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Fantasy Football Today Beyond the Box Score

Advanced Stats on Ridley, A.J. Brown and Eagles-Raiders (10/23 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Fantasy Football Today Beyond the Box Score

CBS Sports

Football, Sports

4.9721 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2021

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jacob Gibbs hops on with his awesome advanced stats to tell us how Calvin Ridley will do against man coverage, why we should expect more passing from Jalen Hurts and why A.J. Brown could smash the Chiefs. 

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Will this be the week that Calvin Ridley breaks out?

0:06.9

What are we looking at in the Raiders Eagles matchup?

0:09.2

Jacob joins us right now on FFT in five.

0:13.1

All right, Jacob, make me happy here.

0:15.0

Make me smile because I got Calvin Ridley and Matt Ryan

0:17.2

in my DFS line up here.

0:18.8

I like him a lot.

0:19.8

Should I?

0:38.0

I think so. Yeah, I'm a little bit concerned about Ryan, but I'm super excited for Matt Ridley, or for Calvin Ridley. So it's mostly about the matchup here. There's two things that really focus on. The Dolphins use man coverage more than any team in the NFL, and they blitz at the second highest rate in the NFL. And so the good news is Ridley absolutely shreds man coverage, which should come as no

0:42.6

surprise. He's really, really good among receivers with at least 150 routes run versus man

0:47.7

coverage since the start of 2020, only five have a higher yard per out run rate than Ridley.

0:52.9

And then more good news. Matt Ryan really, really leans on him when he's blitz. Only Cooper Cup has a higher yard per out run rate than Ridley. And then Morgan News, Matt Ryan really, really leans on him when he's blitz. Only Cooper Cup has a higher target per out run rate when his quarterback is blitzed than Calvin Ridley does. So those two things, those two aspects of the matchup set up really well for Ridley. It is worth noting, though, that Matt Ryan has been noticeably worse over the past couple of years when blitzed, and he's been noticeably worse when facing man coverage.

1:14.5

He's better against zone.

1:16.0

And so that gives me a little bit of pause.

1:18.2

And just in general, the aggressiveness of Miami's defense makes it a bit of more of a volatile matchup than most.

1:25.2

But in terms of really what he's looking at it, as long as Ryan can deliver the ball to him downfield, he absolutely should cook this defense. So I'm really, really excited. He's really underpriced on both draft kings and fan duels. So I think this is the week he gets back on track. All right, AJ Brown. Let's talk about AJ Brown. In week six, he had the Monday night game against the bills. The bills have been shutting down. Fantastic wide receivers left and right. And AJ Brown had a really good game, most of it in the second half. What do you see this week against the Chiefs? Big spot here? I think so. This is another one that's a little bit volatility. He's, of course, dealing with the illness. And then we, the Chief's been really bad against the run. So if Tennessee were to get up. They could just lean on Derek Henry not need to throw as much. But if the game script plays out the way that Vegas is expecting it to, Tennessee would be playing from behind and throwing a lot. And AJ Brown should just absolutely torch Kansas City's defense. The Chiefs ranked 31st and DVOA against the past. But if you look, you know, more

2:17.8

specifically, it's a matchup that does set up really well for Brown. The Chiefs ranked top five in both

2:22.3

man and press coverage use. And press covering AJ Brown in general is really not a good idea.

2:28.3

He's been the fourth most targeted receiver win pressed since the start of 2020. He's also been,

2:33.3

you know, noticeably better first man. He has averaged 3.04 yards per hour run and the target on 34% of his routes versus man coverage compared to just 21% versus zone. So it's a massive difference there. And then similar to Ridley, the chiefs, the chiefs blitz a ton. They blitz the seventh highest rate in the NFL. And similar to Ridley, Ryan Tanjos really leaned on Brown. He's targeted him on 40% of his routes run when facing the Blitz. And it's only Cooper Cup and really they've been targeted at a higher rate. So everything sets up really well for Brown. And unlike Matt Ryan, Tainho has actually been better against the Blitz and has been pretty good against man coverage as well. So I think as long as Tennessee is passing, and as long as AJ Brown's stomach allows him to play, he definitely should have a big game here. Yeah, he says he expects to play. Got to get him some IV or something like that before the game. All right. So I think the Eagles and the Raiders is a pretty interesting matchup. All eyes are going to be on the running backs from fantasy perspective here. But what are you looking at in the Eagles Raiders game? Both these teams play zone at a really, really high rate. The only two teams in the NFL actually that play zone over 80% of the time. And so on the Philly side of things, this is really interesting for Dallas Goddard and just a passing offense in general.

3:41.7

Jalen Hertz has been 49% more likely on a per play basis to rush when facing man coverage than zone

3:48.2

coverage. I think that makes sense intuitively, you know, playing zone coverage, you've got your eyes

...

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