Sophie Seconds - Zack Moss  (Fat Running Backs Have Upside Too)

Sophie Seconds - Zack Moss (Fat Running Backs Have Upside Too)

Zack Moss - BIlls

Current: 105 | RB35

Last year's 3rd round pick finishes his rookie year with 112-481-4-4.3 || 18-14-95-1 (RB45 in fantasy) in 13 games.

He played on 45% of their snaps and had an opportunity share of 43.3%. It was a direct split between he and Singletary.

Despite lots of link, reports, rumors of adding a back, all they did was add one ankle in Matt Breida to their backfield. So, it'll be Moss and Singletary again.

I think we'd all like to see Moss take over, and I think it can happen. He never really got going last year, probably thanks to a toe injury after Week 2 that cost him weeks 3-4-5. He suffered a high ankle sprain in the playoffs and had surgery this offseason and he'll be ready for everything.

 

Them tossing around "70% of snaps" is just stupid. There were literally like 5 RBs that had a 70% snap share last year, jst another fill/buzz arbitrary number people in fantasy toss around with literally not backing to it.

The problem with Zack Moss is that the Bills had VERY defined roles for their running backs last year. Moss was the bruiser, and GL back. Singletary was the pass-catcher.

  • In the 13 games Moss played in, he had 11 GL carries, Singletary had 3 (FIND GAMES WHERE ONLY MOSS PLAYED), Josh Allen had 7.
  • In term of targets, Moss had 18, Singletary had 50. So that wasn't even close. That's my big concern, for Moss's ceiling. You can literally take his rec. production and at 100% of what he did last year, and he's at like 35 targets, 40 in full 16 whatever. He doesn't offer breakaway plays either. Feel like you need 1 of those 2 to unlock upside from a non pass-catching RB.

What could be underrated going into next year, and get Moss on the field on 3rd downs more often, was his pass-blocking. Among 40 RBs last year with more than 35 PBing snaps, Moss had the 2nd highest pass-blocking grade among RBs in the NFL. I also don't think it's a huge reach pushing Moss into more of a pass-catching role, considering he did it in college, two seasons of 28+ catches.

Moss's position as a pure runner, though, is probably underrated.

  • First off, just look at the team, 30 PPG last year, 3rd in the NFL. THey're going to score a lot and give him a ton of scoring opps. Just basic common sense will give you a very high floor in fantasy football.
  • They have an above average offensive line. 15th in RBing last year, 6th in PBing. They re-signed most of their FAs (Jon Feliciano and Daryl Williams) and used 3-4 draft picks on OL. It shouldn't be a liability.
  • For Moss as a runner, PlayerProfiler: #7 in both Juke Rate and Yards Created/Touch. There was nothing fancy with Moss last year, but he brought his tackle-breaking ability from college, one that gave him an undying level of hype out of Utah State.

Where Moss is going, outside of the top 100 picks, is one of my favorite all-around picks in fantasy this year. I'm not expecting a top-12 finish from him. But if he overtakes the starter role, and converts better than 3-for-11 on GL carries, he can be a top-20 fantasy RB. Let's not project to go from 14 catches to 50, or from 44% of the snaps to 70%+, but both areas have room to grow and his foundation of what he did last year, to build upon this year is better than most people will remember it.

 

Michael Pittman - Colts

Current ADP: 102 | WR48

 

 

 

  • New QB (Wentz)
  • Parris Campbell byke
  • Show Hilton's RP?

 

Here's the baseline of Pittman's rookie year. If you're pegging him as a breakout for 2021, it's almost purely on projection aka you want it to happen. His athleticism, his college profile, whatever it is, but we didn't see a lot of encouraging signs from his rookie season. Obviously every breakout is a projection, what i'm saying is that we don't have a lot to point to from his rookie year. Like with Jeudy, it's a projection obviously too, but you can see well the dude fucking commanded over 100+ targets, put up 900 yards and saw an unbelievably high uncatchable target rate while being wildly successful in running routes (per RP). So it's like yeah obviously we're projecting it, but we also saw him be relatively good on a football field, which is probably 

Pittman had a lot of trouble being a staple of the Colts receiving group, despite it being absolutely atrocious. We had an absolute blackhole of a receiver in 32 year old TY Hilton:

Parris Campbell out for the year, Zach Pascal, like Marcus Johnson. I mean.

He didn't rank highly in almost any single efficiency metric last year:

All that being yelled, it's definitely worth mentioning the excuses as to why Pittman could have a big year. Their offense ran through their running backs, and also passed through their running backs. You could argue it's a chicken or the egg thing, but.. 

Reason #1 - and outside vertical threat like Michael Pittman is an awful match for River's angel hair arm.

Out of 39 qualified QBs last year, Rivers ranked

  • 30th in deep ball attempt rate (9.9% - Wentz ranked 6th)
  • 18th in YPA on deep balls
  • 5:5 TD:INT (there were only 4 QBs with a lower rate (negative): Drew Lock, Teddy B (shoutout Denver), Mitch Trubisky and Dwayne Haskins)

Reason #2 - him not breaking out over that terrible WR group, can be a positive as well.. bc their WR group stinks, he still has every opportunity to be the alpha here in INDY. Hilton is likely toast if not just specialized for a few shots/game. People that still believe Parris Campbell are going to be a thing are the same people drafting OBJ and holding onto Josh Gordon in dynasty. All they added was a 7th round rookie.

The big change here is obviously bringing in Carson Wentz to reunite with Frank Reich. Wentz was obviously awful last year, but he'll now have some time to hangout behind his offensive line instead of being a literal magnet to crashing d-lineman, and the new environment is a fresh start. Almost with the same example I used with Pittman to Jeudy, it's not like Wentz is Sam Darnold. New situation, people are projecting Darnold to be good in a new place, when we've never seen him be good in the NFL, we have with Wentz.

At the end of the day, Pittman was a late breakout in college, so the red flag was there. We're also projecting two things for a year two breakout - he's actually a good NFL WR (which we have yet to see) and Wentz will be good again.

There's reason for hope though, Pittman's rookie year stats weren't there (13-61-40-503-1) but he actually performed pretty well in RP:

 

He also dealt with a serious calf injury and just a weird health year as a rookie.

He also ranked 3rd among all WRs with at least 40 targets in YAC. Now that's probably not correlated into how good of a WR/fantasy WR you are seeing as how Deebo is #1 (he gets 1000 screens - led the NFL in % of targets as screens), and Mecole Hardman #2 who stinks - so less player and predictive and more offense/scheme/role/aDOT likely.

At the end of the day, it's less optimism and more uncertainty that is getting people excited about pittman for fantasy football, imo. The unknown always gets people excited.

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