Week 3 HHG: The Sunday Drive

Recapping the shifts in NFL backfields in the 3rd week

I’m writing this after just watching Jayden Daniels cook up the most thrilling performance of the year in a Monday Night Football stunner that featured zero punts. (Washington’s second straight game without a punt!)

I also didn’t have an intro planned so I’ll just gush for a while here instead.

One of the big talking points of the year has been the importance of scheme and environment when it comes to the QB position both in fantasy and in real life — highlighted by the strong starts of QBs like Sam Darnold and Derek Carr, and for different reasons folks like Caleb Williams, Trevor Lawrence, and Justin Herbert.

But it’s not particularly relevant to the star of Week 3! Kliff Kingsbury is an extremely average coordinator, and Jayden Daniels is piloting an offense with Terry McLaurin — good but hardly great — as its number 1 play-maker, a complimentary but un-spectacular RB committee, and a bunch of random other dudes running routes.

If he was struggling in his first three starts he’d have every possible excuse. Instead, he just hung 38 points on the Bengals on Monday Night Football, including the play of the year thus far to put the dagger into Cincinnati on a go-ball to McLaurin that looked like it was cribbed straight out of Russell Wilson’s prime.

I’ll be doing my dynasty rankings update likely Wednesday, and if you caught the podcast that I did Monday with Davis Mattek and Patrick Kerrane — I touched on a few preliminary post-Week 3 moves I made in our shared sheet. We recorded prior to Daniels’ performance but suffice to say he will be one of the biggest movers.

It’s one game so I don’t want to lose perspective, but what stood out to me perhaps the most out of Daniels’ game was his poise. If for any reason you didn’t watch the game, Washington took over up 31-26 halfway through the 4th after the Bengals had just cut it to a one-score game. Daniels converted a 3rd and 3 early in the drive on a mesh-concept to Terry McLaurin where the linebacker picked him up well out of the mesh, and Daniels just slid to his right, waiting for it to open. The ‘backer played it pretty well, sticking with McLaurin until he couldn’t any longer and running at Daniels while the defensive back moved up from his zone to pick up McLaurin. The result was that Daniels had only about 1 second to make the throw where McLaurin was un-covered, during which a linebacker was charging at him. He calmly waited out the play, tossed it to McLaurin before the defensive back could make a play on it, and it was first down Commanders.

Then, on the play of the game, it was a 3rd and 7 and Washington had 10 men on the field and no timeouts. It looked like a potential disaster play, but Daniels managed to keep his composure, and uncork an impossibly good ball while getting rocked as he released it.

If he misses either of these plays, the Bengals likely march down the field and win the game — they hadn’t punted the entire game either. And if that was the outcome I’d still be singing Daniels’ praises for an impressive coming out party that was just a step short of perfection on a night when perfection was required. In fact, the whole night felt like it would likely end in a moral victory for Washington — a game they played closer than expected and came away from at 1-2, but with confidence they’d found their QB of the future. Not so. They didn’t just find their QB of the future — they clearly found their QB of the present.

What a start for the 2024 rookie class — Daniels looks like an absolute smash, I’ve moved Malik Nabers to my 1.05 overall in dynasty after one of the most impressive starts we’ve ever seen from a rookie WR, and Marvin Harrison Jr. has somehow lost ground in all this despite adding a 17.4 point week to stack on top of his Week 2 explosion. That’s not to mention Brock Bowers — who was possibly the most-discussed breakout player just last week.

Nothing overly profound to this, except to say that (a) if you can somehow buy high on these guys it’s probably more likely their market value hasn’t actually caught up to their efficient value — tentatively, Nabers will be my 1.05 and Daniels my 1.08 in the next update — than the reverse, and (b) if the first few weeks have not gone as well as you’d hoped (surely the case in at least some leagues), think about how much of the landscape has shifted already in the last 3 weeks — and how many shifts are bound to keep happening the rest of the year. I assure you we have a long way to go, so stay positive.

And once again I need to note: the FantasyPoints Data Suite is where I get the bulk of my info for this column. If you want access to the single best database of key metrics for every fantasy format, use JAKOB25 at checkout for 25% off, and join the data suite!

Now let’s get into the Week 2 Sunday Drive!

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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 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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1. INJURIES AND FALL OUT

Kansas City Chiefs

In their first game without Isiah Pacheco, the Chiefs turned primarily to Carson Steele as their lead back, though it was more of a committee than it had been with Pacheco active. Samaje Perine retained his 3rd down role, and also played the two-minute drill. He worked in for 18 non-LDD snaps, but Steele had 45.

There were a couple interesting wrinkles to how it played out. First off, Steele wound up with 17-72-0 and 2-1-2-0, while Perine had 6-20-0 and 4-3-15-0 — an edge of 21-14 in adjusted opportunities. In the first half however, the opportunities were 6 carries and 2 targets for Steele, with 6 carries and 3 targets for Perine. In the second half, Steele had 11 carries while Perine had 0, and had the only RB target. There is some sequencing randomness I’m sure, but it also felt like Reid was genuinely impressed by Steele, and chose to ride the hot hand. Steele wasn’t (and isn’t) explosive. But he churned out positive gains — with the league’s top raw success rate — and posted +0.22 RYOE/Att. Good enough.

The Chiefs had only 3 non-short yardage 3rd down snaps in this game, so the 46-28 snap distribution will likely be closer in future weeks. But 3rd down snaps are not very valuable for RB fantasy value. The more important role for Perine is the 2-minute drill, and his usage suggests that if the Chiefs were to find themselves behind in a future game, Perine would likely lead the backfield in fantasy points. However, seeing as they are the Chiefs, that’s not likely to happen very often.

The other shift we saw was the expected bump in their pass-rate, posting a +5% PROE in a matchup I think most teams would prefer to run against. Rashee Rice has essentially become an extension of the run-game, and he’s a locked-in elite WR1 every week.

I do maintain an optimism for this backfield despite a low-scoring Week 3. The TD equity remains high here — especially for Steele, even though it didn’t cash in this spot, and Perine has spike week potential with his receiving role in the right script. Unfortunately, with Steele seemingly locked into a sizeable early down role, the apex-ceiling outcome is likely off the table — where Perine could have consolidated all the high-value touches.

Takeaway: Both RBs are viable streamers, with Steele the preferred play in most game scripts

Houston Texans

Cam Akers chalk week went out with a whimper, as the Texans got throttled by the Minnesota Vikings. Akers had the role Joe Mixon’s been in the last two weeks — with J.J. Taylor taking over as the Akers/Dameon Pierce compliment on early downs, and Dare Ogunbawale playing his passing down role. Unfortunately, game script got away from Akers to such a degree that the entire second half was effectively a two-minute drill. This led Ogunbawale to play near equal snaps with Akers.

If Mixon and Pierce out again, I would be inclined to go back to Akers even off the dud. You’d expect better game script against a Jaguars team that could not look more disinterested in playing football than they did Monday Night, and I think Akers could see up to 60-70% of the snaps and 70-80% of the touches in a positive script. I fully expect Mixon to miss — though he’s an auto-start if he doesn’t. I’m less sure about Pierce, and if he plays there’s probably too much uncertainty on who would lead the backfield to play either side.

Takeaway: Akers mid-range RB2 if both Texans RBs are out, Mixon fringe-RB1 if active, stay away if only Pierce active