Alright—enough of the doom-mongering. We’ve slogged our way through the devastating injury reports from Week 1 for the past two days. Yet again, it seems like we’re watching marquee names drop like flies to knee injuries to begin the season. Alas!
Let’s pivot. Sunday had its share of absolutely electric moments. It proffered us a few historic ones, too.
I combed through NFL Next Gen Stats so as to highlight some of Week 1’s most high-voltage plays and most improbable moments. Some of these should have material effect on season-long fantasy waivers tomorrow, as well as the DraftKings Sportsbook prop markets for this weekend’s games.
Let’s get nerdy and a bit overexcited, shall we? Follow me at @dansby_edits on Twitter for more stat-related threads like this.
Favorite Plays
Hou/IND
Anthony Richardson 60-yard touchdown pass to Alec Pierce
Most impressive stat: 21.21 mph. That’s what Alec Pierce topped out at after the inward cut on this post route. To put it into perspective, we all thought Chiefs WR Xavier Worthy’s jet sweep speed on Thursday was game-breaking. He topped out at 18.45 mph, almost 3 mph slower than Pierce.
Tyreek Hill’s career-long 80-yard touchdown catch from Tua only saw Tyreek top out at 20.42mph.
Honorable mention: The pass traveled 65.3 yards through the air. That’s the third-longest in the NFL Next Gen Stats era. Wild.
Outlook:
Don’t mistake this as a fluke. Richardson has great accuracy on the deep ball, and the Colts will want to stretch the field in ways that haven’t been able to with their recent quarterback carousel. This dude elevates the value of all Colts pass-catchers.
Oh—and Pierce is fast.
Anthony Richardson 57-yard pass to Alec Pierce
Most impressive stat: 20.21 mph. That’s what Alec Pierce topped out at after the inward cut on this post route.
Outlook:
Richardson has found his new explosive threat. Pierce might be the ship most raised by Richardson’s rising tide. Pick him up on waivers, and monitor his receiving yards line on DraftKings Sportsbook for this Sunday.
ARI vs. BUF
Josh Allen 28-yard pass to Keon Coleman
Most impressive stat: You name it. This catch was all Coleman. This throw had a 16.3% completion probability. That’s what this rookie had to deal with. Coleman was only 0.6 yards from the sideline, and 0.7 yards away from the nearest defender. He still caught it.
The rookie’s most impressive play was all him, and he’s showing he can make contested catches for an elite quarterback looking for wideouts to trust.
Outlook:
Buffalo’s offense is going to run through Josh Allen, obviously. We just didn’t know how effective this would be. Elite quarterbacks love finding new guys who’ll go out there and make a catch that, *checks notes*, had an 83.7% chance of being an incompletion.
Coleman’s on the rise.
DeeJay Dallas 96-yard kickoff return TD
Most impressive stat: Just by virtue of this being the inaugural kickoff return for a touchdown under the new format is impressive enough. However, there’s one stat I like more—DeeJay Dallas wasn’t even the fastest player on the field for this play. He topped out at 19.41mph
The man who was? Bills Kicker Tyler Bass, who reached 21.47mph as he tried to tackle Dallas just short of the end zone. That’s faster than Tyreek Hill reached on his 80-yard TD!
Outlook
Nothing material. Just nice to know that kickoffs can be returned for TDs in the new format! And, golly—Tyler Bass can absolutely scoot.
WAS vs. TB
Baker Mayfield 17-yard touchdown pass to Mike Evans
Most impressive stat: NGS gave Mike Evans a 25.3% chance of completing that catch, despite it being a great fade ball from Mayfield. Commanders corner Benjamin St-Juste was draped all over Evans, who did his own version of the Aaron Donald spin move to create enough separation to snatch the ball.
Outlook
In case you were wondering, Mike Evans has still got it. The Tampa passing attack might be just fine.
Favorite Stats
C.J. Stroud’s completion probability on throws to Nico Collins
Or is it more like Nico Collins’s? Of his six receptions, four had fewer than 42% completion probability: 41.4%, 39.6%, 38.7%, and 16.6%. That last one was the under-thrown 57-yard post route in the second quarter for which Collins had to come back and do all the work to secure the catch.
But it’s not all Stroud’s fault: on three of those throws, he was under pressure with an avg of 1.63 yards between he and the nearest Colts pass rusher. This is a polished rapport between two impressive athletes in Houston.
Joe Alt’s pass protection stat line
Harbaugh and the Chargers drafted Joe Alt for days just like Sunday: stymie the berserk intradivisional pass rush of Crosby and the Raiders. In 19 pass-pro snaps, Alt allowed zero QB pressures.
He was supposed to announce himself like the landing of a mortar shell in the Raiders’ trenches, and Crosby and Wilkins were both supposed be neutralized in the blow. Alt sure did that.
J.K. Dobbins’s top-end speed
Chargers’ J.K. Dobbins was officially your fastest running back in Week 1, registering 19.92mph on his 46-yard run in the fourth quarter.
A little lightning to complement the thunder.
Caleb Williams’s average air yards
Captain Caleb had, let’s face it, a mostly-bad day (22.0 QBR) against the Titans. His final stat line of 14-of-29 passing for 93 yards is ugly.
It’s made worse when you dig a little deeper. Of Caleb’s 14 completions, ten had a completion percentage of over 60%. Which would be great, except for the fact that not a single one of those throws registered more than ten air yards.
Remember: one of Williams’s other completions was a tipped ball that Rome Odunze, in all unlikelihood, snatched out of the air.
Was Chicago protecting Caleb?
Aaron Rodgers’s average air yards
Less surprising here, seeing as we know Aaron Rodgers likes to play close to the line of scrimmage. We also know how imperative it is to get the ball out quickly against that frenetic front-seven of the 49ers.
But still, it’s worth noting that against the 49ers last night, 70.6% of Rodgers’s throws registered with fewer than ten air yards. And 23.8% of his passes were behind the line of scrimmage.
An offense that still has yet to gel beyond the short-route level. Look for Breece Hall to provide early-season returns in the passing game.
Smoke and mirrors for Derek Carr and Sam Darnold?
Derek Carr and Sam Darnold both eviscerated the defenses they played against, but Carr’s completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) was 16.3%. Darnold’s CPOE was 12.7%.
We should expect some regression, particularly with Carr, who doesn’t have a game-changing receiver like Darnold does in Justin Jefferson.
Oh, also—last note. C.J. Stroud’s CPOE was 12.6% against IND. I expect no regression here. Simple analysis: Colts D is good. Nico Collins is better.
All odds provided by DraftKings Sportsbook and all odds subject to change.
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