Quick Slant: SNF Features the Week's Most Talked-About Teams

Jets @ Steelers, Sunday @ 8:20 PM

For the Jets, what a difference a week makes. They lost on Monday but fought hard against a good team and narrowly came up on the wrong end. This was New York’s first game under new HC Jeff Ulbrich after Robert Saleh was shown the door following Week 5. Then the Jets acquired Davante Adams, a likely Hall of Fame WR with an impeccable, longstanding relationship with their QB. Their record is dismal, but things are suddenly looking up for Gang Green.

Pittsburgh is 4-2, but it is difficult to know if its record is real or Memorex. Quality of opponent is in question, but they are, in the thick of the playoff race yet again—an annual tradition. Under Mike Tomlin, the Steelers have famously never had a losing season.

The Steelers made their own news this week, as it was reported they are making a QB change. Russell Wilson was set to be their starter before the year began, but a calf injury has kept him sidelined all year. Justin Fields served the team well in his absence, winning four games and demonstrating improvement in his least-desirable aptitudes. Many assumed Fields had Wally Pipped Wilson by now, but it would seem they jumped the gun.

And now, two franchises representing blue-collar Northeast fan bases will do battle Sunday night with their sights set on the AFC playoffs. This game could certainly have implications.

Jets’ Implied Team Total: 20

One basic but somewhat reliable way to assess team-level regression is to consider which teams have the best point differential per game and compare it to a win-loss record. Using point differential we can devise a Pythagorean expected wins model. If we subtract real wins from expected wins, we can understand which teams have been luckiest or unluckiest in the win column. In 2024, the New York Jets have been the fifth-unluckiest team based on this formula.

The Jets are renowned for their defensive prowess, but offensively, it’s been tough sledding thus far. New York ranks 22nd in team EPA per play and 19th in offensive success rate. They are also 19^th in EPA per dropback and 20^th in offensive success rate on dropbacks.

The Jets have thrown a lot so far in 2024. They are fifth in pass rate over expected, and as a consequence, Aaron Rodgers has the fourth-most attempts in the league. Tied mainly to that volume, he also has the 10th-most passing yards and the eighth-most passing TDs. However, Rodgers has not been as efficient as he used to be, posting -17.9 FPOE, 54th among all QBs. His -3 FPOE per game ranks 47^th and is the worst rate of his career since his rookie season in 2005. He ranks 23^rd in EPA + CPOE composite, just before Will Levis, Gardner Minshew, and Andy Dalton and slightly behind Trevor Lawrence.

The Steelers’ pass defense ranks 11^th in fantasy points allowed to QBs. It also ranks 13th in EPA per dropback allowed and 18th in defensive success rate on dropbacks. This indicates that Pittsburgh is slightly better at controlling big plays than stopping long, sustained drives through the air.

The Steelers utilize the ninth-most zone defense in the league, playing almost half their plays out of Cover 3. Rodgers scores 0.28 fantasy points per dropback against Cover 3, ranking 23^rd. This is not a great spot for him, and he hasn’t yet proven himself as a fantasy commodity in 2024.

There may be some hope for Rodgers based on the fact that the Jets reunited him with Adams this week, acquiring him for a conditional third-round pick from the Raiders (I'm curious to know the last time a team was driven to fire its coach early in the season, lost the following game, and then traded into an aging veteran immediately after, but I digress). Rodgers has been better in every statistical category of significance in games played with Adams than without him since 2014, Adams’s rookie season.

Trusting Adams will suddenly cure all of Rodgers’s woes is complicated. He and Rodgers are getting old, with Rodgers now 40 and Adams 31. Also, there is little hope in general that Rodgers will fix Adams (other than the fact that Adams has been driven not to play due to his dissatisfaction with the Raiders and thus has been scoring zeroes). Adams’s performance is not as starkly different when he played without Rodgers.

Adams comes into the game with the best track record among Jets’ WRs for fantasy against Cover 3 with 0.58 fantasy points per route against it, good for 21^st in the league. Allen Lazard and Garrett Wilson each have 0.34 fantasy points per route against Cover 3.

There would usually be concern with a receiver’s ability to hit the ground running in a new environment, yet the Jets believably intend to utilize Adams Sunday night. It is plausible he could fit right in because, though Rodgers is not officially the play-caller, our greater intelligence would suggest he is; the level of connection that Rodgers and Adams once displayed in Green Bay was telekinesis of the highest order (think Mahomes and Kelce). In addition, much of their offensive language and philosophy was set up by Nathaniel Hackett, even if he no longer calls plays; Adams has also played for him. But when it comes down to it, Adams and Rodgers don’t even need plays to score fantasy points; they operate largely with hot reads and mind-meld.

Of the utmost concern to many in the fantasy community is the effect an incoming Adams will have on Garrett Wilson. Wilson was drafted as the seventh WR off the board in FFPC redraft leagues, often in the first round. For his first two seasons, he was given every justification for not becoming elite; now, he is out of excuses.