Fantasy Football Today - Courtland Sutton Profile: Good or Bad Fit for Russell Wilson? (06/25 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: June 25, 2022

Jacob Gibbs of Sportsline takes you through the advanced metrics on Courtland Sutton including his splits against man and zone coverage and how he fits with Russell Wilson's strengths. You can also follow the full-length Fantasy Football Today podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fantasy-football-today-podcast/id261735167 Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs, @BenSchragg You can listen to Fantasy Football Today in 5 on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today in 5 podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today in 5 podcast." Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Jacob Gibbs joins us. He's a sports line analyst. He's a great fantasy football mind. He punches all the numbers, looks at all the data, and tells us what we need to know. And gives you splits that you're just not going to hear anywhere else. So first we're going to start with a Cortland Sutton profile, Jacob. And let's talk about,

here's a guy who's already had a thousand yard season under his belt. I think fantasy managers right now are gravitating to Sutton profile, Jacob. And let's talk about, here's a guy who's already had a thousand yard season under his belt. I think fantasy managers right now are gravitating to Sutton over Judy. What's the first thing you want to tell us about, you know, how his previous success will translate to this year? Yeah. So he has had a one, one thousand yard season, as you, as you mentioned. But the other two complete seasons we've seen from really are not that impressive. And the thing I really want to focus on here is his average depth of target. So as a rookie, Sutton's ADOT was 14 yards. And we saw him, you know, at just 1.3 yards per outrun, which is 14% below the league average.

He was only targeted on 16% of his routes. His second season, when he really went off in 2019 for 1,100 yards, his average depth of target was all the way down to 11.5, which is right on the league average. The year before it was 14. He was being used way more downfield. But when he really saw him be successful, he was using a more short yardage role, more of a true wide receiver one type of role.

He started on 23% of his routes up from 16% as a rookie. And his yard per route run rate was all the way up to 2.08, which was 34% above the league average. And in the year before he was he was much more downfield it was 14 below the average um he missed most 2020 and then in 2021 we saw his average depth of target all the way up to 15.4 yards um which is one of the highest among qualified receivers he was only targeted on 18 percent of his routes and his yard per run rate was six percent below the league average so we've've seen one year where he was, you know, the true alpha in the offense and was, you know, used more around line of scrimmage, shorty targets. And that's when he thrived. But when he's been used more as a downfield threat, he's not been as efficient. And I think that that's

what we're going to continue to see here with Jerry Judy occupying more of a short yardage role. With that said, Russell Wilson is a massive upgrade in the quality of deep targets that we're going to see Sutton get. Wilson had the highest average depth target in 2021. Only Kirk Cousins had a higher passer rating on attempts to travel 15 or more yards. So definitely an upgrade on deep targets, but really the role has not been conducive to fantasy success so far. What about man versus zone?

This is an area that you look at a lot. Yeah, so Teddy Bridgewater has actually been better than Russell Wilson versus man coverage. He had the highest completion percentage in the NFL versus man in 2021. And since 2019, he's third in completion percentage versus 20th. Yardsworth 10, Bridgewater 6, Russ is 24th. So he actually has a huge upgrade there over Russ, and that's an area that Corbin Sun has been pretty dependent on.

He's been 19% more likely to draw target versus man than versus zone and he's been 40 percent more efficient um at creating yards on a per route basis when facing man coverage so he now gets a quarterback who is much better versus zone which is you know predominantly used in the NFL at 65 percent of the time you're going to be facing zone coverage so just kind of a slight uh change, you know, the fit here. I think Bridgewater really was, you know, conducive to success for these, you know, man-dominant receivers like Tim Patrick and Cortland Sutton and Russ, maybe not so much. Okay, this so far is not a very good Cortland Sutton episode.

What about his splits with and without Jerry Judy on the field? It doesn't get much better. When Judy was on the field in 2021, he was clearly Denver's wide receiver one. So Judy was 63% more likely to draw a target than Corbin Sutton when they were both on the field. That came on 224 routes. It's not a small sample size. And Judy was clearly favored as the wide receiver one.

And this stat really blew me away. 83% of sudden's fantasy points came with judy off the field last year uh 59 percent of his routes came with judy off the field but 83 percent of his fantasy points came during that time okay that's not good that's not good i mean i want to throw all this stuff out and i like both of them. And just say, you know, better quarterback. He had, Sutton had that great year with a bad quarterback, with Drew Locke and others.

I'm hoping this doesn't matter. I'm hoping this doesn't matter, Jacob. I'm hoping so, too. I like Corbin Sutton. I think it's more fun when he's good. And I think, like we said, Russ really does like to target receivers downfield. So I think one of him or Tim Patrick could be good. And I don't

get why people are favoring him over Judy, honestly, given the data that we have. Well, most people don't know the data that we have, so that's why you're on the show. We'll talk about Jerry Judy tomorrow on Fantasy Football Today in 5.