WEEK 11
As we approach the holiday season, I’m finding more and more that there is a limit to how much changes later in the season, particularly when having 3-4 hours of audio content each week. It is my plan that this show will still be “full swing” in the early off-season as we get into Draft Season. So, with no off-season on the horizon, I’m dialing it back a bit through the holidays. Appreciate everyone who reads/listens and let me be clear that I will still try to engage in the same level of analysis and hit all my important points. All feedback can be sent to u/cjfreel on Reddit, @FFBForReal on X/Twitter, or to my email cjfreelfantasy@gmail.com. If you think a subject is slipping through the cracks, feel free to reach out and let me know.
Included on the show this week:
Positive/Negative Weeks for NFL Players
2025 Risers
Concern level on Cam Ward?
The first portion of today’s post was written last week, prior to the most recent game. In the most recent game, Young continued his clean play from a Pressure-to-Sack%. In the last 3 games, Bryce Young has taken 4 Sacks. In all of 2023, his best 3-game stretch was taking 9 Sacks. Young’s Pressure-to-Sack% the last 3 weeks is a hair above 10%, which is excellent.
Bryce Young Impresses?
As an opening disclaimer, it is important to stress that what we are dealing with here is a case of cautious optimism. I am not saying that Bryce Young has turned the corner, or at least not necessarily. What is more fair is to say that this off-season, many bought Bryce Young not for an indicator, an encouraging sign, or a reasonable expectation based on 2023, but simply because he was the 1.01 one-year removed.
Because of his benching at the hands of Andy Dalton, Young’s price has fairly dropped. However, you could also make the case that for the first time in his young career, these past two games after his benching-reset have finally given us what his entire rookie year didn’t: a reason to be encouraged.
While the overall volume still leaves something to be desired, when it comes to a number of indicators I look for in QBs, Bryce Young has scored very highly these past two weeks. Big Time Throws and BTT% (PFF) are not numbers that I would consider highly stable, but even just retroactively they help to show us if a player is producing some higher-difficulty plays. Young’s BTT% in 2023 was pedestrian, ranking 23rd among the 32 QBs with 283 Dropbacks. Early on in 2024, Young was considerably worse. Young had only 1 BTT in his first two starts and including the time he played behind Dalton, a rate which would drop him to roughly the bottom of the league. In the past two games, Young has multiple BTTs in each game, something he only did 4 times in 16 starts in 2023. By proportion, on that same Leaderboard, Young’s BTT% the last two weeks would be 3rd. Once again, this is a dangerous stat to bring up without context because I do not believe this indicates repeatability, moreso that Young has essentially made plays by his own accord and is not just purely manufacturing the last two weeks.
The statistic that is actually more encouraging and potentially COULD be considered repeatable is the growth in Pressure-to-Sack%. P2S% is a very stable statistic. Once again, I don’t want to lead people astray. This is still a very small sample. But to put Bryce Young’s career into context, P2S% was not an issue for Young coming out. His 12.5% P2S% in 2022 was 23rd among 100 qualified QBs. However, in the NFL last year, Young was a disaster. His 24.5% P2S% in 2023 in the NFL was 32nd (or last) among 32 qualified QBs. This issue not only persisted, but was even worse for Young in his first two games this season. Young took 6 sacks on his first 19 pressures (31.6%) including 2 sacks on only 4 pressures the week before he was benched. Since returning, Young has taken only 3 sacks on 22 pressures (13.6%). This includes a fairly pressured performance against the team with the 2nd most sacks in the NFL, the Denver Broncos (2 Sacks, 15 Pressures). On our same leaderboard from being, a 13.6% P2S% would be 4th.
While nothing can refute the size of this sample, Young’s last two games on this particular metric, which does have a prior for him back in College, were both individually his best two games in pressure-to-sack% since Week 4 of 2023.
This is, at the very least, something I will be monitoring closely moving forward.
There are certain times after two games where I will treat it as a “dead-cat bounce” – which many will claim this is – and trade for what I can get. In Superflex leagues, there is enough upside with Bryce Young that I am personally encouraged enough to more likely take the risk at the current market price. I may not win more often than I lose, but at this stage I see the reward outweighing the risk when you consider the relative cost & payoff.
Concern Level on Cam Ward
Cam Ward once again put up phenomenal box score statistics, and while Miami lost to Georgia Tech, he remained 4th in Heisman Odds and 3rd in 1st Overall Pick Odds. Anecdotally, we can point to the fact that Ward crucially fumbled the ball later in the game giving the win to Georgia Tech, but the issues go far deeper.
It is important to point out right away that there is a middle ground between 2023 Cam Ward and the hopeful #1 Overall Pick version; Ward could have easily improved substantially from 2023 to 2024 and still not be the kind of profile teams want to take very early in the draft. And I do believe Ward has improved. This past week, Ward passed his career high in total Big Time Throws in a season with a few games left to play. In his first season in particular, Ward struggled with Big Time Throws and creating them with any frequency. He has now improved in each of the last two years.
However, almost all of Cam Ward’s improvements this season outside of Big Time Throws are condensed into his first four games. In these first four games, which include FCS Florida A&M, Ball State, and South Florida, Cam Ward played phenomenally in terms of what I would consider “clean football.” Since Week 4 however, Ward has largely regressed to the exact same QB he was last year.
In the first four games of the season, Cam Ward’s Big Time Throw : Turnover Worthy Play ratio was 11:2, or 5.5:1 on average. In general, those 2 TWPs over four games were an even more noteworthy improvement for Ward, and would equal a TWP on only 1.5% of dropbacks. Prior to 2024, Ward’s best 4-game stretch in the FBS still had 4 TWPs. Ward took only 2 sacks and his 6.3% Pressure-to-Sack% in the first four weeks was elite. And while he did have an over 3 second Time to Throw against Florida, the other three games (against lesser competition) he kept it to right around 2.6. These numbers discussed in this paragraph, carried out over an entire season, would mark an elite QB at least in terms of performance. The trouble is that all of these numbers have substantially regressed to Ward’s career norms.
We have 6 games now since this initial 4 game sampling, so this is a fairly large sample of games that equals roughly half a College Football season. In this half season, Ward’s BTT:TWP play ratio has dropped to 14:11 or 1.3:1. Ward’s 11 TWPs in 6 Games is notably high, and would be a TWP on about 4.0% of dropbacks. Ward’s P2S% has also increased, taking sacks on 21.6% of pressures the last six weeks, which would drop Ward from near the top of the leaderboard to the bottom third. Finally, Ward’s rough time-to-throw during this period is above 3 seconds. While it was above 3 against Florida, those four games in general averaged out to about 2.8s, which is far healthier than the ~3.05 he sits on the last six weeks. In the same way that the numbers discussed in the previous paragraph, carried out over an entire season, would mark an elite QB, these numbers suggest a substantial number of flaws and faults that also align with Ward’s pre-season grading.
Cam Ward notably is the only player I am aware of to initially (at least publicly) make a declaration for the 2024 NFL Draft and then eventually walk it back, and I followed the news there pretty closely as I will this year as I was trying to make sure I was prepared to talk about the proper players of the class. My presumption, which I do believe is shared by many, is that Cam Ward wanted to enter the NFL and was told he would not like where he would get drafted. This is (very loosely at this stage) backed by some rumors that his pre-draft estimate was closer to the 5th Round. Regardless, the greater point is that it definitely seemed like Ward returned to college out of necessity for his stock. In that guise, I think it is important to note that we need Ward to be substantially better than he has been before.
Ward is still importantly avoiding the spirals. In previous years, when he started to make mistakes, more mistakes came, and they were catastrophic. To be fair, he did have a catastrophic turnover against Georgia Tech, but even in this game his overall performance individually was not bad and had plenty of positives to take away from it. Ward is also still improving in accessing his arm down the field. However, it would currently be my contention that all of the things that caused Ward to get that 5th Round grade are currently festering at a rate higher than the general consensus is giving it credit for.
There are still similarities in the breakouts of Jayden Daniels and Cam Ward, but notably there is another, scarier comparison that has started to come to mind more and more: Malik Willis. (Note: Willis+Daniels are both mobile, but mobility is not a similarity here). Now Ward is playing head & shoulders by even my own account above Willis’ final year with Liberty, but Malik Willis was a QB who rose to be the favorite for the #1 overall pick mid-season and then constantly could not get out of his way down the stretch of the season. In an open 2022 class, he failed the final tests significantly. I’m not sure Ward is outright failing, but in a similar fashion he is substantially in his own way at this point.
Ultimately, fan bases who need a QB won’t like to hear this or will simply hope I am wrong, but Cam Ward is firmly a QB who I would consider in the late-1st in the NFL or the early-mid 1st in Fantasy, but I just struggle to see the player that many are excited about taking in the top 5, or even top 1-3.
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Obviously a bit of a different format this week. Not sure what all I’ll do moving forward. Have been struggling to concoct traditional “Risers” so trying to shake it up instead of getting lost in some doldrums.
Thanks as always, expect a few more shorter shows / posts these next couple months as I take a light break and prepare for Draft Season.
C.J.
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