Quick Slant: Christmas Day - A Wrap on the 2024 Fantasy Season; May All Your Dreams Come True
Chiefs @ Steelers, Wednesday @ 1:00 PM
In western Pennsylvania, there are things to remember and forget; Acrisure Stadium stands as a mighty monolith—a den as feared as the wolves within it—and as a filter directing Pittsburghers to know which is which. There, bold as brass against the Allegheny wind, which could cut through Carhartt like a Lincoln Electric plasma cutter, folks pile in every Sunday, bundled up and bellowing for their beloved Steelers, who’ve turned football into a religion with six Lombardi crosses over its pulpit. The echoes of black-and-gold chants—“Here we go, Steelers!”—weave through the iron beams and brick facades along Pittsburgh’s South Shore, spilling into a city that bleeds its team’s colors. This rare Wednesday, their branding merges with red and green—with the wonder of a present still untied; on Christmas, the Steelers have their eyes set on the big red and yellow one under the tree, hopeful for what could lie beneath its bow.
Christmas Day, the Chiefs ride into town constructing an empire of their own, built not of ASTM A992 W-beams, but out of the surgical precision of Patrick Mahomes’s genius. Mahomes’s name has already been permanently added to the game’s all-time Nice List just as his face is embedded in every commercial. At 14-1, the 2024 Chiefs cast an intimidating shadow, their ambitions imperial: a third consecutive Super Bowl title and a fourth in six years. Their legend is often told through winking backhand passes out of daring Houdini escapes and the subversive brilliance of Andy Reid’s play-calling, so unchallenged he commonly grows bored by it. But this current run—this potential three-peat—is as much powered by Steve Spagnuolo’s impenetrable city walls on defense, inspiring conspiracies, doubt, and rebuke from the most casual objectors for not driving up scores. The Chiefs hear your whispers—an inflated record, too many narrow escapes. But for these to become more than whispers, someone will eventually have to put coal in Kansas City's stocking, and no one has been able to do that.
The Steelers keep that thought on the back burner, but this Wednesday, they simply cling to simpler and more pertinent aspirations: winning a dogfight in the AFC North. Russell Wilson—never-was cheeseball, Father Time’s latest victim—has revived his once brilliant reputation and breathed new life into Mike Tomlin’s sleepwalking legacy, even if the road back to glory has been jagged. At 10-5, Pittsburgh fights not just for a division title but for a season teetering between resurrection and more futility. Their defense is on brand—a snarling, swarming unit that echoes the Steel Curtain muscle of yesterday, and Wilson’s resurgent play offers a glimmer of hope that the Steelers may finally find the balance eluding them since long before Ben Roethlisberger hung up his stockings.
These teams are bound for the postseason in immensely different ways. The Chiefs—simultaneously adored and ambiguous—are chasing a dynasty. The Steelers, resurgent and resolute, seek to reclaim their place near the top and, if they can, while they’re at it, remind the world that six still stand taller than four. String up the black and yellow lights along the uprights at Acrisure, slap a Santa hat on the Art Rooney statue, and hunker down for a holiday classic between two of the NFL’s best on a very special day.
Chiefs’ Implied Team Total: 23
Based on Pythagorean Wins, the Chiefs, at 14-1, have won 5.3 games over expected, well beyond any other.
Kansas City’s narrowest escapes are the stuff of Christmas miracles: Isaiah Likely’s out-of-bounds toe, Daijahn Anthony’s phantom DPI flag, an uncalled DPI on Bryan Cook a week later, Chris Jones’s must-have sack, a blocked field goal, a ten-point differential combined against arguably the two worst teams in football, and partridge in a pear tree.
The Chiefs manage 69 snaps per 60 minutes, third-most in the league, and have a total pass rate of 60%, tied for eighth. In the aggregate, Mahomes has dropped back the most and attempted the second-most passes.
But Mahomes has barely been usable in single-QB formats because, despite ranking third in EP, he ranks 59th in FPOE. His -43.3 FPOE is already the worst of his career and could still worsen, as FPOE is a net differential accumulating throughout the year. At this rate, Mahomes may be just as likely to double his previous low of -27.3 as regress to it. At any rate, he ranks 13th in PPR/G among QBs.
The Chiefs rank ninth in EPA per play and fourth in offensive success rate. They rank ninth in EPA per dropback and seventh in offensive success rate on dropbacks.
Regardless of Mahomes’s individual efficiency levels, the team is doing enough to keep some passing-game options full on roast beast. In the past six games, there are four Chiefs with receiving market shares of at least 15%: Travis Kelce (20%), Xavier Worthy (20%), Marquise Brown (20%), and DeAndre Hopkins (17%). These numbers look a little askew because Brown returned from a dislocated SC joint that has kept him out of action since Week 1 and has only played in one game during this sample.
It is dangerous to deduce too much from a one-game sample, but with Brown fresh out of the wrapping paper, he drew the second-highest target share on the team, trailing only Worthy. Hopkins slid to a 10% share.
Worthy’s 27% comes directly after a share of 29% in Week 15. These are very serious workloads, especially from an offense attempting so many passes. Worthy had a terrific rookie profile, and we would expect rookies to get better as the countdown to Christmas grows smaller. It is conceivable this represents a substantial breakout to usher us into his next phase as an alpha or, more likely, a high-end two somewhere in the Smith/Higgins/Kupp atmosphere; it’s simply too early to tell.
Hopkins, an aging future Hall of Famer, came over in Week 8; since then, he has 10.6 FPOE, better than the other three, meaning he’s produced when given opportunities. We can speculate that the Chiefs are saving him for a significant playoff run; they clearly don’t need him to win games. But we officially won’t know that until it has happened. For now, we can only assess that he hasn’t been used and more or less assume this is the norm.
Fellow aging future Hall of Famer, Kelce, has undoubtedly begun his career's last downhill sleigh ride. However, he is still reliable for fantasy. With the second-most targets among TEs, this extrapolates into the third-most receptions and fifth-most yards. Arguably, he is underperforming, evidenced by how few TDs he has scored relative to league base rates. Trey McBride is having a biblical run of bad luck; aside from his anomalous season among anomalous seasons, Kelce is right in line with Brock Bowers at roughly six TDs below expectation, which could be dead last in plenty of other seasons.
The Steelers are a stout assignment for any offense to conquer, allowing the fifth-fewest total fantasy points of any team. They are seventh in EPA per play allowed and 13th in defensive success rate. They are sixth in EPA per dropback allowed and 16th in defensive success rate on dropbacks. This would indicate they are good at preventing longer gains in the passing game, but relatively average at preventing opposing defenses from sustaining drives. Only Green Bay is more imbalanced in this way.
The Steelers run man defense at the ninth-highest percentage, constituting 33.3% of their plays. They use Cover 3 more than any other alignment, fifth-most in the league at 38.8%, and Cover 1 at 28.7%, which ranks sixth. They run single-high, closed middle more than any other team.
Patrick Mahomes ranks 18th in Fantasy Points’ Matchup Expected Fantasy Points Model, which assesses expected fantasy points based on how players have performed in fantasy against specific coverage alignments. Chiefs’ pass catchers also don’t perform overly well against the types and rates of coverages the Steelers run. Their best performer in the model is TE Noah Gray at 46th.
