Week 3 Walkthrough: Chris Olave Joins the Party
Welcome to the Week 3 Walkthrough.
In this article, I'll outline critical fantasy football context for the second glorious football Sunday.
(The stats below are from PFF, NFLfastR, rbsdm.com, RotoViz, FantasyLabs, ESPN, and NFL Next Gen).
Quick Links
- Eagles at Saints, 1 PM
- Bears at Colts, 1 PM
- Giants at Browns, 1 PM
- Packers at Titans, 1 PM
- Texans at Vikings, 1 PM
- Chargers at Steelers, 1 PM
- Broncos at Buccaneers, 1 PM
- Panthers at Raiders, 4:05 PM
- Dolphins at Seahawks, 4:05 PM
- Ravens at Cowboys, 4:25 PM
- 49ers at Rams, 4:25 PM
- Lions at Cardinals, 4:25 PM
Eagles at Saints, 1 PM
Eagles Implied Team Total: 23.25
When Jalen Hurts took over as the Eagles starter in 2021, Philadelphia was a run-heavy team, posting a -5% pass rate over expected. But they trended toward the pass in 2022 (-2%) and then tilted slightly to the pass in 2023—with a neutral 0% PROE, but a notable 5% PROE on 1st-and-10.
However in two games under new offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, they’ve shifted back to the run – posting a PROE of -3%.
The big caveat here is that they’ve largely been in game scripts that allow for a fair amount of rushing.
The story doesn’t end there, though. After a 5% PROE on 1st-and-10 last year, the Eagles have shifted dramatically, dropping to -11% on 1st down — a hint that they are truly building their offense more around the run this season.
And… let’s think. Did the Eagles make any big additions to their backfield this offseason?
The Eagles are clearly very excited about having Saquon Barkley in the backfield. They’ve been feeding him snaps and touches. Barkley has an 83% snap share and 72% route participation; both are elite numbers. And he’s getting valuable opportunities when on the field. Barkley leads all running backs in expected points per game, with an outrageous 23.8 PPR point workload.
For context, Christian McCaffrey finished RB1 with 20.5 EP per game in 2023. Austin Ekeler was RB1 in 2022 with 20.4. If Barkley can sustain this, he’ll be the key to the entire season.
This week, Barkley and the Eagles are facing a Saints defense that has been very strong against the run so far.
But the Saints have faced a flailing Panthers offense and a broken Cowboys running game. So they could very well be paper tigers. And the Eagles' offensive line looks quite good.
I expect Barkley to be solidly efficient here. But with the Eagles coming in as 3-point road underdogs, it may be unrealistic to expect quite as sizable a rushing workload as he’s had thus far. And Barkley’s receiving yardage efficiency has been very unimpressive. If he keeps catching TDs, no one will ever care. But his 0.83 YPRR is a pretty big red flag for what his value could be, if given fewer high-leverage opportunities.
Barkley is clearly a high-end RB1. But I don’t think he’s as locked-in as his scoring through the first two weeks might suggest.
In the passing game, Jalen Hurts faces a defense who just made life very difficult for Dak Prescott and the Cowboys.
But Prescott has struggled in both of his games this season. Hurts, on the other hand, has turned in strong efficiency.
Hurts does have some weaknesses in his profile, though.
For one thing, he’s holding onto the ball forever. At 3.24 seconds per throw, he has the slowest time-to-throw (TTT) in the league.
But Hurts isn’t using that time to attack the splash zone or throw it deep. Instead, he’s settling for more intermediate targets. To be fair, he’s doing this efficiently – turning in a 7% completion percentage over expected (CPOE), with a solid 5.6-yard average depth of completion.
He’s also scrambling effectively, adding 36 scramble yards per game.
Hurts now gets a very strong Saints coverage unit that’s limiting first-read EPA, protecting the splash zone, and preventing explosive plays.
But… they aren’t getting a ton of pressure. And the pressure they are getting hasn’t been very quick to materialize.
So we should see Hurts moving to his second read and take off running a fair amount this week.
With A.J. Brown expected out again, DeVonta Smith will operate as the clear top option in the Eagles passing game—meaning that stopping Smith will be the focus of the Saints pass defense. Still, Smith is a talented player, in line for strong target volume. He’s a low-end WR1.
If the Saints are successful in forcing Hurts off his first read at a high rate, he doesn’t have a whole lot else to work with. Against the Falcons, Jahan Dotson and Britain Covey were his WR2 and WR3.
Covey logged only 49% route participation last week, but his role was infinitely more interesting than Dotson’s. As an underneath slot WR, Covey is the type of profile I would expect to see targets here. If he runs more routes, he could actually be pretty fun as a dart throw.
Dallas Goedert is a lot easier to trust. He ran 100% of routes against the Falcons, and is in line for enough target volume to make him a TE1.
Saints Implied Team Total: 26.25
Derek Carr is having an epic start to the season. He currently ranks QB4 in EPA per game and success rate.
It was hard to take Carr’s stats seriously against the Panthers. But his win over the Cowboys is much more impressive. And intriguingly, Carr played with a similar style in both games.
Against the Panthers, he averaged 2.83 seconds per throw and a 9.5 aDOT. He was letting plays develop downfield and playing aggressively. Last week, I asserted that Carr would need to change things up against the Cowboys pass rush.
In reality, Carr was fine doing it his way.
In fairness to myself, Carr’s deep rate dropped from 17% in Week 1 to just 6% in Week 2. But largely, I got this one wrong. The Saints did their thing against the Cowboys—and it worked.
Play action looks like one of the keys to the Saints success so far.
I was very impressed by Derek Carr’s 36% play action rate against the Panthers. Turns out that was nothing. Carr followed up with a 59% play action rate in Week 2.
Sure, he only dropped back 17 times, and weird things happen in small samples. But it’s pretty clear how the Saints plan to handle difficult passing matchups—and it’s not by ditching their downfield passing game.
Carr’s 45% play action rate this season leads the NFL.
Carr’s efficiency has been awesome, though we have little volume to back it up. Among Week 1 starters, only Jordan Love (34) has fewer dropbacks this season than Carr (39).
Largely, this has been a function of game script. The Saints are definitely enjoying leaning into the run. But they’ve been in position to run the ball a ton.
It’s possible that the Eagles push the Saints enough to change up this dynamic. But even then, the Saints are likely to shift from ultra run-heavy to, well… still pretty run-heavy – given the weak Eagles run defense they’ll be facing.
Alvin Kamara is set up for another great game. He's been running the ball well this year and carrying an elite workload. At 19.9 expected points per game, Kamara has been teed up for high-end scoring—he’s driven the ball over the horizon, adding 13.1 fantasy points over those lofty expected numbers—kinda what happens when you constantly score TDs.
Even if the Saints shift to the pass here… that’s still great. Kamara has done a ton of his damage through the air, leading all RBs in YPRR.
I did not expect this version of Kamara to show up in 2024. But for as long as he's in this form, he’s one of the best plays in fantasy.
And although they’re particularly vulnerable on the ground, the Eagles pass defense also looks pretty weak.
Because the Saints keep blowing people out, it’s difficult to get a true sense of their passing weapons.
On paper, Rashid Shaheed actually looks like the top option, with a 24% target share to Chris Olave’s 21%.
But the Saints were making a big effort to get Olave involved last week.
After just two targets in their demolition of the Panthers, Olave saw six targets against the Cowboys—five of which were first reads.
It’s also worth noting that defenses are aware that Rashid Shaheed can beat them deep. He’s actually seen more double coverage than Olave so far.
Olave and Shaheed are the clear top-two downfield options in this passing game. So far, it’s been the Shaheed show. But Olave has a lot of unrealized upside.
Think about it this way: Olave was being drafted in Round 2 when we thought he was part of a bad offense. The Saints now look shockingly good, Olave has delivered high-end per-route efficiency with a 2.36 YPRR, and the Saints get a matchup that could boost passing volume. If we knew all of this a month ago, we’d be tripping over ourselves to play Olave.
This isn’t to take anything away from Shaheed, who looks like a solid WR2 here. But Olave is a clear WR1.
