Week 2 Walkthrough: Amon-Ra Beats the Blitz
Welcome to the Week 2 Walkthrough.
In this article, I'll outline critical fantasy football context for the second glorious football Sunday.
This week, I've added some additional QB stats from NFL Next Gen to help illuminate the styles of QB play across the league. These stats include:
- Air Yards to the Sticks
- "Air Yards to the Sticks shows the amount of Air Yards ahead or behind the first down marker on all attempts for a passer. The metric indicates if the passer is attempting his passes past the 1st down marker, or if he is relying on his skill position players to make yards after catch."
- Average depth of completion (aDOC).
- Like aDOT but for completions instead of targets.
- Differential between aDOT and aDOC.
- Helps show if a QB is efficiently completing deeper passes or just chucking it up.
- Time to Throw
- "Time to Throw measures the average amount of time elapsed from the time of snap to throw on every pass attempt for a passer (sacks excluded)."
(The stats below are from PFF, NFLfastR, rbsdm.com, RotoViz, FantasyLabs, ESPN, and NFL Next Gen).
Quick Links
- Buccaneers at Lions, 1 PM
- Saints at Cowboys, 1 PM
- Colts at Packers, 1 PM
- 49ers at Vikings, 1 PM
- Jets at Titans, 1 PM
- Seahawks at Patriots, 1 PM
- Giants at Commanders, 1 PM
- Chargers at Panthers, 1 PM
- Browns at Jaguars, 1 PM
- Raiders at Ravens, 1 PM
- Rams at Cardinals, 4:05 PM
- Steelers at Broncos, 4:25 PM
- Bengals at Chiefs, 4:25 PM
Buccaneers at Lions, 1 PM
Buccaneers Implied Team Total: 22
It’s 2024… and Baker Mayfield is the best QB in the league.
Quick, take a screenshot.
As one might expect, some of the advanced stats don’t support the idea of Mayfield as QB1.
Mayfield kept throws extremely shallow against the Commanders, with just a 5.0 aDOT. He frequently threw short of the sticks and declined to attack either the splash zone – 10+ yards and over the middle – or anything 20+ yards downfield.
But Mayfield executed a quick-pass game plan impressively, which produced surprisingly productive results in a high-volume game environment.
And to Mayfield’s credit, he effectively countered the blitz. The Commanders were relentless, blitzing 41% of the time. And Mayfield made them pay— flashing a lightning-quick 2.4/sec time to throw (TTT).
Mayfield should have more time to throw this week against a Lions defense that – despite having PFF’s No 1-graded EDGE rusher in Aiden Hutchinson – did not generate impressive pass rush numbers in Week 1.
This could set up nicely for Mike Evans. Impressively, Evans scored two TDs against the Commanders; but last week’s game plan actually wasn’t ideal for him. With a 13.3 aDOT, Evans trailed Chris Godwin in targets per route run—significantly.
If Mayfield has more time to throw and can work the ball downfield more, Evans is the obvious beneficiary.
On the other hand, no one expected the Commanders to have a dominant pass rush this year. And yet, the Buccaneers opened the season with an emphasis on quick passing.
Perhaps that’s who the Bucs plan to be this year, rather than a specific Week 1 game plan. In fact, the Bucs’ 31st-ranked pass block win rate against the Commanders suggests they may have little choice. For Week 2, it also means potential offensive line issues for the Lions to exploit.
If so, Godwin could continue his PPR scamming. With a 4.4 aDOT, he was a key part of the quick passing attack.
Theoretically, Cade Otton could be a part of the short passing attack as well, but he continues to function mostly as a route eater.
Regardless of how the Buccaneers attack this week, we’re likely to see a lot of Rachaad White—who looks like one of the more locked-in receiving backs in the league.
The issue with White is that he continues to actively hurt Tampa Bay's running game. After two years of extreme inefficiency, White left a whopping 32 yards on the table last week.
Bucky Irving was better, with a -3 RYOE mark. And he was much better in the raw numbers – rushing for 62 yards on nine attempts to White’s 31 yards on 15 attempts.
We can expect Irving to continue mixing in, but this is more of a long-term concern for White than an immediate one.
This week he gets a mediocre Lions run defense. He’s a high-end RB2.
Lions Implied Team Total: 29.5
Dan Campbell has been pretty consistent as head coach of the Lions. He wants to run the ball.
What separates Campbell – who I view as sharp – from some other run-first coaches is that he doesn’t stubbornly run the ball in all situations. He’s willing to pivot.
But the Lions were able to win last week with a run-heavy game plan. Campbell had to be fired up.
The Lions were also able to win with a weak outing from Jared Goff, who was both inefficient and inconsistent against the Rams.
Goff now gets what looks to be a softer secondary. But he’ll be dealing with more pass rushers. After not being blitzed much last week, he gets a typically blitz-happy defense from Todd Bowles.
The good news is that Goff is familiar with the blitz. Only Justin Fields (38%) saw a higher blitz rate than Goff (35%) last season. And Goff was quite solid in those situations, ranking QB10 in EPA per blitzed dropback.
Speaking of good news, Goff’s primary outlet against the blitz will be Amon-Ra St. Brown. Including the playoffs, St. Brown posted 687 yards and six TDs against the blitz, averaging a whopping 2.97 YPRR. After a quiet Week 1, St. Brown is a high-end WR1 — and blowup candidate.
Sam LaPorta has been less efficient against the blitz than St. Brown, averaging just 1.33 YPRR. But LaPorta scored six of his 11 TDs against the blitz last year, so there’s definitely some upside to this matchup.
He’s also just a big part of the offense in general.
Both St. Brown and LaPorta should be more consistent producers than Jameson Williams, but so far, the Williams breakout looks very promising. He was a downfield force against the Rams.
But this doesn’t look like an ideal matchup for the speedster. Last year against the blitz, Goff posted just a 6.4 aDOT—only Mac Jones (5.7) and Jake Browning (5.4) ranked lower. And he attempted a 20+ yard pass on just 5.9% of his attempts, again besting only Browning (5.6%) and Jones (5.1%). It only takes a few plays for Williams to hit, but he’s slightly less likely to see those opportunities this week.
Opportunities could be at a premium, in part, because the Lions are going to look to run the ball here.
The Lions are currently the No. 1 rushing offense and facing a Buccaneers defense that showed real vulnerability on the ground.
The Lions are still playing this as an even split between David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs, and Montgomery’s consistency – reliably on display Sunday night – is only likely to validate that approach.
Montgomery shapes up as a TD-dependent RB2 here.
Meanwhile, Gibbs appears to be a bigger part of the passing attack than last year, with a very exciting 22% target share against the Rams. His rushing workload is still lighter than we’d like, but he should see some quick passes this week – and he’s dangerous with the ball in his hands. Gibbs is an RB1.
