HHG Week 2: The Road Trip

Spotlighting three of Week 2's most interesting backfields, and how I'm viewing these backs season-long

Part two of the weekly hitchhiker’s guide will change week to week, but what I’ll often do is take a deep dive into a few backfields I think have potential to change in coming weeks, feature young players breaking out, or contain players I’m considering changing my mind about from previous columns. Ideally this provides some more evergreen analysis on these players to help you have a deeper understanding.

This week we’re zeroing in on the Bills, Commanders, and Lions. The first is a backfield I’ve seen some tiliting about online through two weeks, so I’m taking a closer look to see if Jahmyr Gibbs is being used appropriately, and what his fantasy value looks like while David Montgomery sits, and season-long. The latter two feature second-year backs whose ceiling I have been perhaps too dismissive of in the past, and I’ll walk through whether I’m changing my view on those players and how much.

Detroit Lions

The big story from this one was David Montgomery leaving with a thigh contusion, thrusting Gibbs into a potentially more fleshed out role moving forward.

This was a fascinating watch for me, because Gibbs saw the increase in work in this game I was hopeful for, and yet sentiment after the game typically focused on peoples’ disdain for the Craig Reynolds usage. How Gibbs is deployed tomorrow without Montgomery in the lineup will be a key area to watch.

For the time being, here are the Lions’ backs respective three-level charts:

As you can see, even on a small sample Gibbs is #onbrand with our expectations. He’s been an effective receiver and a dynamic, but inconsistent runner. Watching this game through, it’s hard to come away with any conclusion that’s critical of how the Lions staff used him from a real-life perspective.

It was clear they were dead set on getting him into the action, with his first snap coming four plays into the game on a designed play. It was a particularly interesting design in which all three receivers effectively ran clear out routes as obstruction for Gibbs who came sprinting across from the bottom of the formation. Ideally you hit him in stride and he’s in a pseudo-kick return situation with blocking up front and a running start

suppose they had this set to sit down vs. zone or run through vs. man, because he winds up sitting before he passes through Bobby Wagner (the 3rd defender from the top of the screen). He makes the catch, and a strong move to turn back upfield and convert the first down, but I’d love to see this ran again some time where he gets the ball in full sprint.

While not as elaborate, Gibbs was schemed targets all game long. By my rough count, he had at least nine routes in which he was a primary or secondary read, rather than a check down, and was targeted on eight of those. The most common was using him on angle or choice routes isolated against linebackers, including one in which he was the primary read on a 3rd and 7 in an angle route in man coverage. It shows a lot they were willing to design a play explicitly for him in that game situation.

Seattle has historically been a strong matchup for RBs in the passing game, so we’ll see if Gibbs remains a focal point of the offense to this degree moving forward. But for now, he was a clear point of emphasis every time he was on the field. This is the type of usage we hoped to see, with 9 targets on 22 routes. The priority with which he was used when on the field, resulting in a sky-high 41% TPRR is reminiscent of early Kamara, who could turn less than half his team’s routes into a 20% target share. While unconventional, this is a path to RB1 utilization if it’s sustained.

His only poor play in the passing game for my money came on the Goff interception. If you’ve seen the video, or hit the link above, Goff winds up throwing behind Gibbs directly to the linebacker who returns it for a touchdown. After the game, Campbell blamed the play on Gibbs and I can see why … in part. He seems to get out-of-sorts running out of the backfield when a defender occupies his lane. He take the long path around him which perhaps throws him off his route. He winds up running a sloppy route that gets too high before eventually turning inside, right when Goff releases it where he was.

My guess is he has a choice route, in which he can either turn to the boundary, or the middle depending on the leverage of the defender, or he can sit down at the top of his route. Goff should be making his determination based on what Gibbs *should* be seeing more than what he’s doing. The sit down option is likely the zone version of this play, while if he’s being covered man to man he’s running left or right at the top of his stem (possibly just right). While they’re in a zone look, the corner — Tre Brown — effectively picks up Gibbs exactly at the top of the route, meaning if he sits it’s not coming open. Ultimately, I don’t know enough about the read here to know how much to blame Goff, and if Gibbs ultimately makes the correct choice cutting inside. At the very least, if he thinks Gibbs is settling where he throws the ball he should have recognized it’s either falling incomplete or being tackled for a very short gain. Campbell sated the pick happened because Gibbs was indecisive, and he was. He gets far too high in his route before cutting, leading to understandable confusion on Goff’s part on where he was going to end up. But I still can’t imagine this was a good choice by Goff even if he made the correct read and Gibbs was wrong. Anyhow, we’ll see if they keep using these choice routes in high-leverage situation or if it spooks the staff moving forward.

In the run game, Gibbs was mostly used on lateral designs — toss plays and sweeps — or draws from the gun. After Montgomery left, you see why. Gibbs was given a short yardage carry up the middle and was chopped down effortlessly, in a spot where even falling forward makes a world of difference. The next play he stayed in on 4th down and lost his pass protection assignment leading in part to a failed conversion. If you’re looking for reasons why Reynolds wound up playing as much as he did, this run of plays is a reason. It’s not an indictment on Gibbs to point out that he’s a dynamic talent, but presently a player with clear deficiencies the team needs to manage. As an outside runner, Gibbs flashes more. His contact balance once he’s in motion is quite strong, leading to that high MTF/A score. On one toss play, he made an absolutely ludicrous series of cuts to freeze a defender and work inside past him for a solid gain. My one critique watching him is he can use up his space too quickly at times, sprinting to the outside when the edge isn’t there. I’d prefer to see him keep his eyes downfield in these spots searching for a cut back lane, or even trying to set one up with his movements. This is the kind of progression we hope to see over the course of the year as he looks to round out his game.

t was a game of ups and downs for the talented rookie. But overall we should come away bullish. He was used in a more creative and intentional fashion, and flashed the talent to justify it. While he also made mistakes, being the 12th overall pick has its privileges. He’s going to get more chances to convert those mistakes to learning opportunities, most of all this weekend with his running mate out of the mix. Montgomery has been largely effective this year working in tight areas, and I’m not sure they view Reynolds as a similar enough option to sacrifice Gibbs’ explosiveness for reliability. He’ll get looks for certain, you don’t want to overload Gibbs with 20+ touches. But I could see an increase to 10-12 carries on 60%+ snaps this weekend in addition to continued passing game usage for the rookie.

TAKEAWAYS: Incomplete rushing ability at the moment leads to intermittent usage. But passing game usage was scaled up enough to contend for Top-12 without any change to rushing role. Possible opportunity to add some more rushing work this week without Reynolds makes him a mid-range RB1 play. He’s behind only Bijan Robinson and Breece Hall in my dynasty RB ranks.