Top 10: Year in Review

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MISSION

The mission of this column—and a lot of my work—is to bridge the gap between the fantasy and reality of football analysis. Football analysis—fantasy and reality—is often dramatized because there's a core belief that it's more important to entertain than to educate.

Why not both?

Whoever said it's better to be lucky than good did not understand the value of the process. Being good generates luck.

The goal of this feature is to give you actionable recommendations that will help you get results, but the fundamental mission is to get the process right. It's a rush to see the box score or highlights and claim you made the right calls. Without a sustainable process, success is ephemeral.

The Top 10 will cover topics that attempt to get the process right (reality) while understanding that fantasy owners may not have time to wait for the necessary data to determine the best course of action (fantasy).

My specialty is film analysis. I've been scouting the techniques, concepts, and physical skills of offensive skill talent as my business for nearly 20 years.

The Top 10 will give you fantasy-oriented insights rooted in football analysis that has made the Rookie Scouting Portfolio one of the two most purchased independent draft guides among NFL scouts. This is what SMU's Director of Recruiting Alex Brown has told me based on his weekly visits with scouts during his tenure in Dallas as well as his stints at Rice and Houston.

Sigmund Bloom's Waiver Wire piece, that's available Monday nights during the season, is also a good source of information to begin your week as a fantasy GM. Bloom and I are not always going to agree on players—he errs more often toward players who flash elite athletic ability, and I err more toward players who are more technically skilled and assignment-sound.

STRAIGHT, NO CHASER: THE SEASON IN REVIEW

This week's article shares 10 topics from the 2021 season that will carry over to 2022 and beyond. This will be a shorter column containing thoughts on players, schemes, and fantasy ideas that this season taught us or served as further validation.

1. SCHEME PLAYERS VS. MATCHUP PLAYERS

Scheme Players are individuals who have the baseline skills to produce in the NFL if placed in an offense that asks them to execute plays where there's minimal effort to defeat an individual defender one-on-one. Matchup Players are your starters who can win one-on-one.

The best players are Matchup Players who can consistently challenge top individual opponents. Think Justin Jefferson and JaMarr Chase at wide receiver, Nick Chubb and Christian McCaffery at running back, and Patrick Mahomes II at quarterback.

Learning the difference between scheme and matchup players can help you as a fantasy GM and football fan. This has been an ongoing theme for my analysis during the past two years. Here are three points I made about this topic last year:

• Make Matchup Players your primary targets during at least the first 6-8 rounds of fantasy drafts: If you're going to take a conservative approach, aim for the first 10 rounds to maximize potential production stability.
• Quarterbacks and Tight Ends are the easiest to discern between the two types: Patrick Mahomes II and Justin Herbert could thrive in multiple offensive approaches. Malik Willis and Zach Wilson need an offense schemed around their skills to generate a shot at reasonable production at this point.
• Scheme Players can have elite production: New schemes for the NFL can often lead to a player delivering top production until opposing defenses find a way to defend the system and the player spearheading that scheme fails to grow beyond it. Robert Griffin III III was a great example. Attempting to predict which scheme-based talents will earn an ideal match is riskier when considering an ADP that places them in the top half of NFL drafts.

This year, I'm beginning to formulate potential guidelines for schemed-based options in terms of their ceiling of production:

• Quarterbacks: Developing passers who can legitimately break gains of at least 30 yards as runners can lead a scheme with proven talent around them that generates top-five fantasy production. The less proven they are as passers or the less proven the surrounding talent, the safer to value these quarterbacks in the bottom third of your top 12-15 passers in your rankings, if not lower.
• Running Backs: This year's schematic changes in the NFL (see No.2) have encouraged offenses to use more gap plays, which are more conceptually difficult to run than many variants of zone blocking. Runners who are only skilled at gap plays (Power, Toss, Trap, ISO, Counter, and to a certain extent, Duo) are scheme-based talents relative to backs who have strong skills with zone-based running. That said, the NFL's widespread increase in gap running could mean that as long as the back has the size and technique to win between the tackles and hold up to a workload of at least 7-10 touches in this part of the ground game, he'll be a viable fantasy starter with top-12 upside.
• Wide Receivers: Gabriel Davis is a scheme-based talent. He drops a ton of passes, and he doesn't run routes that earn him targets against primary corners singled against him in pivotal down and distance scenarios. He's capable of elite production in any given week, but his lack of match-up skills also renders him capable of minimal outputs and multiple mistakes. I'm coming around to the guideline that a scheme-based talent has a cap as a low-end WR3 or high-end WR4 in fantasy value for 12-team leagues.
• Tight Ends: Even elite match-up talents at the position will benefit from scheming more often than wide receivers, but the elite tight ends still win one-on-one and often as outside receivers against primary defenders. The more you see this from a tight end, the closer his ceiling is to the elite tier. The less often you see it, the more likely his ceiling is among the bottom third of the top 12-15 options.

When you begin developing an understanding of the difference between Scheme Players and Matchup Players, you can have more success with picking "the most productive players" at the position rather than following methodologies that are rooted in data without valid sample sizes or broad-stroke ideas like "only pick running backs with top offensive lines," or "mobile quarterbacks."

These methods lock onto one attribute in the same way health and wellness media will lock onto the cancer prevention benefits of broccoli, and in an attempt to integrate its content, the cooking media will post a wide range of broccoli recipes — most of them drowning the benefit of the vegetable with oil, cheese, or carcinogenic methods of cooking it.

The more you can identify the root value of the player (Scheme vs Matchup), the less dependent you will be on fad drafting methodologies.

2. The Resurrection of the Gap Game

Two-high shells have limited the influences of the vertical passing game and goaded quarterbacks to be more patient. While this has decreased the value of passing in a small but significant way, it's also increasing the value of the run in a similar fashion.

It's only natural when defenses begin coveting safety-sized linebackers, lighter defensive ends, and under-tackles that offenses run the ball at these six- and five-man boxes. The fascinating development is, at least from what I'm observing anecdotally, a rise in man-gap blocking: Power, Counter, Duo, Toss, and Trap.

Most of these plays use pulling linemen. Some incorporate fullbacks or wingbacks as lead blockers. Offenses are countering the two-high with bigger personnel who are overpowering lighter boxes with smaller personnel, and the ground game is paying dividends.

Cordarrelle Patterson and Elijah Mitchell's success in 2021 were the early signs of the change coming. This year, we saw most offenses running a much higher volume of gap plays, which makes it easier to plug in backs capable of strong production.

While there will always be great backs that separate themselves from the rest because they can do it all, it's likely that we'll see a lot more backs who win more often because the scheme isn't requiring as much conceptual and technical refinement from their games. You're going to see more athletes produce well at the position early on if the gap blocking continues to have a resurrection in the league.

3. Missed point: "The Next Cordarrelle Patterson-Deebo Samuel"

While much of the media was hyper-focused on players who might be the next Patterson or Samuel in 2022, we now see that this track of analysis missed the most valuable point: The fact that two NFL teams generated consistent success on the ground with wide receivers as focal points of their running game had less to do with special skills and more to do with the use of gap schemes.

While Patterson and Samuel are terrific open-field runners, neither is a conceptually-gifted runner between the tackles. Although I expressed doubt at this time last year that there would be a "next" player, what we didn't see clearly was these players' success serving as notice that gap plays were the way to go.

After all, Rhamondre Stevenson is not a game-breaker on an athletic level of Patterson and Samuel, but he's generating strong production with the gap-based approach. As mentioned above, the success of ball-carriers running behind gap blocking has as much or more to do with the way offensive linemen are matchup up against the average defensive personnel currently starting in the NFL. Expect that to continue next year.

4. Zach Wilson Was Never A Top-10 NFL Draft Talent

He may still find his way and mature into a capable NFL starter, but his film clearly revealed a player not ready for the NFL as a franchise player who could weather a bad year and develop through the on-field struggles. You can read Wilson's RSP Pre-Draft Scouting Report here.

5. Passing Accuracy Is A Deceptive Category For QB Evaluation