Week 1 HHG: The Sunday Drive
Making sense of a whirlwind Week 1 across 32 NFL backfields
For those who recall the column from last year, early in the year especially I’m going to split the Hitchhiker’s Guide into two parts. The first part (today) is going to have a pretty lengthy introduction on some evergreen Week 1 thoughts, but especially as they apply to the games we just watched. Then I’m going to get into the Week’s results more from a usage perspective than a quality of play one. Later in the week I’ll have had the chance to review the film of every game and I’ll re-visit some spots where I think the usage we saw in Week 1 might be more or less likely to continue moving forward. Full transparency from a film perspective is that I watched a lot of plays in each of the late games, but was primarily locked on the Colts-Texans game in the early-slate, so the film takes are largely under-developed right now. (That won’t be the case for article #2 this week.
The reason for the split is that there is just way more to talk about in Week 1 than later in the year when usage becomes much more stable week-to-week, and there are plenty of backfields we just don’t need to spend much time discussing. I work tomorrow for eight hours at a legal office (and ditto on Tuesday), so my odds of getting through the film of every game, and getting you a fully-developed column before you have to make waiver claims are approximately 0.0%. I’d rather get you a first look prior to waivers, and then get a bit more into the weeds later on.
Lastly, this is a reminder that everything I write here is free this week, but the Hitchhiker’s Guide will have a paywall partway through starting Week 2.
How to Make Sense of Week 1
Trying to come out of Week 1 with a correct takeaway from each game is as impossible a task as nailing all the correct takes entering it. Though that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try our best.
Trying to figure out how much ‘signal’ and how much ‘noise’ to apply to each Week 1 output is difficult often feels like an endless series of Schrodinger’s cats. We know for a fact that over the course of a season there will be plenty of outlier performances on both a team-wide and individual player level, and through pure random distribution, some of those are bound to occur during Week 1. At the same time, while it’s easy to write off a shocking spike performance in Week 14 as variance come to life, it’s far more plausible that a Week 1 emergence portends a breakout season on the horizon (or in the case of Week 1 flops — that we might be in for a whole world of hurt).
In some instances such as Amon-Ra St. Brown — who had a 5-3-13-0 line in Week 1 — I suspect his managers are annoyed at the output, but are unlikely to be facing down existential dread on whether they have a bust on their hands. St. Brown has a solidified history of earning elite volume, is healthy and young, and even if you want to knock him down a touch moving forward due to Jameson Williams’ apparent emergence as a 4th key play-maker in this passing game, it would be preposterous to suggest St. Brown is going to fall out of starting lineups. On the other side of the spectrum, nobody is racing to the waiver wire to make massive bids on Allen Lazard.
But for other players it’s not nearly so simple. How much do we weigh the Week 1 performances of younger players such as Tank Bigsby, Jameson Williams, or Isaiah Likely vs. their respective histories? How much do we read into veterans who had disappointing Week 1s — are they washed? And what about veterans who crushed — is this merely what we should expect out of veterans in Week 1, or is there a key question that player answered in their performance?
Take an example of five different TEs — each of whom had underwhelming Week 1 performances:
Mark Andrews — 2-2-14-0
Travis Kelce — 4-3-34-0
Trey McBride — 9-5-30-0
Dalton Kincaid — 2-1-11-0
Sam LaPorta — 5-4-45-0
Which of these TEs should we be concerned about? Which should we merely write off as random chance?
The way I look at these things is first I look purely in a vacuum at each player without any factoring in of what I expect the market reaction to be, and then later I weigh my position against the market’s to determine where I want to place my chips. To do that I first look at the micro-game environment: is there a clear-cut indicator that this performance is not even prima facie concerning beyond its output, and explainable by simple regression?
Of this group, the clear candidate for that is McBride. McBride ran 34 routes on 38 drop-backs and posted a 26.4% TPRR. That’s elite usage combined with elite target earning in the role. Perhaps you start stacking up a month full of 3.3 YPT performances and you grow concerned from a talent perspective, but as a one-off — especially compared to the efficiency upside he showed last year — it’s just absolutely nothing to worry about. For Trey McBride it’s full steam ahead elite TE1 SZN.
The next question I’d ask is — is there a reason beyond simply the fact of this box score performance why we would question the player’s talent moving forward?
I think the only player there is absolutely zero reason to question is Sam LaPorta. LaPorta is a premium prospect coming off a fantastic rookie season in an offensive environment he’s already thrived in. As I mentioned with St. Brown, the emergence of Jameson Williams is mildly troubling, since this team really only had three pass-game play-makers last year and has seemingly added a 4th, but any downgrade you place on LaPorta should be marginal at most. Any way you sim his season you’re going to have a couple nondescript games like this, and it’s likely Week 1 was just one of the bunch, and it says very little for what we’d expect from him going forward.
The other three are a bit more concerning.
Dalton Kincaid had a good TE season for a rookie in 2023, but his peripherals were absolutely not at the talent level we’d require for his draft cost in 2024. His .196 TPRR and 1.46 YPRR were far more comparable to Jake Ferguson, Dalton Schultz, Cole Kmet, and Dallas Goedert, than to Travis Kelce, Mark Andrews, Sam LaPorta and Trey McBride (or even George Kittle and David Njoku). The bet was that he would take a year-2 leap, combined with potentially the best situation of any TE as the possible leading target-earner for Josh Allen.
His role was perfectly fine in Week 1: he ran 25 routes on 30 drop backs. There is a bizarre obsession among some Kincaid Fudders (a group I’ve historically counted myself to be a part of) about how many routes Dawson Knox runs. It matters a lot if Dawson Knox runs routes in 11-Personnel that takes Kincaid off the field. But just purely looking at Dawson Knox’s play-time in a vacuum makes no sense: Knox’s pass-routes at this point mostly come in 12-Personnel packages alongside Kincaid, in which you’d actually prefer to have Kincaid competing against Knox for a target than Khalil Shakir or Curtis Samuel.
One other potential excuse in Kincaid’s favour is that this game was quite weird for Buffalo. They basically didn’t possess the ball for the first half, and combined that with going extremely run-heavy, leading Josh Allen to have just two pass attempts 28 minutes in. Things evened out more in the second half, but Allen still had only 30 drop backs, and due to some sacks, scrambles and throwaways, only 22 of those resulted in a target. I’m worried about Joe Brady going full boomer with this offense all year, but even in the worst outcomes, 22 targeted throws is going to be an outlier low number. The result was that only Keon Coleman had more than three targets today (5).
I’m narrowing the Kincaid talent-upside case slightly after a poor Week 1 performance where he was clearly not the priority for this offense, but I’m trying to just treat it as one more input rather than a decisive statement, given the role was strong, he remains a young player, and there was some odd game environment aspects at play.
Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews are in some ways less concerning because we have a much higher talent baseline to centre ourselves to than with Kincaid, but in some ways more concerning, because at their ages it’s always plausible that the talent we’re used to relying on simply isn’t there anymore.
Kelce is maybe more concerning from a purely “washed” lens, because he came into the game perfectly healthy, and the Chiefs offense appeared to operate largely as it planned to. Mahomes was extremely efficient, and was often hitting his first read — unfortunately for Kelce that first read was usually Rashee Rice. If you’re a Kelce manager, your hope is that it was a game-plan specific decision, or just the variance of the call sheet week-to-week, which is very possible. But you have to be concerned that Kelce wasn’t made a priority in the way we’ve typically seen.
Andrews has the widest consideration set. On one hand, he has a lot of potentially valid excuses for his play that don’t involve the “washed” allegations: first off, he’s coming off a major ankle injury which it’s possible he’s still not 100% recovered from. Second, he only recently returned to full practices after being in a car accident this summer. Third, he was double-covered at the highest rate of any game of his since 2020. Fourth, despite being a consistently Top-5 TE since 2019, he has only broken 22 yards once in five games vs. the Chiefs in that time-window. Fifth, the Ravens — unlike the Chiefs — had their game-plan completely blown up by non-viable pass protection. This meant a lot of drop-backs becoming scrambles and check downs rather than playing out the concept as designed. It also meant instituting a lot of gadget-type quick game touches as first-reads to avoid the pass rush. Andrews largely lives in the intermediate middle of the field, which was not something the Ravens could work in this one.
These excuses however are not all the same: some issues (the Chiefs history and the double-coverage rate) have little bearing on his rest-of-season projection. Perhaps the car accident effect is a temporary one as well. But if he’s suffering ill effects from the ankle injury, it’s possible that lingers all year as it appears it did with Tony Pollard in 2023. And while I suspect the offensive line will play better as it has more time to gel and doesn’t have to deal with Steve Spagnuolo and Chris Jones, it might be a major issue all year long that hurts this offense and Andrews especially.
The other elephant in the room with Andrews is Isaiah Likely — who was (by a mile) the TE1 on the week. Likely’s emergence is much more of a real issue for Andrews than Knox’s is for Kincaid (though still not quite as big of an issue as I suspect some will believe). Last year Andrews averaged 86% of routes. He ran 75% in this game, which to some extent is explainable due to the car accident and 51 Lamar Jackson drop-backs — many of which were in the two-minute drill which causes additional fatigue. For the most part, Likely was taking Nelson Agholor off the field, as the Ravens shifted to a 12-Personnel base passing game. But they were legitimately splitting 11-Personnel snaps, which is bad for Andrews at the margins. Worse for Andrews is that unlike Knox vs. Shakir/Samuel, when Likely takes Agholor off the field for a 12-Personnel snap, Andrews is getting stiffer target competition rather than weaker. Likely isn’t “taking Andrews’ job” since they so often play together, but he will present issues at the margins that hurt Andrews’ ceiling.
Looking at a situation like this, I try — best I can — to weigh all the different mitigating and aggravating factors together to figure out how much lower I should be on Andrews than I was before Thursday. I view the Likely portion as a locked-in, and legitimate concern. The rest, I’m trying to hold out relatively even weighting for the other potential excuses — including those which exonerate Andrews for 2025 and those which do not, while also leaving some room for the possibility that Andrews is just depreciating as a talent at age-30.
The result is a move down the dynasty tiers (from “Base 1” to “Late 1”) and if I were doing a re-draft in the Main Event today, I’d likely take him in the late-fourth / early-fifth, while I’d been very comfortable in the early-third prior in that format. However, just because I’m moving him down doesn’t mean I may not start trying to acquire him. My guess is that the Chiefs matchup history and double-team rate aspects are not widely known in some more casual dynasty leagues. If you can buy from a manager who doesn’t have that information, you’re buying whatever % chance that’s the primary issue for free within your cost of acquisition.
I also think that because of the market’s baked-in fear of TE committees, that the Likely aspects of the case — while legitimately true and legitimately worrying — are probably going to be over-emphasized by the market-at-large.
And at the end of the day, that’s the goal: not to pick out what is going to happen, but to try and play into whatever potential explanation the market is potentially under-rating on any given player. This might mean out-right fading a market consensus directly, but more often it means agreeing that the market is correct, but might be too certain of it, and playing into a bet you think is +EV (positive expected value) despite being in and of itself unlikely. One positive example of that for me — and we’ll get more to his outlook from here — is JK Dobbins. I thought the most likely outcome for Dobbins was to be a total flop this year. And I played a lot of Kimani Vidal teams under that assumption. But when it came to Dobbins in a vacuum, I felt his price was weighted too far to the negative outcomes in his range, with a lot of room for him to beat it in a massive way at his apex, or even in a meaningful way with an early-season hit that fades over time. I wouldn’t say that I was correct on Dobbins’ output this week, but my take on him appears to have been directionally accurate, or more importantly, profitable.
The example I always revert to in describing this type of situation is Nate Silver’s 2016 election forecast. The forecast was incorrect in the sense it thought Hillary Clinton was more likely to win than lose. However, it was clearly a +EV forecast from the perspective that it showed Trump as much more likely to win than most other competing models, and much more likely to win than betting markets implied. If you were looking to bet on that election for the pure purpose of maximizing EV, and were correctly applying Silver’s forecast to do it, you’d have bet on Trump.
I bring all this up in the introduction this week because this is primarily a column about fringe-players: players who are not likely to hit, but whom we are combing through and trying to pick out the ones who are slightly more likely to hit than their price indicates. In order to find value in this column, you need to be comfortable with the reality of being wrong, often, but trying to come out ahead in the aggregate, by identifying big hits at low costs (or dumping high-priced assets at inflated costs). We’re grinding the margins, and playing the odds — we are not trying to predict the future.
Specifically, what we’ll attempt to do in this column early in the season is point out whether the output in terms of fantasy points for various RBs is largely representative of their usage or not, and if there are considerations for why that usage might change in the future — both in the immediate and long-term, and then weigh the market and make the best bet we can. This is a RB column, so I will not touch on every player (though I’m tentatively hoping to write up some thoughts on my biggest dynasty movers at all positions later this week), but hopefully the thought process is illustrative and applicable to any player in any format as you go through a major week of decision-making.
I’ll also note that while typically in this column we are focusing on RB “streamers” (RBs that you either added in the late-rounds on Zero or Hero-RB drafts, or players that you added / should add on waivers), for the first week I will at least briefly touch on every backfield to set an early-level. For many of these backfields with an established star, if usage remains consistent we won’t touch on it again for a while.
Let’s get into it: but before we do I want to shout out the FantasyPoints Data Suite. As always, I write out my sources below at this point of the article. But in case you’re used to scrolling by, take the time to consider how easy to use and expansive a resource the FantasyPoints Data Suite is. I could not write this column every week without it, though only a fraction of the actionable data on that site is re-produced here. If you want access to it all, to be a better fantasy player, use code JAKOB25 for 25% off.
NOTE: utilization data is from Nathan Jahnke of PFF. All qualitative 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
GAME-BY-GAME TAKEAWAYS
Typically in this column I sort this section into injuries, followed by usage changes. But today, to level set, we’re going game-by-game with an overview, and some thoughts on standing moving forward.
I’ll also note that as we talk usage in this column there are, roughly speaking, four categories of RB usage I discuss:
Early-Down Rushing
Early-Down “schemed” Receiving: this is typically work on primary reads, and screen passes, and can have a different usage profile from 3rd down and 2-minute drill type receiving work that is more often a check down
Outlet Receiving: this is predominantly LDD and 2-minute drill work, but also can encompass early-down check down situations
Short-Yardage / Goal-Line Rushing
There’s nuance to this, but that’s the basics.
Ravens @ Chiefs
On the Chiefs side we didn’t get a ton of new information here. Isiah Pacheco had a fantastic role from a ‘rate’ perspective, but the Chiefs pass-rate is always high, and he’s not a major priority in the passing game, which can lead to lower ceiling outcomes even when he’s seeing 70+ per-cent snaps. We saw that here where all the peripherals look great, he scores, but he winds up with a good, not great fantasy score. Whether he’s a fringe RB1 or a mid-range RB2 depends on how much of the passing game role Samaje Perine takes on. In this one he played very little, and mostly in LDD situations, though Pacheco saw the two-minute drill.
However, it was notable that Perine in his limited snaps saw a screen pass — which he converted for a nice gain — and a designed swing pass he couldn’t bring in where the timing appeared off between him and Mahomes. It was clear they made it a point to use his pass-game skillset and it wouldn’t be shocking if his role grows in Week 2 and beyond after more time with the team.
On the other side, I think a lot of folks were surprised about Justice Hill’s level of involvement. We discussed Hill last week, and to me this was less a scenario where we got new information, and more a scenario where we saw a depiction of the already known best case scenario game for Hill and the worst-case game for Derrick Henry. Hill’s snaps mostly came in LDD / 2-minute situations, plus some occasional passing plays on early downs along the way. But the nature of this game was that the Ravens had 20 “two-minute drill” snaps, and realistically a lot more when you consider the whole of the 4th quarter was mostly a two-minute drill. That kept Henry from making much of an impact beyond the first drive.
For what it’s worth, I thought he looked as he has the last two years: a lot slower at the start of runs, and it can look largely unimpressive when he’s unable to break loose. The Offensive Line issues hurt Henry here both due to running lanes, and potentially putting the team in more trailing scripts than we saw from Baltimore last year. Henry will have better games ahead however as a game-script dependent, back-end RB1.
This was a ceiling game for Justice Hill: he’s not someone to look at as a starter as he just rode a perfect storm to a streamable week.
Moving Forward: Pacheco fringe-RB1 pending greater Perine involvement, Henry fringe-RB1, but game script dependent.
Packers @ Eagles
It was a tail of two halves for Josh Jacobs, who looked downright sluggish in the first half, but broke some runs loose in the 2nd to turn in an efficient outing. I think the 2nd half runs were a tad over-hyped on twitter as a reaction to the negative commentary on his early touches — he mostly just took advantage of wide open lanes, and some favourable angles on a slip-n’-slide field, but he definitely showed more juice.
The usage was strong, though presumptive RB2 MarShawn Lloyd was inactive, leaving the RB2 chair to Emmanuel Wilson, who had 46 yards on 4 carries and looked terrific.
The larger near-term issue for Jacobs is that he’s about to be the RB1 on a Malik Willis offense. We should project bottom-tier offensive efficiency and limited passing work, leaving Jacobs as a volume-based prayer to get one TD on limited red zone trips for the team.
The story of the game however was Saquon Barkley. If there was any concern that he might be a diminished version of himself, that was immediately tossed aside. He looked excellent in the run game, showing elite burst in tight quarters, and then hitting for a TD on a designed b-gap wheel route. Some of the concerns we had shouldn’t totally melt away: the tush-push was still being attempted (although it failed twice, possibly leading to a move away from it), and Barkley saw just two targets. For that reason, I don’t think the bet has materially changed with the possible exception of just confirming how strong of an IRL player he still is. Somewhat like I talked about with Baltimore, this game was probably always in his Range of Outcomes, and we just saw how a ceiling game happens.
Kenny Gainwell was the clear RB2 which is expected. I still value Shipley in deeper leagues as a contingent play, based on my expectation that the complimentary role here is not necessarily an indicator of who the second-best primary back would be on the team.
Moving Forward: Jacobs is a mid-low RB2 until Love returns, then becomes a fringe RB1 pending usage changes with Lloyd back. Barkley is a top-five RB.
Texans @ Colts
This is another relatively boring one to discuss usage on because the lead backs are so entrenched. Jonathan Taylor played nearly every snap in every situation, but wound up with just 10.8 PPR points. We now the check downs would be limited in an Anthony Richardson offense, but I did expect some screens for him as a way to get Richardson into the rhythm of the game with easy completions. They only got the chance to pass 19 times today, so maybe that’s coming in future weeks.
Taylor ran 16 times for 48 yards which is a rough stat line, but there was not a ton on offer. The only truly bad rep I saw was the 2-point conversion where he had a one-on-one to the end zone and lost the interaction. That’s a spot where a superstar just needs to make a play and he didn’t. But for the most part he was simply up against too many bodies in a game Houston dominated in the trenches on both sides.
Speaking of both sides, Joe Mixon flattened the Colts repeatedly, racking up huge volume and chunk-playing them to death all afternoon. The blocking was excellent, but I can’t say Mixon didn’t do plenty himself too. He looked extremely natural in the zone-run scheme, and had lots of plays where Indianapolis appeared to have penetration, only for Mixon to make the designed cut back at the perfect moment to shoot into the space that was just vacated. It was really impressive stuff.
Mixon’s role was identical to most of his time with the Bengals. He doesn’t play pure LDD snaps (3rd and long), but he plays everything else.
I will always caution with a player like Mixon — and this applies to some other veterans as well — that we should expect them to look their best at this point in the year. When we fade a veteran, we do it because of our expectations for the late-weeks, so it doesn’t make much sense to massively tilt our perceptions based on the first weeks. However, at least in the short-medium term, Mixon is a great start.
One thing to note quickly on both sides of this game is that Houston ran 31 more plays than the Colts. That’s in part because of Houston’s success running the ball, but it was a weird Colts script. They had three 50+ yard passing plays which really shortened up their successful drives, and also had a blocked punt which led to a one-play TD drive. Overall they were successful offensively with four TDs, but none of the scoring drives were of a sustained nature that allowed the whole team to get in on the fun. There will be some level of positive regression here, even if the nature of Richardson’s volatile game might equate to a higher rate of shorter drives (for both good and bad reasons).
Moving Forward: Jonathan Taylor mid-tier RB1, Joe Mixon mid-to-low-end RB1
Steelers @ Falcons
Let’s start with the positives. Bijan Robinson safely put to bed any rumours of a time-share, playing 89% of the snaps and seeing 23 touches to Tyler Allgeier’s 3. Robinson saw five targets as well, and was by far the most functional aspect of this offense — which is the one negative note. The optimistic portion of the bet on Robinson was that he would both consolidate work and be part of a prolific offense. Kirk Cousins looked awful in this game — his first off the torn achilles, and specifically looked unable to move well in the pocket or drive into throws. It was a worst case scenario opener for him. If that continues it lowers Robinson’s ceiling from truly legendary heights but it’s the only missing piece right now. He has the rushing role, the receiving role, and the talent all locked down.
The other side of this game was more discouraging, at least from the perspective how I expected / wanted it to play out. Najee Harris played 38 snaps to Jaylen Warren’s 22, and within that saw 22 touches to Warren’s 4. Warren remained the primary LDD back, but while he split into Harris’s early down work frequently last year, Harris was the clear-cut early down RB in this game, and even Cordarrele Patterson mixed in on occasion. The optimistic reading is that Warren was being slowly worked in off the hamstring injury from the summer — though he did get in two full practices. The fear is that Arthur Smith just loves running it with Najee Harris. If he does, he does so at the expense of his own offensive success, but that’s never stopped him from doing odd things before.
The other aspect to touch on is that the Steelers played Justin Fields at QB, and played from ahead this whole game (despite not scoring a single TD), two things that made it a far more favourable script for an early down rusher than a receiving back. But this was pretty much how this team wants to play — especially with Fields — so we need Warren to get more rushing opportunities going forward. Najee Harris averaged just 3.8 YPC despite playing next to Justin Fields — who has historically aided RB YPC to a material degree — so the door remains open for a change here.
I’m choosing to remain optimistic on Warren because the talent level has been so clearly demonstrated over two years, and while Smith is a new play-caller, this is still Mike Tomlin’s team. We should have a high degree of confidence in Warren as a player, and Tomlin is too good a coach to let a UDFA diamond in the rough he elevated to prominence at the expense of a first-round pick just disappear into the night. Warren has already done the hard part of earning a role. Logic has to dictate that he regains one as he starts to stack full-health weeks together in the future.
Moving Forward: Bijan Robinson top-3 RB, Najee Harris back end RB2, Jaylen Warren bench asset until role improves
Panthers @ Saints
Yikes. This thing got ugly immediately for Carolina, and they wound up rotating in backups in the 4th-quarter at different times for each position group which makes the snaps data un-reliable.
But it did seem like there was a clear pattern at RB, with Chuba Hubbard playing two drives for each one drive of Sanders. The Hubbard drives often ended in turnovers he was not responsible for, which is why Sanders wound up with just one fewer touch and 10 fewer snaps.
If you’re going to start a back on the Panthers, Hubbard appears to have a classic RB2 role in a league that has more commonly adopted these 2:1 style rotations. But the floor on this offense is so low right now after this performance that he’s quite hard to trust. We’re going to need to see major improvement before even trusting Jonathon Brooks late in the season.
On the Saints side, Alvin Kamara was dominating touches in all situations before Jamaal Williams handled a lot of clock-killing work late. Kamara was even efficient on the ground in this one with 15-83-1 and 0.56 RYOE/att. But as a one game one-off vs. a sustained sample of sharply declining efficiency, this makes me more inclined to start JK Dobbins next week vs. Carolina than I am to re-evaluate wha the Kamara bet is. What that bet is, is a RB with a fantasy friendly skillset in an elite role for as long as he’s allowed to be. The best thing he has in his corner is that unlike some other similarly fragile backs, there is no threat to his workload in the immediate offing. Jamaal Williams is cooked (he even put up -2.24 RYOE/att in this game), and Kendre Miller is on IR. There’s no reason to go away from Kamara.
The other thing in Kamara’s corner that warrants a legitimate upgrade is that the Saints look fun. Yes the Panthers suck, but the Saints debuted a modern, motion-based, play-action offense under Klint Kubiak that was night and day from the prehistoric slog they were rolling out under Pete Carmichael. Derek Carr is far from elite, but he’s a capable enough QB that if he gets to participate in the McShanny scam offense this year, we could see career-best results. That means more red-zone work for Kamara and potentially more favourable run-sets.
For those reasons, I don’t think you need to sell Kamara right away. But if we get a month into the year and we see my expected combination of high-end scoring and poor efficiency, it’s a spot I’d want to move off of before Kendre Miller gives the team any other plausible RB upside option.
Moving Forward: Chuba Hubbard desparation RB2 / Flex, Alvin Kamara mid-range RB1 for the early-season
Jaguars @ Dolphins
There’s a lot to break down in this one. Let’s start on the Jaguars side, where Tank Bigsby matched Travis Etienne with 12 carries apiece. Bigsby was much more efficient (73 yards vs. 44), though Etienne added a TD and 3-2-15-0 in the receiving game, while Bigsby didn’t see a target.
As you may infer from the latter half of that sentence, this wasn’t a true 50-50 split: Etienne still saw 69% of the snaps. Bigsby was splitting the early-down rushing pie right down the middle, while Etienne was taking all aspects of the receiving game: he ran 17 routes to Bigsby’s 4. We saw growth from Etienne as a receiver last year and very little from Bigsby in that area, so this type of split probably makes the most sense. The nature of that split is such that when Bigsby is on the field, it’s probably a run play, and thus he’s probably getting the ball a lot on the snaps he plays. It would not be a surprise to see similar carry counts moving forward especially given Bigsby’s results.
This is a spot I want to watch the film on in much more detail later this week to get a handle on just how impressive Bigsby looked relative to his stat line. It’s hard to know what to make of Bigsby, who was a prospect I was really high on before he was downright horrific as a rookie. I hesitate to get behind any player who put what he did on tape, but from what I have seen so far from this game on braodcast view, he looked decisive, strong, and had some juice that wasn’t there last year. He had to big runs to the right side; one where he hit the edge immediately around a penetrating defender, and one where he snuck through an inside gap and then bounced. Both runs totally rocked, and show-cased a back who was thinking the game and translating it to movement infinitely faster than at any point last year.
Couple more things here: Etienne saw the only goal-line carry, but short yardage work was split overall, and it seems more that whomever is in will stay in between them, than that there is a designated back. Etienne converted his goal-line look effectively, and was stuffed on a 4th-and-1 that was actually a pretty impressive play: Etienne lined up off centre and was given a sweep to the left, had absolutely no room, tried to cut back all the way across the field back to the right and I think he may have gotten the edge if the tackle, #74, gets on his horse and makes a block. Instead it was stuffed a couple yards short. Bigsby went 1 for 2 on his short yardage chances.
Etienne also had a fumble at the one-yard line. It was a poor play, and one that was probably the most important in the game: he gets one more yard and the Jaguars are up 24-7. Instead, they were up 17-14 just one play later. I would give the credit more to the defender than the blame to Etienne, however. He had the ball in a strong position tucked between his chest and elbow, and didn’t have time to transfer carrying hands between eluding a tackler to his right, and then engaging with Jevon Holland to his left. End of the day the RB is always responsible for his own ball security, but it took a perfect punch from Holland. I think that was reflected with Etienne still playing on the next drive.
Given the overall performances I don’t see a reason to expect a major change from the Week 1 usage plan here. It’s a positive development for the team in real-life, but a downgrade in fantasy for Etienne to be losing this much rushing work.
On the Dolphins side, the action began when 4th-round-rookie Jaylen Wright was announced as a healthy inactive, bringing back memories of De’Von Achane from Week 1 of last year. I’m not reading a lot into this. The hype on Wright was strong enough that I started coming around to the possibility they would sprinkle him in, but teams don’t run 3-RB committees unless one is in a designated pass protection role. I’ve always been in on Wright, but as a two-way handcuff not a standalone piece. Jeff Wilson Jr. was apparently in over Wright for special teams purposes, according to some reporting.
The good news for Wright owners is that neither Achane nor Raheem Mostert are practicing yet, and they play Thursday Night. Achane was hurt very late in the game, and it’s apparently an ankle issue. Mostert was hurt early, and then again fairly late, and both times he returned but his role was reduced throughout. Both are something to monitor. If either misses, the other is a premium RB1 and Jaylen Wright would be worth a shot in deeep leagues. If both miss, you could plausibly start Wright or Wilson, but Wright would be my preferred pending reporting on game day.
As for Achane himself, what a promising day of usage. He didn’t get lose at all in the run gane, but he was used consistently as a receiving with 7-7-76-0, flashing efficiency out of the backfield. Outside of a long bomb to each of Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle, Achane was the most consistent part of the passing game which was up-and-down most of the day. He lined up out-wide or in the slot 14 times, six clear of the next highest RB. If we get this role every week, he’s going to compete for RB1 overall.
Raheem Mostert got off to a poor start here. He had just 9 opportunities to Achane’s 17, and was out-snapped 37-31; which included some snaps with both backs on the field. I suspect in games he is healthier he sees more than 6 carries, and he was hurt by script as well. But Achane was heavily involved from the first drive, and a lot of his work came via the slot, so I don’t think these two are entirely mutually exclusive.
I’ll note as well that Achane got a goal-line series to himself. I doubt he’s the “goal-line back,” but it was encouraging that they were confident enough to let him play there when it was natural to do so. As I said, Mostert was a bit in-and-out with apparent discomfort so it’s a bit hard to parse if he may have been subbed in for that spot on a healthier day, but even then they could have played the bigger Jeff Wilson Jr. if they wanted to and chose to keep Achane in.
I’d say that moving forward Achane’s goal-line role could be Gibbs-esque: he’s an underdog to get a goal-line series compared to his teammate, but if he gets them down there they’ll give him a crack at finishing it off.
The one note here we can reall emphasize is the Achane receiving usage, but everything else is in a holding pattern for now while we wait on injury information.
Moving Forward: Etienne high-end RB2, Bigsby low-end flex, Achane top-five RB and Mostert mid-range RB2 — when healthy: Wright upside RB2 start if both out, flex dart if one misses, Wilson Jr. can be a flex play if both Mostert and Achane miss
Cardinals @ Bills
Look we had to nail one of these on the money, here at some point. As predicted precisely, Conner was the bell cow, though Emari Demercado played the LDD role. Trey Benson was given a couple series to get his feet wet in his first NFL game. Unfortunately for Benson, Conner played terrifically in this one picking up where he left off, so I suspect this usage pattern will hold for at least a few weeks barring injury. I’ll take a closer look at each Benson touch later in the week.
The Bills were somewhat similar, as Ty Johnson was the primary RB2 playing mostly in LDD work, and Ray Davis snuck in for a run of snaps in the 3rd quarter, including an impressive catch and run conversion. Ideally, Davis phases out Johnson sooner than later, and he did everything in his power toward that end today.
James Cook is an interesting usage profile in that he gets all the early-down receiving looks, but doesn’t play a lot in outlet situations due to pass protection concerns. That plus goal-line issues holds him back from being a true RB1 in fantasy, but his efficiency and early-down receiving role can lead to big spikes.
The Bills had no true goal-line carries in this one, but Cook did see a carry form the eight and the four yard lines. That’s encouraging stuff.
Moving Forward: Conner and Cook high-end RB2s, Benson and Davis Stash
Patriots @ Bengals
Let’s start with the simpler Patriots side. Rhamondre Stevenson was the cover boy for the first Hitchhiker’s Guide two years ago when I wrote at PlayerProfiler. So I certainly enjoyed seeing him look all the way back to his 2021-22 form, and far improved from 2023 on Sunday. He toted the rock 25 times for 120 yards, adding three short catches. 118 of his 120 yards were after contact, which is truly incredible, and brings to mind the best of Stevenson we saw in previous years. He’s mentioned having run outside zone at Oklahoma this off-season, and saying that was his most comfortable scheme to run in. I think a lot of folks were perplexed by that given he’s a slower back, but the attribute in his game I’ve always liked best is his ability to control angles in open space to create favourable engagements where he can use his size to evade tackles. It’s something he’s able to do a lot more if he’s moving diagonally pressing the defense, rather than needing to build up speed immediately running straight ahead — which is just not his game at his size. Think of backs like Alfred Morris or Arian Foster who were less than impressive straight-line speedsters, but had a ton of success in and outside-zone based run scheme.
The downside of Stevenson’s terrific performance is that Antonio Gibson played only 13 snaps. I expected him to work as a designated LDD back, but that was not the case. Stevenson was the clear lead in every situation, and Gibson played in every situation as well — just far less. They’re being used right now in an “interchangeable” rotation albeit one with a clear-cut lead back. Perhaps that changes when they face negative game script, but seeing as the team was comfortable with Stevenson on passing downs, I’m less optimistic about that than I would have been prior. The other extenuating note is that Gibson was questionable coming in with a hip injury. However, I’m not expecting as much of a shift here as I did in a similar situation with Pittsburgh is that Stevenson played far better than Harris, and Gibson is a far inferior player to Warren. Even if this wasn’t the plan coming in, Stevenson dominated this game, and I think they let him run with it for a while.
The Bengals side was one we were all watching, as it came into the year much more ambiguous. I wrote in the pre-season HHG that I was expecting Chase Brown to play more between the 20s on early downs, and Zack Moss to play more in outlet and short-yardage situations. The usage profiles were correct, but the overall distribution tilted more toward Moss than I expected. Moss and Brown split early-down work right down the middle, while Moss expanded his touch lead by monopolizing LDD work, the two-minute drill, and the goal-line. The result of this was a 2:1 snap share advantage, and a 13:6 opportunities advantage.
As long as this distribution holds, Moss looks like an RB2 and Brown is a low-floor streamer. However, even though I was expecting a bit more Brown to open the year based on beat reporting, I don’t think this one is a set and forget situation. Brown played a larger role in this game than he played at any time last year, and the team reasonably didn’t want to take him 0 to 100. That doesn’t mean they ever intend to get to 100, but just that we don’t fully know their season-long vision, and a ramp up would make sense, given Moss is the more experienced and reliable asset.
In order for that to happen though, Brown will need to force the issue. He didn’t have many chances to do it in this one, but wasn’t able to do anything memorable. If he makes the most of his opportunities in the coming weeks, I don’t see this backfield as entrenched, given the limited investment in each player from the team. That being said, the reason I’ve been lower on Brown than other backs in similar situations like Warren or Tyjae Spears is that I’m a lot less convicted that Brown will make the most of those opportunities. He’s still largely a black box to me, and six touches on Sunday don’t really change my perception of him in either direction.
Moving Forward: Stevenson high-end RB2, Zack Moss mid-RB2, Chase Brown streamer
Titans @ Bears
This will be another long one to talk through. Let’s get the Bears out of the way first, as not a whole lot happened.
Roschon Johnson was scratched, which was surprising. Johnson was expected to be a strong special teams player and third-down back, so it’s not particularly obvious why the team would need to instead play Travis Homer as a special teamer and third-down back, unless he’s just purely beat out the 2nd-year man for that role. Johnson had practiced in full for this game and was not on the final injury report, but he had missed time in camp — so it’s possible this was a health-influenced scratch, even if he wasn’t necessarily too hurt to play.
However, the in-game result of this scratch wound up likely being zero. Shane Waldron — who I’m increasingly sure is a donkey — chose to play Homer in the role we projected for Johnson, which was as a pure LDD specialist. This left D’Andre Swift taking on 39 of the remaining 45 snaps for a role that was almost identical to the one we described for Joe Mixon, with Homer as the Dare Ogunbawale pass protection specialist, and Khalil Herbert in the Dameon Pierce role of breather back. Unfortunately for Swift, this offense was completely non-functional all day long, which meant this role amounted to 30 yards on 10 carries and zero catches on 1 target. Waldron’s offenses in Seattle threw to the RB at a very low rate, something that was plausibly more about Ken Walker than Waldron himself, but the early returns are showing that it may be a Waldron issue.
I am a little worried that this might be a fake regression spot. If the role holds, Swift is a clear candidate to trade for right now, while people don’t recognize just how strong the underlying usage was, in an offense which has a pretty reasonable path to rapid improvement behind their No. 1 overall Quarterback. However, there are so many new pieces here from Swift himself, and the play-caller, that I don’t view this rotation as particularly settled. If the offense continues to fail, and Swift continues to be inefficient, there’s no reason why they can’t just give more touches to Herbert (or even Johnson). This is also where I’ll note that Herbert had only two carries all day, but they came on 3rd and 1 and 4th and 1 — two consecutive plays, Herbert was stoned on the first one and converted on his second chance. The Bears never ran a goal-line series in this game, but if that usage transports to the goal-line, Swift would profile as a TRAP back, losing out on pass-game and goal-line usage.
Moving to the other side of the game, Tony Pollard was probably the only offensive player on either team who was legitimately impressive, going 16-82-1 on the ground, with 4-3-12-0 through the air. The 39-29 snap edge (this included 4 snaps with both playing together) was a mild surprise to me. The more surprising aspect was that the roles were so bifurcated. Pollard out-snapped Tyjae Spears 35-11 on early downs, while Spears took 17 of 18 snaps on 3rd downs and the two-minute drill. This matches the role Spears had last year next to Derrick Henry, but is the complete opposite of the “interchangeable” backfield that the coaching staff has preached all off-season, from the moment they signed Pollard up until the Week 1 press-conference. A lot of pro-Pollard people have said to me that interchangeable does not mean equal, which is of course true, but the Week 1 plan was in no way interchangeable either.
The immediate coach speak after the game from Brian Callahan is that they want to get Spears (4 carries, 4 targets) more involved. I’m quite invested in Spears and think he’s a terrific talent, so I’m happy to hear that — but it’s a bit hard to trust this staff after their Week 1 plan diverged so substantially from anything they said all off-season. You’re probably better off trusting their actions over their words and expecting more of the same next week, perhaps with the exception of a couple early plays schemed up for Spears in the screen game in the opening script to appease the ‘squeaky wheel.’
One reason for that is Tony Pollard looked legitimately terrific — a continuation of what we saw in the pre-season. I talked this backfield through in here, and also at length during my main event draft with Ben Gretch. My view was that even if Pollard was truly ‘back’ — and able to sustain that all season — he was seemingly going to open in a timeshare with Spears, who is also very talented, and the staff would have little incentive to deviate from their initial plan. Of course, the initial plan was not what I expected it to be (or what the staff said it would be), but the latter point largely stands. Spears didn’t do anything in this game to shake me off my priors on his talent level, but Pollard was exemplary, and certainly didn’t do anything that would cause a coaching staff to take touches away from him. The challenge for Pollard will be maintaining this level as a 27-year old back who has never demonstrated a full-season of efficiency mixed with a feature back workload. But after years of adamantly screaming that he was capable of doing just that, I’m certainly not going to close the door on it.
On a self-indulgent note that you don’t have to care about or read, I will say that watching Pollard look this good is extremely tilting to me. It’s only one week, but we should be more confident now than ever that the ankle fracture was the primary culprit for his poor play in 2023, which means I really do think we were robbed of a potentially legendary hit last year, and the culmination of a lot of analysis attemtping to center and isolate RB talent being validated rather than mocked. As I’ve mentioned, I’m slightly overweight Pollard this year — though I have far more Spears.
Moving Forward: Swift vollatile, mid-range RB2, Pollard high-end RB2, Spears is a streamer only until further notice
Vikings @ Giants
This is admittedly the game I’ve watched the least of to this point. On the Giants side, things went more or less as expected: Devin Singletary played 71% of the snaps, and led in all situations — with the possibly notable exception that Tyrone Tracy was on the field for the team’s only goal-line snap. I don’t really see why Tracy would be a designated goal-line back, so unless this becomes a trend I’m chalking it up to noise. Singletary also ran two-thirds of the team’s RB routes (52% of the total routes). His role is quite good, and a pretty stereotypical ‘starter’ type role. The issue of course is that the offense is a nightmare, and Singletary is a decent player but not a gamebreaker by any stretch, so he needs a good environment to compile production. He has a high-end RB2 role, but will probably perform more like a high-end flex due to circumstance. Think late-2023 Chuba Hubbard.
If you’re a Tracy bull it’s encouraging to see him work ahead of Eric Gray (who played 7 snaps to Tracy’s 14), in a week where most rookies were worked in very slowly. He’s a very strong dynasty stash, and a reasonable hold in deep leagues, but the ‘what do you win if you win?’ with him is much lower than some other rookies because of the offense he’s in.
The Vikings on the other hand looked terrific on offense, with Sam Darnold getting off to a scorching start on his campaign to prove that the McShanny offense is total scam. He completed his first 10 passes, and it seemed Minnesota could have put up a big number here if the Giants had any ability to keep up. (They had 21 points after their first drive of the 3rd quarter) Unfortunately for Darnold and the passing game, Daniel Jones was truly wretched, and the Vikings completed two passes in the fourth quarter (both to RBs), as they simply sat on the ball and ran out the clock.
I’m starting with the environmental aspects here for Minnesota because while it was only one week, I think you should meaningfully upgrade your expectations for this team. They play in a division with three potentially fun teams (at least when Love returns to health and if the Bears make some progress) and also play against the AFC South this year which is full of fun offenses. They’re going to get pushed in future games, and it seems they’re capable of keeping up.
As for the backs, Kevin O’Connell did what he’s done every year he’s been in Minnesota, which is a 2:1 drive-based rotation, albeit with occasional spell plays mixed into some longer drives. For the most part, each RB owns their drive and gets usage in any situation that arises. Aaron Jones was the “two” side of that equation, and looked like the much better player as well. Jones had an interesting year in 2023 where the overall numbers look poor, but he was elite late-season after getting over a hamstring injury, followed by an MCL sprain, and initially struggling in his return. Safe to say he is not washed — with the caveat that’s applied to every veteran RB we’ve discussed so far which is that Week 1 is usually the best these guys will be all year, and some may decline from here. But Jones has been so efficient for so long when healthy that I do view him as a potential outlier from the typical rules of aging curves.
Ty Chandler was not impressive here, but it’s one game and a small sample. His role was what I expected it to be, and the offense looked better than anticipated, so overall I’d say it’s stock up.
Moving Forward: Singletary flex, Aaron Jones high-end RB2, Ty Chandler and Tyrone Tracy are stashes
Raiders @ Chargers
This is a game with probably the two most surprising RB situations from Week 1.
Zamir White was heralded as the clear, early-down back by the coaching staff coming into this one, and while he started and saw 13 carries to Alexander Mattison’s five, he was actually out-snapped 34-26. White played a slight majority of early down snaps (18-14), but Mattison played in 19 of 20 snaps on third downs and the two-minute drill.
I think some of the raw numbers here obfuscate the actual usage pattern slightly. With the Bears, Luke Getsy typically oversaw drive-based rotations, and sometimes opted for a designated third down back on top of that. In 2022, Montgomery saw 2 drives to Herberts 1 early-season, which changed to 1:1 drive splits as Herbert asserted himself, but Montgomery played all LDD snaps throughout. In 2023, the RB room was in flux so rotations shifted aorund more often, but he typically opted for more pure drive-based rotations letting each back (even Khalil Herbert, a notably suspect pass-downs back) own their full drive.
This week we saw a third permutation of this, where White was receiving two drives to Mattison’s one, but it was Mattison who played all the LDD snaps even on White’s drives. The likely result of all this is that White will likely lead in carries more often than not, while Mattison will more likely lead in snaps — with potential exception of rare games when the Raiders win decisively.
All that being said, this is far from a settled rotation, and Pierce alluded to the fact that he may play the hot hand more, which at this point is Mattison. White didn’t get much going here with 13 carries for 44 yards, and losing a fumble. Mattison did little on the ground, but he did have quite an impressive receiving TD where he broke away from a tackler after the catch, and ran down the sideline into the end zone. It took one week for Mattison to put a better play on tape this year than he did at any point last year.
I’ve been skeptical of Mattison for a long time and remain so: this isn’t a Tank Bigsby situation where he was bad as a rookie but may have un-tapped potential. Mattison had poor underlying metrics for years on the Vikings despite some occasional fantasy spike weeks, and then completely flopped in a terrific opportunity as the lead back last year. He’s not a good rusher. But I’ve also viewed Zamir White much like I viewed Mattison last year, so while I don’t expect a flippening in this backfield, I wouldn’t expect White to pull away either.
The most bullish aspect for Mattison is that he won the LDD job over Dylan Laube and Ameer Abdullah, which converts this backfield from a possible 3-man committee to a 2-person one, and he made a great play in the receiving game that will help him lock down that role.
On the Chargers side, I mentioned last week that I was concerned we might see Kimani Vidal get scratched, and that’s what we saw. Hassan Haskins was active but did not play on offense. Beyond the complete erasure of a 3rd committee member, the backfield played out as I projected, with Gus Edwards playing roughly half the early-down snaps and little else. JK Dobbins took on all passing down opportunities (17 routes vs. 6), but wihtout any 3rd back in the mix he was able to establish a clear snaps lead by playing even with Edwards on early downs. From a pure ‘who plays when’ perspective, this was similar to the Bengals backfield, although the Chargers wanted to run with rather than throw to Edwards, while the Bengals were the opposite with Brown in the game.
Putting the usage aside, the most important aspects of this game were quality of play given all the uncertainty in this backfield heading in. If any backfield was likely to be shaped more by how the backs played Week 1 than when, it was this one. I watched the majority of this game live, and both backs got off to a slow start: this led to a classic “spoke too soon” tweet, where I said Kimani Vidal’s stock was on the rise despite not playing.
For Gus Edwards, that never really changed. He looked lethargic, which matches what we saw late in 2023. His efficiency really regressed last year vs. previous campaigns, and especially over the second half. One thing that we discussed in this column last year that isn’t as apparent watching box scores is that Edwards was appearing to lose a lot of his role mid-season when Keaton Mitchell emerged. Just as Mitchell was pulling away, he was hit with a season-ending injury that forced Baltimore’s hand, reverting to their two-man backfield of Edwards and Justice Hill. Notably, in some of Baltimore’s biggest games — including the Sunday Night Football game vs. San Francisco, the 1-seed clincher vs. Miami, and the Championship Game vs. the Chiefs, Edwards was not very invovled as the team preferred to leave Lamar Jackson in shotgun, and put the ball in his hands on nearly every play. Then, in the off-season, they immediately prioritized adding a new back. I think it’s over for Edwards and the Chargers are going to realize that sooner than later.
Dobbins on the other hand showed off why I’ve been so high on him nearly every year of his career (and usually paid for it by watching him suffer a completely gut-wrenching injury). I’m not sure there is a RB in the league who processes space better between the tackles. His 61-yard run is getting scrutinized for his breakaway speed at the end of the run, but something I really want to emphasize is that he had 10 carries, and on two of them he navigated a fairly narrow lane, to the point where we had a chance to scrutinize his breakaway speed. Most RBs would simply have had 3-yard gains. For what it’s worth, NFL NextGenStats credited Dobbins with 98 yards over expected in this game — 59 more than any other back. I think we often see big runs like this where there’s no violent tackle being shed, and the hole looks more obvious after the fact. But it take an ability to read the rhythm of the play, pick the right opportunity to cut into the hole, and shoot through it with sufficient burst to make these kinds of plays happen, and Dobbins is a back who has done that consistently his whole career whenever he’s been on the field. It’s not just by accident that he averages 6.1 yard per carry for his career: he’s really, really good at playing running back.
Some of the people focusing on his breakaway speed remind me of those who did it with Breece Hall after he ran out of gas on a big run last year in Week 1 in his return from an ACL-tear. Now some folks have made the more nuanced point that these are different injuries, and while RBs in year-1 post-ACL are more likely to ramp up their ability over time, RBs in year-1 post-achilles are apparently more likely to wear down over the season. (Please don’t take my word for this — I have no idea what I’m talking about regarding injuries, and am merely relaying what people who do know things about injuries have said)
Basically, I’ll concede that Dobbins’ breakaway speed is proabably what it is for 2024 (and maybe beyond), but I’m still pretty optimistic, compared to some of the more health focused analysts, that a lot of what makes Dobbins special is that he’s a 100th percentile cerebral runner, and so long as he trusts his body enough to execute the reads he has, he’s going to be a positive player. I’m starting him every week until he gives me a reason not to, and honestly I would see if I can trade late-2nd round value (ideally in the form of a player) for him in dynasty if people are set on pattern-matching him to James Robinson a few years ago, who popped early and then faded.
All that being said, I freely concede that Dobbins remains at high risk of fading or re-injury relative to any other player of his role and talent level — which means if you drafted Kimani Vidal, the thesis remains in tact: he’s behind one very fragile player and one very washed player. I think this backfield could be in flux all year, and the hope is that he eventually gets a chance to work into some of Edwards’ role. Once that happens, he has a ton of contingent upside at the very least.
Moving Forward: Zamir White flex play, Mattison is a low-end streamer, Dobbins vollatile RB2, Edwards is a seasonal league cut, Vidal is a stash
Cowboys @ Browns
This game was quite tough to watch, with potentially significant injuries to both starting TEs, and Deshaun Watson looking as bad as a Quarterback could possibly look.
For the Browns, Jerome Ford was the clear starter, and with less caveats than last year, where he was losing a lot of high-value touch opportunities despite being the clear lead between the 20s. He got the lone goal-line snap, and dominated snaps and touches in every other game situation over Pierre Strong, with a 75% snap rate overall. He’s a more explosive rusher than Devin Singletary, though probably not as talented as Rhamondre Stevenson. In any case, he is in a similar tier to these two at least until Nick Chubb returns as players with great usage in bad environments.
For the Cowboys, this is one spot where I do think the box score is a bit misleading. Snaps were 32-28 for Ezekiel Elliott vs. Rico Dowdle, and while Elliott got the start, they rotated by drive. Nathan Jahnke noted that Dowdle played 25 of 27 snaps on “his” drives, and Elliott played 32 of 35 on “his.” There was only one goal-line opportunity and it came on a ‘Zeke series,’ so I don’t know how much we learned from him getting that TD. We know Dowdle won’t replace Elliott at the goal-line on his drives (which we surely already knew), but we haven’t seen what will happen yet if Dowdle is the back when the team gets inside the five. Based on how they rotated generally, I think Dowdle will get first crack to finish it out, but we’ll find out soon enough I’m sure.
The larger issue is that the Cowboys continued their torrid pass rate, handing off just 19 times in 63 plays despite massive positive game script. When you split those two ways (10 carries for Elliott, 8 for Dowdle), you’re not getting a start-worthy asset either way unless they score. I think both backs currently look like good bets to hit in best ball for as long as this usage sustains, but neither are a managed league start at the moment. For what it’s worth, Elliott posted -1.65 RYOE/att on 10 carries, so it’s not like he’s found the fountain of youth. I’m not sure Dowdle is good enough to displace the natural order of things, but if one back is going to fall out of this rotation, it’s the extremely washed dude.
Moving Forward: Ford low-end RB2, Elliott and Dowdle are streamers
Broncos @ Seahawks
On the Seahawks side, Kenneth Walker was dominating snaps in all situations, even LDD work, early in the game, and looked fantastic — mixing in a couple perplexing choices, but out-doing it with big-time runs. He suffered a core-injury late in the game, which is why the snaps look closer, and after Walker exited, Zach Charbonnet made a nice TD grab on a wheel route.
This offense looked quite good overall after a first-quarter filled with some weirdness. If Walker is healthy, he looks like an absolute smash play, and if he’s not, then Charbonnet should be in every lineup.
On the Broncos side we got another backfield where the usage doesn’t totally allign with the box score, or with our pre-season expectations. Javonte Williams started the game, played the majority of LDD work and the whole two-minute drill. Jaleel McLaughlin played slightly more early-down snaps overall, and received 6 targets and 9 carries to Williams’ 2 and 8. Based on Williams playing 12 more snaps overall, I suspect he’ll see more touches than McLaughlin more of the time moving forward — but McLaughlin has always had a really high touch-per-snap rate, so some of this might stick.
Overall, this is more in line with my early off-season expectation of roles, and less so with my later expectations after seeing McLaughlin work as an LDD back in pre-season. Audric Estime played 3 snaps early in the game and fumbled trying to hurdle a defender. This likely won’t help his case.
I want to be buying these backs still because the McLaughlin usage was really encouraging, and I think Williams’ role is a lot better than the stat line suggests. But Bo Nix’s rancid play is going to make things a bit difficult. We don’t need him to be great, but we need him to be a lot better than he was.
Moving Forward: Walker mid-RB1 if healthy, Charbonnet elite handcuff, Williams and McLaughlin both on the RB2/Flex borderline.
Buccaneers @ Commanders
The Bucs running backs were remarkably on brand. Rachaad White ate the majority of snaps, was efficient in the receiving game, handled nearly all LDD and goal-line work, and posted -2.15 RYOE/att in a nut matchup. Bucky Iriving rotated into the game in the first half, but played a bit more than he may have otherwise since it got out of hand. He looked fantastic whenever he touched the ball, racking up 62 yards on 9 carries, though the lanes were pretty darn open.
My stance on this backfield is unchanged: White is going to lead in HVTs and overall snaps in the near-term, but his teammate is way better at football than he is, so I expect movement in the medium-long term.
On the Commanders side, Brian Robinson just outsnapped Austin Ekeler 33-31, though he was leading 28-21 prior to the last two drives which were effectively one extended two-minute drill. The rotation here was similar to the ones we discussed in Pittsburgh and Tennessee, where Robinson was dominating carries, and Ekeler was playing in LDD situations. One shift is that the early-down role was actually pretty split in terms of snaps, but Robinson was generally on the field when they wanted to run, and Ekeler was subbed on if they wanted to pass. That’s not how I would like to run an offence, because it gives the defense far too much information, but I’m not Kliff Kingsbury, and this is pretty much exactly how he split work between James Conner and Chase Edmonds in 2021 — the last time he had a true committee.
If there was one mild surprise here it’s that Jayden Daniels threw 33% of his passes to RBs — including 4 to Robinson on 9 routes. We saw Robinson post pass-game efficiency last year even though he ran very few routes and that carried over so far this year. He clearly won’t have 6.13 YPRR every week, but it’s nice to know that he has some HVT upside beyond the goal-line.
Moving Forward: Rachaad White high-end RB2 on a leash, Irving priority stash and reasonable streamer, Robinson low-end RB2, Ekeler streamer with flex appeal in negative script
Rams @ Lions
The Lions backfield was virtually unchanged from last year and thus warrants little discussion at the end of a long column. When the Lions play from ahead — as they did for most of this game — Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery will evenly split snaps, mostly by drive, but with occasional game-plan specific plays in place for each guy. Montgomery is more likely to receive goal-line snaps, but Gibbs will get some, and each socred a close-range TD in this game. When Montgomery is in the game the Lions operate as more of a power-running team, while they operate as a space-based attack with Gibbs, which leads to more carries for Montgomery and more targets for Gibbs. They’re similar quality plays in positive script, though Gibbs has the higher floor and ceiling due to targets, and he becomes a much better play than Montgomery when they face negative script.
Kyren Williams dominated the backfield with 91% snaps, which was one of two early-season Ls I suffered in this game (the other being Cooper Kupp going absoluely ham with 21 targets, in conjunction with Puka Nacua going on I.R.). The especially surprising part was that Ronnie Rivers rather than Blake Corum received the leftover work. The history of RB rookie seasons would tell you not to check a talent-based take at the door because of Week 1 usage, and in just the last two years we’ve seen backs like James Cook, Rachaad White, Tyler Allgeier, Jahmyr Gibbs, and De’Von Achane drastically scale up their work over time during a rookie season. So I’m holding the line on Corum working into a role here by mid-season and being #goodatfootball. However, part of the justification for his elevated price in comparison to backs like Jaylen Wright or Trey Benson was that Corum would have the RB2 role locked down from Week 1, and had nothing in his path when it came to contingent value. Clearly, that’s not the case — at least not yet.
For what it’s worth, in his media session Sean McVay stated that he threw the pre-game rotation plans out the window after the team suffered two O-Line injuries instantly, and went with the trusted hand in Kyren Williams for a higher rate of snaps than he intended to going in. He stated a desire to get Ronnie Rivers more involved, and Corum involved as well. I half-believe him, but McVay planning to get more RBs involved is a bit like me planning to meal-prep during a Sunday when there is 9 hours of football to watch and an article to work on after it’s done: sure that’s the plan… but when have I ever executed that plan?
For the time being, I’m abandoning my early-season read on this backfield and expect to see a ton of Kyren Williams. I’ll hold out an expectation that Corum grows his role over the course of the year however. The larger short-term issue for Williams is the offensive line — which knocks down his expected efficiency and the overall talent of the unit (also affected by Nacua’s absense), which could impact how often the Rams are near the goal-line.
Moving Forward: Kyren Williams mid-RB1, Corum stash, Gibbs low-end RB1 with elite RB1 contingent value, Montgomery script-dependent RB2
Jets @ 49ers
Last game… woo!
The Jets got run out of the building in this one after a really impressive first quarter drive, but Breece Hall’s role looks elite. Braelon Allen continued the trend of rookie RBs playing less than anticipated, coming in for one (1) snap, before Aaron Rodgers left the game and Allen played a garbage time drive with Tyrod Taylor. Hall was one of only 4 Jets to see targets in a hyper-consolidated offense. On the first two drives, only Hall and Wilson touched the ball, and then Lazard got into the mix with 2 TDs later on. Rodgers was not great in this one, but I thought he was better than Cousins as a comparison of achilles QBs, and he had the tougher matchup as well.
Jordan Mason became the un-expected bell cow when Christian McCaffrey was ruled out, much to all fantasy players’ displeasure. Not getting this news until Monday night left many managers who had Mason unable to play him. Nonetheless, he looked truly awesome. There’s a Shanny element to this of course, but Mason has flashed in the metrics every time he’s had a chance to play. I’ve said this before with Elijah Mitchell and I think the same applies to Mason, where you’re losing the receiving aspect from CMC, but the rushing is pretty much a 1-for-1 replacement. If McCaffrey misses next week he’s a no-brainer RB1.
It’s also possible they revert to the late-2022 usage pattern where Mason plays the Mitchell role, supplementing McCaffrey on early down rushing. McCaffrey is still an elite RB even with that occuring since he does so much damage in the passing game, but it is a slight knock on his ceiling if we see that manifest.
Moving Forward: Breece Hall top-3 RB, Christian McCaffrey top-3 RB if healthy, Jordan Mason mid-range RB1 if CMC is out.
WAIVER CONSIDERATIONS
Here would be my priority ranking of RBs with sub-50% rostership, based on Yahoo! fantasy:
Jordan Mason (59% rostership, but making an exception): worth 50-70% of FAAB, or 100% in deeper leagues, based on one more likely spot start, and potential for an elite handcuff thereafter
JK Dobbins (51% rostership, another Week 1 exception): 100% of FAAB
Zach Charbonnet: 20-30% FAAB if there is no update on Walker’s health before waivers clear, > 50% if you have Walker.
Jaylen Wright: 10-20% FAAB — only worth a big spend if both backs miss, worth prioritizing if you think you can nab him, wait on reports, and then add a different back later. He should be 100% rostered in deeper leagues anyhow.
Jaleel McLaughlin: 10-20% FAAB — more in deeper leagues if you need a spot start RB
Bucky Irving: 10% FAAB — likely a guy you can sneak on to your bench with more exciting options in shallow leagues. If it’s a deeper league and nobody above him is available (and Irving is somehow), then spend more as needed
Watch List / Minimum Bids: Tank Bigsby, Tryone Tracy, Kimani Vidal, Ray Davis, Braelon Allen, MarShawn Lloyd, Ty Chandler, Alexander Mattison
NOTE: Earlier Version did not list Tank Bigsby by error
STREAMER STOCK WATCH LATER IN THE WEEK
Metrics Legend:
RYOE/att = Rush Yards over Expectation per Attempt (NFL Next Gen Stats)
ROE% = Percentage of Rushes over Expectation (NFL Next Gen Stats)
BAE Rating = Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating, A box-count weighted efficiency metric comparing a RB vs. his teammates created by Noah Hills
RSR = Relative Success Rate, a metric created by Noah Hills to measure a running back’s rate of successful carries vs. that of their team-mates
YAC/att = Yards After Contact per Attempt
YBC/att = Yards Before Contact per Attempt
PFF Grade / PFF Rushing Grade = Qualitative Film Grade assigned by Pro Football Focus
Juke Rate: PlayerProfiler’s tackle avoidance metric, combining both broken tackles and evaded tackles
EXP%: Percentage of rushes of 15+ yards
YPRR: Yards per Route Run
TPRR: Targets per Route Run
HVT: High Value Touches (receptions and goal-line carries)