Hitchhiker's Guide to RB Week 1: Part 2

Breaking down the remaining Week 1 Backfields: including Bijan's Debut, Breece's Return, and Tony Pollard's ascent

Hey folks and welcome back,

If you’ve read my off-season content, given it’s Week 1 of all weeks you’re probably expecting some form of Ben Gretch-esque long-form introduction to these columns with an attempt to say something prescient and wise, but I’m just getting right into it.

NOTE: If you caught Stealing Signals this week, the David Forster Wallace inspired intro to Part 2 was fantastic, as always.

I’m relying a lot on my eye test for early-season takes with such a small sample of data which frankly adds a lot of prep time to these columns. (Re)watching nearly every touch in each backfield, and then writing these two columns while trying to work 40+ hours per week and record three podcasts is … a lot. My plan is to write a more free-flowing post on Saturday with a bit of a dynasty focus so you’ll just have to wait on Radiohead analogies and dorm room philosophy until the weekend.

First things first, if you missed Part 1 of this week’s HHG, it’s entirely free for one week only, and the link is below. As I mentioned there, this is the only week this year I discuss literally every backfield in a single week. My goal is to focus this piece more on depth of analysis than breadth, and to spin what’s essentially a usage + taeks combo platter into more universal takeaways. Out of a desire to set a baseline on my thoughts for each backfield until I return to them, I’m leaning more on the breadth side this week.

Let’s get into it!

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NOTE: all data is from the FantasyPoints Data Suite unless otherwise sourced with exception of the following: Rush Yards over Expected (RYOE) and Percentage of Rushes over Expectation (ROE%) are sourced from NFL Next Gen Stats. PFF Grades and Yards per Route Run are from PFF. BAE Rating and Relative Success Rate (RSR) are from Noah Hills. Juke Rate is from PlayerProfiler.

SEE: “Metrics Legend” at the bottom for an explanation of each stat and its acronym

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Lions vs. Chiefs

I did these out of chronological order in an effort to give you the backfields with waiver-priority options in part 1, which means we’re now kicking off part 2 with the first game of the year.

The big story here (outside of the Chiefs WR room taking a turn for the macabre) was the split between Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery, and the strong takes many people had about a situation I thought was pretty expected.

I’m going to paste what I posted on this backfield just a few weeks ago in my preview column:

• I suspect Montgomery will receive the majority of SDD work and lead the team in carries. I suspect Gibbs receives a ton of early-down passing work, and roughly 30-40% of the backfield carries. Some of these should come on jet-sweeps in line with how the Lions used Khalif Raymond and Jameson Williams last year. An edge Gibbs has on Swift is straight-line speed, and I suspect they’ll take advantage of this using Gibbs on more lateral designs.

• The LDD work is a slight question mark after the Lions prioritized pass protection over receiving with Justin Jackson over D’Andre Swift last year. Montgomery is a suitable LDD back and I could see him playing those snaps early in the year, while Gibbs retains the two-minute drill, and is the primary “catch-up mode” back they turn to for check downs and explosive plays.

• As the year progresses, I suspect Gibbs will keep adding more to his workload in any area he shows competence outside of the receiving game, to get him on the field and put the ball in his hands more. The most likely of these scenarios is adding LDD work if he can hold up in pass protection.

I didn’t post that to brag about how smart I am, but I do think we has a fantasy community have an easier time envisioning upward progression when we’re not in the middle of it. Gibbs had only 25% of the backfield carries and a 25% route participation. But the most important aspect is he looked explosive on his touches.

My concerns over Montgomery opening as the clear LDD back manifested, but Gibbs running just 9 routes with 2 early down targets were definitely the area I was most surprised about from an early season perspective. However, Montgomery received 0 targets on 21 routes. It’s not as though the Lions view him as a dynamic option as a receiver, and the usage speaks much more to prioritizing his reliability in a spotlight game against a blitz-heavy defense vs. putting too much on a rookie’s plate out of the chute. Dan Campbell said as much after the game, that he wanted Gibbs to get a feel for the game before having more added to his plate.

People were quick to jump on the staff for mis-using their 12th overall pick, but you need only watch the other side of this game with Kadarius Toney and Skyy Moore, or watch some of Tank Bigsby’s errors we discussed in Part 1, to understand that putting young players in uncomfortable situations can lead to damaging results for them and your team — especially for a team with designs on contending.

Gibbs touched the ball on nearly half his snaps, and should start to see his usage scale up quickly, I suspect first with more early-down schemed receiving. As I predicted, they tailored Gibbs’ usage to some lateral concepts and had success. Expect to see more of that integrated and more screen game work this week.

For his part, David Montgomery looked like David Montgomery. He’s a large dude who does what he’s supposed to more often than not, but rarely adds much. Credit to him for a nice cut on his TD run, and I’m sure he won’t see zero targets frequently. The issue for him is that when Gibbs isn’t on the field the Lions simply have no explosive play makers on the field. God bless Amon-Ra St. Brown who is a total stud, but he’s an intermediate option. Josh Reynolds had some nice plays but was a mixed bag, and Marvin Jones was a liability.

This offense frankly didn’t do enough to win the game, scoring just 14 points on top of seven gifted to them by Kadarius Toney. Using Gibbs more is their best bet not to require 12+ play drives to score points. This is a backfield we’ll keep a close eye on.

On the Chiefs side, Clyde Edwards-Helaire got the start, paying off our prediction that Isiah Pacheco would start in a reduced rushing role coming off his injury. Another prediction we got right here was that Jerick McKinnon was unlikely to be fantasy viable out of the gates, and he mostly just played empty snaps in passing downs. Lastly, Pacheco was more involved relative to CEH on passing downs than rushing ones, another aspect of this backfield we thought was underrated; the desire for Pacheco to be the preferred receiving option of the two, at least on early downs, to get his speed out into space.

We got plenty wrong but we pretty much nailed the Chiefs rotation at least for the moment. I continue to think Pacheco will increase his touches over time at CEH’s expense, but he remains a limited player. I do feel better that he’s the one to benefit most if McKinnon was to suffer an injury or be displaced in his passing downs role.

TAKEAWAYS: Jahmyr Gibbs is only up from here, looked explosive, something the offense desperately needs. Montgomery had a good role, but is a strong sell if people think it sticks. Pacheco is the sole KC back you can start, has more receiving upside than credited for.

Panthers vs. Falcons

This was the debut of Bijan Robinson and he wasted no time reminding us how special of a player he can be in this league, catching a swing pass behind the line of scrimmage, evading a clear shot from a tackler and darting into the end zone for one of the best TDs of the week. He wound up leading the Falcons in targets, and posted an elite 73% route rate. Notably, Tyler Allgeier posted a 45% route rate of his own. If you’re doing the math at home, the backs combined for 28 routes on 22 drop-backs, so they were running two-back sets with both in a route on occasion.

The usage fed to the backs was absolutely nuts with 34 of 51 plays resulting in a carry or target to Robinson or Allgeier. The play volume concerns and run-tendency is a massive problem for everyone else in this offense, but it’s a major boon to the RBs.

My take on Tyler Allgeier this pre-season was that he was the player most reliant on Arthur Smith going full boomer and sticking to his 2022-style rush-rate. Robinson was drafted 8th overall and projects as an all situation workhorse. By some point early in the season he’s going to get his 20 touches per game. This leaves Allgeier reliant on an offensive environment able to carve out an extra 10-15 on top of him to enjoy.

For at least this week, that happened. Allgeier was the lead back on the ground, in the red zone, and expanded his dominance late in the game taking 82% of the 4th quarter carries as they salted the game away.

He’s a bruising, talented, reliable RB who is worthy of however many touches he gets. There’s really no way he remains a startable fantasy option without severely limiting Bijan Robinson, or the offense funnelling touches to him at Kyle Pitts and Drake London’s expense, making him a tough player for fantasy managers to root for. But trying to view him in a vacuum, it’s a feel good performance to see him thrive after his team took him out at the knees in the draft after such a strong rookie year. I’m a big fan of Allgeier, who was the most impressive RB on the field today while sharing the ball with possibly the most talented RB in the league.

From a fantasy perspective, there’s no reason to worry about Robinson. The pass-game usage suggests this is a player they want to force-feed the ball, and even if Allgeier is too good to be fully displaced, Arthur Smith seems amenable to forcing enough touches to the backs for both succeed.

The Panthers also had no shortage of RB touches this week with Chuba Hubbard and Miles Sanders splitting 33 total opportunities, alongside WR in name only Laviska Shenault’s 4. However, it should be noted the flow of this game resulted in 77 plays for the Panthers, something I would not suspect to occur often given the struggles we saw from them.

Four receptions for Miles Sanders will be enough for his backers to get excited, but I’m not folding yet. He caught each of his targets on 21 routes, but this was 50% of 42 drop backs. The 50% number is adequate, but may be higher than he typically posts this year when you consider Chuba Hubbard played every third down. On 64 combined non-third down snaps, Sanders ran 21 routes on 44 while Hubbard ran just 5 on 20. This seems likely to be an anomaly.

Sanders handled the only goal-line touch, but Hubbard took four of six short yardage carries with Sanders and Shenault splitting the others. My read from the game was that the precise distribution of SDD touches and routes is a little noisy. Both backs were mostly used interchangeably on early downs with Sanders holding a 2:1 snaps edge, and Hubbard handling LDD work on top.

One thing we saw from this team was a similar phenomenon to the Patriots, where poor receiver talent is tunnelling an artificially high rate of touches to the backs. This is a legitimate positive, but I’m remaining below the market on Sanders overall, while Hubbard remains one of my preferred handcuffs.

TAKEAWAYS: Bijan Robinson looks like a superstar, team using Allgeier plenty, who is good, but not necessarily at Robinson’s expense given run-pass rate and two-RB sets. Robinson is a Top-Five RB while Allgeier is flex-worthy until further notice. Miles Sanders is the lead dog, but role may be overstated by the raw touch count. Chuba Hubbard is a strong handcuff with a standalone high value touch role.