Week 9 Hitchhiker's Guide

Hey folks,

Before we get to an interesting running back week with multiple rookies jumping into potentially expanded roles I first wanted to address a couple items stemming from my mid-week post: the Rookie Check In.

The first of those is that between my publishing that column and now, Travis Hunter was placed on I.R. with an injury he suffered in practice on Thursday.

Every season is bound to have a lot of injuries, and some will “help” you and some will hurt you from a fantasy portfolio perspective. Of course you’re never happy to see any of them, but that’s the reality.

The injuries to Bowers and Skattebo were undoubtedly the most critical to my fantasy portfolio — and for those who followed my rankings, likely yours as well.

But at least with Skattebo we get to take solace in the fact we were clearly on a very good play, and the dice just rolled in the wrong direction. With Bowers, at least he is now (presumably) fully healthy and will have a chance to show in the second half of the season what it was we were buying. I do think he will have a very strong finish, and is a strong trade target today. But if he doesn’t, at least we’ll get some answers.

That’s what makes the Travis Hunter injury so uniquely frustrating. It was obviously not an ideal start, but things were turning in such a positive direction recently. Hunter had a breakout game in an enhance role in London, which pre-dated a bye week full of reports that he’d be installed as the WR1 this week and beyond. And then we just …. will never know how that second half of the year would have turned out.

To compound the frustration, the uniqueness of Hunter’s profile definitely creates additional risk for how this will play out over the long term as well. In a perfect world, Hunter could have used the off-season to continue ramping up toward his goal of playing near-full time on both sides of the ball. But how does that get stalled by a potential off-season of rehab? And if one side of the ball does get de-prioritizeed, which will it be?

We don’t even know what the injury is right now or his timeline beyond the fact that he will miss a minimum of 4 games and from the sounnds of it — likely the rest of the regular season. But it’s a major set back. We were potentially walking into a situation where he would grab the WR1 role by the horns and become so invaluable on offense that it solidified his role going forward. And now the team will adjust to some degree without him in a way he can’t contol, and we’ll all see how he slots in positionally next season. I will likely have him toward the Base 1 / Late 1 borderline after this news on my next update. And while I’m not opposed to buying low I certainly take back my pre-injury stance of make sure you trade for this player this week.

The second item I wanted to address is my “beef” with Keep Trade Cut, since I got some comments about it. The rankings are what they are. I have issues with the way they are calibrated because the “click a poll” basis necessitates very little time and consideration from voters, and biases itself toward flashier or trendier players that people are excited to click. It’s just never going to be as strong of a value proxy as ADP or trade data. But that’s really fine at the end of the day.

My main issue is with the trade calculator, which ostensibly exists to help novice managers weigh value, but seems to provide its main value by helping experienced managers game the algorithm to present lopsided deals as fair ones. If you want to use KTC to gague market sentiment, by all means. If you want to use it to build trades in your favour that you are able to get accepted, by all means — we’re trying to win money not run a charity here. But please just don’t gague your acceptance of a trade based on the calculator. I don’t like trade calculators to begin with because they can never provide the team-specific context you should always be prioritizing, but I especially dislike that one because the value adjustment is insufficient and it is too easy to game by adding nominal crap to an offer. Anyhow, rant over. As you were.

Last bit of housekeeping is that — speaking of trades — my updated Redraft Trade Value Tiers are up at the Athletic. I wrote about it in the intro to the first piece more extensively, but please do consider all of the above with respect to my trade value quantification as well. I hope it is a useful guide for you, but it cannot tell you about what’s best for your team. Make sure to always think critically about your situation, what your team’s path is to winning a championship and how a given trade helps or hurts that path beyond the pure value of the players involved

Now let’s talk running backs.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Running Back — Week 9

Metrics Legend:

From Pro Football Focus

PFF Grade / PFF Rushing Grade = Qualitative Film Grade assigned by Pro Football Focus

Snaps, Routes, and Carries data provided by Nathan Jahnke

From NFL NextGen Stats

RYOE/A = Rush Yards over Expectation per Attempt (NFL Next Gen Stats)

ROE% = Percentage of Rushes over Expectation (NFL Next Gen Stats)

From the FantasyPoints Data Suite

YAC/A = Yards After Contact per Attempt

YBC/A = Yards Before Contact per Attempt

MTF/A = Missed Tackles Forced per Attempt

EXP%: Percentage of rushes of 15+ yards

YPRR: Yards per Route Run [from PFF in previous seasons]

TPRR: Targets per Route Run [from PFF in previous seasons]

Other Terminology

HVT: High Value Touches (receptions and carries inside the 10)

LDD: Long Down and Distance situations — 3rd and 5+

2MD: Two-Minute Drill

Top Takeaways from Week 8 and Entering Week 9

Cam Skattebo’s Season-Ending Injury

This was a devastating blow, with one of the keys to the fantasy season being wiped off the board. I know personally he was on nearly all my most important seasonal teams, and I suspect those who prioritized my rankings likely are feeling the pain as well. From a dynasty perspective, he’s an extremely volatile asset given the extent of this injury.

My baseline is that I’d like to be in conversations for trades involving him in the coming weeks and see where I can get some outlier deals either trading for him or trading him away. I’d need Late 1 value or higher to move on from him, and would buy for less than that in most spots.

In the interim, Tyrone Tracy Jr. takes over and this should be a relatively simple backfield to project since we saw it for most of last year. Tracy will take on 60-70% of snaps with Singletary mixing in. Tracy is a role-based RB2 but we shouldn’t project the same level of efficiency or pass-game involvement as we could with Skattebo, who was just more of a foundational priority for the offense.

Rookies in New Starting Roles

This week D’Andre Swift and Rhamondre Stevenson have both been ruled out, and it’s unclear whether or not this might drag on into future weeks or not.

This presents a big opportunity for the rookies either way.

Kyle Monangai projects as the better start this week, and has a ton of wind at his sails right now. Not only is Swift out this week, but so is Roschon Johnson — who had barely played but would have projected to at least take some LDD work from Monangai in Swift’s absence. Now Monangai shares a backfield with only Travis Homer and (presumably) Brittain Brown off the practice squad.

Homer might play on some pure pass blocking snaps but Monangai projects to get nearly every running back touch. The only fly in the ointment there might be increased running back touches for D.J. Moore — who has been used at times in a wide back role this season and may see that usage scale up in a game where the Bears badly need someone to give carries to. I’m a certified hater when it comes to Moore, but I like him in DFS this week on that angle. I actually like all of the Bears passing game this week, because the team can’t really sustain its high-run rate style in the past month with only one reaosnable back — even if Monangai does get 20-25 carries. They’re going to have to adjust the pass rate up without Swift and Johnson and everyone could eat vs. the Bengals defense.

TreVeyon Henderson also projects as the starter this week, but I understand if you are feeling nervous about it. For what it’s worth, Henderson had easily his most impressive game of the season last week, providing consistent chunk gains as the team fed him tosses and misdirection carries to take advantage of his speed. Can that efficiency now start to trickle back to more “typical” carries? Will the team entrust those to him? These are unknowns.

My expectation is that Henderson will be the lead back, but Terrell Jennings will definitely also play and see some between-the-tackles reps. I also imagine D’Ernest Johnson — who is projected to be raised up from the practice squad — will contribute some pass protection reps.

And lastly, I expect the team to go fairly pass heavy given the issues at running back and Drake Maye’s outstanding season. All that means that Henderson will almost surely have a major opportunity, but it is fragile. If they don’t trust him in pass protection or as a pure inside runner, 10-12 carries with 1-2 targets, mostly between the 20s, is very much in play. I think that’s the floor and possibly even the plan. But if Henderson can thrive in his early looks there is definitely a ceiling here for him to establish himself as a clear lead — at least for this game. I believe the team does not trust him (whether I agree with them or not) but I do not believe that they outright hate him. He was a top-40 pick who they want to succeed and he is by a mile the most talented back on their roster this weekend. If he starts cooking they’ll let him run with it.