Fantasy Football Today - Tyreek Hill Profile: Worth a Round 2 Pick? (08/20 Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Donate to St. Jude as part of our Draft-A-Thon! Bid on pre-draft calls with our experts, a spot in the FFT Podcast League, a guest spot on Fantasy Football Today and more! https://ebay.to/3p4Dc3Z Advanced stats guru Jacob Gibbs talks about some concerning trends for Tyreek Hill and why he shouldn't be a Top 8 WR in drafts. Adam pushes back a bit and defends Hill! 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, 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

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having the spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. I just drafted Tyreek Hill 27th overall in a three-wide receiver PPR league. Jacob Gibbs is going to tell you why I suck at fantasy football. Welcome to Fantasy Football Today at 5.

Jacob does not think Tyreek Hill should be going. As early as I took him in his ADPs, even earlier, Tyreek Hill is a late second round pick. But actually on CBS, 32nd overall on CBS. Some of that is non-PPR pushes, running backs up a bit. But where do you think he should be going? And make your first point about Tyreek Hill and why you're a little cautious drafting Tyreek Hill this year. Yeah, I have

Tyreek ranked, I think, 41st overall, wide receiver 16, and to be clear, I don't think Adam sucks at fantasy. But yeah, on Tyreek Hill, I just, I don't see how things improve really, or even close to what we saw last year when he was the wide receiver six and he's being drafted as a wide receiver eight um the chiefs were really really

intentional about getting the ball in tyreek's hands in 2021 more than they ever have been before he was targeted on 27 of his routes uh for reference only davante adams cooper cup and deontay johnson had a higher target per route run rate among players with at least 350 routes run. So that was by far the highest mark of his career. None of those guys had a rate above 31% for some reference there. So he's at 27%. There's really not a whole lot of room to grow from that rate. I think it's pretty likely that's the highest rate we ever see from Tiger Kill in his career. Another metric that just points towards what ridiculous volume he got last year is his volume hog rate so if you listen to last week's f15 five episodes you heard me talk about volume hog rate it's a stat that i just created you can

find out all about it on sportsline but basically it just looks at the percentage of a team's targets and air yards that a player accounts for while they're on the field and the only player that had a higher volume hog rate than tyree Kill last year was A.J. Brown. And again, he didn't hit the 350-ratt qualifier. Brown didn't. So among qualified players, Tyree Kill had the highest volume hog rate in the NFL on a Patrick Mahomes-led offense. And he finishes the wide receiver six in fantasy. I just don't see it. I don't see how we're drafting him as a top-ten guy in Miami.

For the record, I think I took him as wide receiver 11, something like that. DJ Moore, Michael Pittman went before him, and I took Keenan Allen before him in round two, and then I took Tyree Kill. So it's got to be kind of a wide receiver heavy draft for me to take him around the 2-3 turn. But wide receiver 11, I can understand if you're saying wide receiver 8 is too early, but I try not to overthink it. You're going to give me some more troubling data. I try not to overthink it.

I think he's terrific. I think that he's played now different roles where he's been a downfield guy. Last year, he was more of a short area guy and had a ton of targets. And I think that if they can carry over the offensive system from San Francisco, that should give him plenty of room

to make plays after the catch. He's still one of the fastest players in football. So that's why I think, you know, the numbers will be pretty solid at the end of the year, but I don't think he should be wide receiver eight. All right, well, give me some troubling underlying data about Tyree Kill. Yeah, so you hit on it there. He was used much more as a short yardage target last year and just not nearly the downfield threat that we've seen. And I think that that could in some ways, you know, maybe indicate a decline here. Maybe it was just a usage thing. But the percentage of his targets that came 15 or more yards downfield was between 33 and 39 percent in each of the seasons, 2018 to 2020.

Last year was down to 23 percent. Same thing, 20 plus yard targets was between 22 and 31 percent. Last year was all the way down to 15%. So targeted significantly less downfield. As a result, we saw his explosive reception rate drop from between 20 to 26% from 2018 to 2020, all the way down to 12.6 last year. So explosive reception rate is a percentage of his targets that resulted in a gain of 15 or more yards. And his rate ranked 29th among 35 receivers with at least 100 targets.

And then the other thing I'll mention is that we saw his yards after the catch per reception drop as well. And so is he, you know, you know, in this short yardage role because he's, you know, being more efficient at creating yards after the catch? The numbers don't bear that out. I think it's entirely possible that he's just not as good at getting open deep as he has been in the past because he's possibly slowed down. He is 28 years old, and we've seen his yard per hour run rate decline for five straight seasons now.

I think one interesting note with his deep routes, his deep targets dropping, is that Kansas City threw deep as a whole less often last year. Right. That's what I think it was. I think it was that they were playing the Chief they were playing the chiefs to to give them the underneath stuff and and go ahead i just think it's it's worth noting that um the rate at which mahomes threw the ball 15 plus yards downfield to non-tyree kill targets uh didn't drop nearly as drastically as tyree kills rate did um so the rate dropped uh by 20% in 2021 compared to 2018 to 2020. And that was the amount of 15 plus yard targets. And then the amount of 20 plus yard targets

for non Tyreek Hill players dropped by 7%. For Hill, those drops were 34 and 39%. And then it's the same thing when we look at man coverage, which is another thing that stands out to me. It's something that I note a lot with older receivers is they've been dominant against man coverage throughout their whole career and then we see that start to drop off and we saw that with tyreek as well he was not targeted downfield nearly as often against man coverage his yard per run rate dropped uh significantly so it dropped by six percent versus zone in 2021 dropped by 15 percent versus man he had a career explosive reception rate of 22% versus man coverage. That was all the way down to 12% in 2021. So as someone who looks at this a

lot, it's just not the types of indicators that you want to see popping up for a receiver as he approaches the age of 30. And especially since they coincide with the timing of that receiver being traded away by an organization that, you know, has been perennial odds-on favorites for the Super Bowl and is trying to maximize their window with a win-now franchise quarterback. Why would they do that? Why would they trade away Tyreek Hill? You know, I think it's possible. Why would they do that? I think it's possible.

When you give Patrick Holmes $500 million or whatever they gave him, I think they backed themselves into a corner. I think so, but Tyreek is the guy they chose, and they don't have a lot of depth to the receiver in terms of clear top-end playmakers. I don't know. I think it's possible that he

has fallen off, and we have a lot of underlying data that does point towards that. Fortunately, we're not going to be able to get to you know everything you wanted to talk about but i will just say that um he's 28 i mean there's plenty of wide receivers who are great at age 28 i don't think that's really an age of of uh where they fall off a cliff or anything like that um in terms of two a tongue of iloa you know you look at kirk cousins a couple years ago he was qb 11 and he produced two top 10 wide receivers uh Last year, Russell Wilson and the Seahawks actually produced two top 16 wide receivers,

not per game. So you don't have to have an amazing quarterback. Jared Goff once gave us two top 13 wide receivers. Actually, twice gave us two top 16 wide receivers. So I just think the targets will be very concentrated between the two main guys. I think you'll see a decent amount of, you know, probably 90-plus catches from Hill.

And he's going to make some plays, man. I have more faith in Tyreek, but I do appreciate the advanced stats. Jacob Gibbs, thank you, everybody, for watching and listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow with a DK Metcalf profile. See you later.