Brown is a “get on base” signing for Kansas City. He’s a quality starting receiver, even if he’s not a No. 1. You couldn’t say that about any Chiefs wideout last season. I see how he maps onto this offense.
Worthy’s inclusion is much more interesting to discuss. There’s no doubt Andy Reid is the right coach to deploy a speed threat like Worthy creatively and that the Texas product was much more “real receiver” than the failed fast prospects of old. However, there were enough holes in Worthy’s game on film that may keep him stuck as a low-volume threat rather than a true No. 1 type, as well.
That doesn’t mean that Worthy can’t be a significant fantasy option. However, we need to get a clear vision of what his role will be in Kansas City to project his stat-line accurately. Camp reports should provide some clues.
3 Things I Don’t Care About
The Jordan Love contract
Reports surfaced that Jordan Love will not participate in training camp until he signs a new contract. This should not come as a surprise. There was zero chance he would take a single snap on the lone year remaining of the fifth-year option compromise deal the Packers extended him last year.
I’m sure this story will get press to start the heavy reporting season of training camp. National media will do segments on it. I don’t think we should care about this holdout as the deal will almost certainly get done within a matter of days.
I’ll give it a week, tops, and Love is back on the field for the Packers.
I also think we should all commit right now to not reacting at all when the final figures get put out on what I’m sure will be one of, if not the, highest-paid quarterback contracts of all time.
Love captained the Packers’ offense to a sixth-best finish in DVOA last year and was one of the most electric quarterbacks down the stretch. He checks all the boxes teams seek in dynamic and creative young quarterbacks in the modern era. He was great inside the structure of the Packers’ well-designed offense and created when it came time to get outside of it.
You pay a player like that, plain and simple.
Yes, we only have a half-season’s worth of strong production from Love. Get your head out of the results for a few seconds. Even if the stats didn’t show it to start the year, there were signs and momentum building on film that Love was figuring it out and putting things together before the box score reflected the reality.
Love will get the big deal and it makes all the sense in the world. He is the QB10 off the board in fantasy drafts but has the upside to way out-kick that draft slot. Green Bay will be one of my favorite teams to invest in this year and Love’s play is a huge reason why that is the case. His salary will soon reflect that quality of play.
The Vikings QB battle
We have our fair share of quarterback competitions to enjoy this preseason. Two rookies will battle with veterans in New England and Minnesota, while the Raiders may have the rare “two men enter, one man leaves” 50/50 quarterback battle.
From a fantasy standpoint, the Vikings quarterback battle is the most intriguing to track because whoever wins that contest will throw the ball to the fifth-overall player off the board in early ADP.
Justin Jefferson was productive down the stretch despite Kirk Cousins already going on IR and he’s the best wideout in the game. He’s quarterback-proof. However, the style of quarterback play does still matter when examining how he will produce.
Sam Darnold sounds like he has the early edge. The former Jets draft bust has been an effective quarterback twice in his NFL career. He started off strong in his first three games with the Panthers when Christian McCaffrey was in the backfield to give him easy answers prior to an injury. Then, at the tail end of his Carolina days, they asked him to play game manager behind a strong run game. Darnold did throw up on his shoes in Week 18 of that second stretch with a 5-for-15 performance against the Saints and that bottom-out game will always be looming.
I don’t have faith that Darnold will keep the job for long, if he even gets it at all coming out of camp. The Giants and 49ers pass rushes await in the first two games of the season, providing for easy Darnold collapse games. However, if he’s back there he can play with the type of reckless abandon that Nick Mullens exhibited last year with the Vikings. I wouldn’t say that the Mullens-to-Jefferson games provided good football but it made for some enthralling downfield targets for Jefferson.
The best bet for efficient offense in Minnesota is that J.J. McCarthy is ready to rock from the jump. I don’t know if that will be the case but even in a scaled-back approach catered to a rookie passer, Kevin O’Connell has my trust to design a good offense. McCarthy would likely feed Jefferson an absurd amount of first-read targets in this scenario. It won’t be as wild of a ride but it could smooth out his weekly scoring.
Injury optimism
One of the best pieces of draft advice you’ll hear all year is from Scott Pianowski. I’m paraphrasing but Scott always reminds us that injuries will find your fantasy team during the NFL season; you don’t need to go looking for them during your draft.
Now is the time for injury optimism in the NFL. A rehabbing player coming off a serious injury is participating in practice and looks ready for Week 1. We instantly assume that means the guy is 100% and we can jack their projections up to normal standards. You need to only look at countless examples of where that has steered us wrong to see the foolishness in such an approach.
I’ll give you one example from last year that’s close to my heart. Ravens wide receiver Rashod Bateman was a player I was high on coming into the league and thought he had a strong rookie season on film. He got off to a nice start in Year 2 but suffered a foot injury that ultimately ended his season. I knew it would be a tough road back from a complicated injury and yet, when Bateman was back on the field for practice last summer, I let go of those worries. He was on the field; that’s what matters, right?
Nope.
All the while, Bateman himself was worried he might not even play that season because he thought he might need another surgery.
Fast-forward to the first few weeks of the season and Bateman clearly wasn’t right just yet. The normally crisp route-runner wasn’t separating as usual and the confidence wasn’t back. Bateman eventually started to quietly look great on film but he was never fully integrated into the offense because, while the team was busy installing under a new coordinator, Bateman was just trying to get ready for football.
Now, Bateman is drawing rave reviews from everyone attached to the Ravens organization and is expected to play a big role. We’ll see if that happens but, on paper, his offseason looks the same from 365 days ago to now. However, there’s always so much more going on than you or I know when it comes to players’ health. And it should stay that way. We don’t have a right to know all that information. That lack of knowledge is why injury optimism is so dangerous. You’re assuming the 99th percentile outcome when the range is much larger — and more frightening than you think.
