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| Tuesday, August 6, 2024 |
| It's Bears Day! |
| But first, I need to correct a mistake from yesterday's Packers preview. I forgot to update the projected totals for Green Bay. Here they are: |
Packers projections:
Projected Offensive Plays – (24th) |
| Projected Passing TDs – 30.7 (5th) |
| Projected Rushing TDs – 16.5 (26th) |
| Before diving into Fantasy analysis for each team, I'll present a brief overview containing their offensive ranks in my base line team projections as well as any notable coaching or offensive line changes. |
Bears projections:
Projected Offensive Plays – (12th) |
| Projected Passing TDs – 27.6 (9th) |
| Projected Rushing TDs – 17.7 (20th) |
| Were you a bit surprised at how closely the Bears touchdown projection came to matching Green Bay's? I was! Vegas lookahead lines imply a 434-point total for Green Bay. That's 10th-highest. Chicago ranks 17th with a 417-point total, ahead of the Colts, Browns, and Seahawks. This offense is led by a rookie quarterback, but expectations are that this Bears offense will be competitive. |
| Notable coaching changes: |
| Hired Shane Waldron as offensive coordinatorHired Eric Washington as defensive coordinator |
| Notable offensive line changes |
| Traded for center Ryan Bates from BuffaloSigned veteran center Shelton Coleman from the Rams |
| This offensive line is talented. Injuries hit Chicago's line hard in 2023, as all but one starter missed time. The one healthy starter was an important one, though. Darnell Wright, the 10th overall selection in the 2023 NFL Draft, started 17 games at right tackle for Chicago and was a respectable for a 22-year-old first-time pro. |
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| Wright, at 6-foot-5 and 335 pounds, was particularly impressive as a run blocker. |
| Hitting on a young cornerstone at the tackle spot is an incredible start to building out this line. The other pieces that Chicago has assembled are also exciting. Left tackle Braxton Jones was incredible as a fifth-round rookie in 2022 and nearly matched Wright's impressive PFF grades during 11 healthy games in 2023. The 25-year-old graded out as the best pass blocker on the team and will be tasked with protecting Caleb Williams' blind side. Next to him, at left guard, the six-foot-six and 321 pound former second-round selection, Teven Jenkins was responsible for the highest PFF grade among Chicago's linemen in 2023. Jenkins has been spectacular when healthy, but his 12 games in 2023 were actually a career-high. He's just entering his fourth season, so I don't want to assume that Jenkins is incapable of playing a full season quite yet, but we haven't seen it. |
| Nate Davis was the prized 2023 offseason acquisition but was a huge disappointment in his first year serving as Chicago's right guard. Entering his age-28 season, Davis certainly is young enough to bounce back but also may be beginning a decline. He was among the league's best guards during his time in Tennessee, so any return to form would be huge for Chicago. |
| Every starter on this line is 28 years old or younger. They're also huge! |
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| Davis, Jenkins, Wright, and Jones all profile as better run-blockers than pass-blockers, which is interesting given the rest of the offensive personnel talent distribution's strong lean toward the pass. |
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| Caleb Williams is poised for an unprecedented statistical performance |
| The recipe for a huge Fantasy season from the 2024 number one overall pick is clear -- I presented it in a Twitter thread if you want convincing. Here is the TL;DR version (it's still long, of course): |
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| Shane Waldron's offenses have played very fast. It didn't amount to a large number of total plays during his time in Seattle -- in fact, his teams often were at or near the bottom of the NFL in total offensive plays. Pace is only a part of what goes into the total number of offensive plays . Two more important parts -- both of which the 2024 Bears might have -- include a successful defense and run game. I'm not particularly confident in D'Andre Swift as a consistent rusher, but I am excited about this run-blocking unit and I am confident in Khalil Herbert if he assumes an early-down role for this team at any point. If this line is healthy and Herbert is running behind it, it is going to require a really tough defense to slow such a physical rushing attack down. |
| I think that Chicago could have an effective run game. I also think that Chicago could have an effective defense. Nate Tice and Charles McDonald of Yahoo Fantasy both included the Bears among their top-10 defenses for 2024. Here's why this is important for Caleb Williams and the total number of offensive plays that we can reasonably project for the 2024 Bears: |
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| The Bears rank 12th in projected offensive plays, but the potential for this offense to create one of the highest total play numbers is clear. If the line is bullying opponents and setting up easy-to-convert third-down opportunities and the defense is getting opponents off of the field on third downs, the Bears could dominate time of possession and create tons of opportunities for Williams, his pass-catchers, and even the running backs to put up some gaudy Fantasy totals. |
| DJ Moore hit another level in 2023 |
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| Moore finished as the WR6 in Fantasy in his first year away from Carolina. The Bears had no answers for offensive line injuries and the quarterback position was a mess. |
| Chicago's offensive ranks in 2023: |
- 23rd in passing touchdowns
- 27th in passing yards
- 29th in targets created |
| It was not exactly a situation conducive to Fantasy scoring, and yet, Moore turned in nearly 300 PPR points. That's pretty cool! I know that there is more target competition in 2024, and I know that Moore's 10.0 yards per target rate from 2023 is almost certain to regress, but we aren't betting on him to produce 288 PPR points again at his cost. Moore is being drafted as the WR22 on average. He needs roughly 230 PPR points to be worth that draft cost. He may breeze right past that if this Bears offensive environment comes close to reaching its potential. |
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| Moore just turned 27 years old. His underlying data suggests that he is still making improvements to his game as he enters the peak years of his career. He proved too explosive for opposing defenses to effectively slow down even as the clear focal point in 2023, and now he is joined by Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze. Moore should have more breathing room than ever before. Gone are the days when defenses can say, "if we stop DJ Moore, we win." Defenses have to find answers for three diverse and dangerous receivers, and there's also the ever-present threat of Caleb Williams improvising and creating problems for defenses on his own. Defenses may have to give extra attention to the run game if it ends up reaching its potential. On paper, this Chicago offense presents a lot of potential problems for opposing defenses. The offense is young with lots of new pieces, so there's no telling how it will materialize in reality. If it is a success, then Moore is going to find himself with more freedom to create than ever before. That is exciting to think about after what he just put on film and spreadsheets alike in 2023. |
| 2024 projections aren't exciting for Odunze and Allen, but there is upside |
| Moore had a 28.5% target share in his first year with the Bears and hasn't had a target share below 27.6% since 2020. I'm projecting him for a 23% share in 2024, and still, there's not enough volume for Odunze and Allen to feel like players that I want to go out of my way to target in Fantasy drafts. |
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| Odunze got the shortest end of all the short sticks that I had to hand out, which I guess makes sense since he is the rookie. He also will likely run the deepest route tree while working as the "X" receiver and often facing opposing top corners. Still, 15.5% feels very low for a top-10 pick. I also had a hard time putting Keenan Allen in the grave like this. He's never seen such a low target share and is coming off of a fantastic season. |
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| Surely, Allen is going to see a higher target share than just 20%, right? Well, another thing to consider is that we may see him leave the field more than ever before. Odunze and Moore may be the receivers who remain on the field in two-receiver sets. If Allen's primary duty becomes slot work, that would limit his playing time and potentially lower his efficiency. Do you remember the lackluster Fantasy performance that Jaxon Smith-Njigba turned in? He was the primary slot player in Shane Waldron's offense. Waldron designed lots of short-yardage easy-button targets for JSN, but Seattle's slot receiver finished with just a 75% route participation and a measly 6.1-yard average depth of target. To produce within that type of role, a player has to be a true outlier in terms of efficiency. We saw Rashee Rice do it last year, but it's a rarity for a player to matter for Fantasy while occupying that type of a role. |
| The Seahawks may use more three-receiver sets in 2024 than Waldron did in Seattle, but I don't necessarily know why we would expect that. Seattle's WR trio is about as good as it gets, and the Seahawks ranked 16th with a 65.4% rate of plays that included three or more receivers on the field. The Bears have two quality tight end options (Kmet and Gerald Everett), and it would not surprise me at all to see Waldron's offense again employ three-receiver sets at a league average rate. |
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| Median projections are not kind to this receiver room, even with bullish team-level projections from Vegas line-setters and my projections. Moore comes out as the WR20, Allen as the WR30, and Odunze as the WR47. There's upside for much more than a median projection can account for, though. If Williams exceeds expectations, we could see the entire offensive projection lifted. If the offense is more concentrated on the receivers than I'm expecting, and I unnecessarily accounted for a projected 24% of the targets to go to Kmet and Swift and those two then don't prove to be significant functions of the passing offense, all three receivers could prove to be values. If any one receiver were to miss time, the other two could put up massive numbers. And, of course, if any of the trio simply proves to be better than expected -- I'm looking at you, Odunze -- then the target distribution could swing their direction in a meaningful way. There's upside for any one of these three to put up massive numbers in 2024. Moore is the one who I would bet on, as he is in the prime of his career while the other two are not. They're all intriguing, though. I expect Williams to aggressively take shots at his fellow 2024 top-10 rookie teammate down the field. It feels totally realistic that Allen could become the "quarterback's best friend" as the veteran always-open safety blanket in the short and intermediate areas. You can paint a picture where any one of these players succeeds. |
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| Williams is the Chicago player who I have drafted the most of. He feels like a clear value, and so why not just take him and leave the guessing on which pass-catcher is the right one to someone else? |
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| This graph depicts discrepancies between how the Fantasy community is investing in each offense's quarterback relative to his pass-catchers. Here, we find Williams joining pocket passers like C.J. Stroud Brock Purdy, Jared Goff, Tua Tagovailoa, Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins, Trevor Lawrence, and Joe Burrow above the trend line. Fantasy drafters are aggressively targeting the pass-catchers for those quarterbacks but don't seem to want to draft the passers responsible for distributing the receiving volume. Of that group, Williams is clearly the most likely to add value with his legs. Particularly in the red zone, Williams could be a weapon as a rusher. |
| His collegiate scramble rates don't come close to recent QB prospects Anthony Richardson and Jayden Daniels, who we find well below the trend line in the graph above. But Williams was willing to create plays with his legs. He's clearly different than Jared Goff. |
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| Only nine quarterbacks project to outscore Williams on a per-game basis in my 2024 Fantasy projections. Jayden Daniels is one of them, and I am drafting him ahead of Williams. I feel more confident in the Bears offense than I do in Washington's and acknowledge that there's massive risk with Daniels. I've drafted a ton of both rookies this summer. I like to live dangerously. I see more upside with those two and their respective offenses as potential sources of huge play volume than I do for Kyler Murray, which I believe is a contrarian take. I love the direction of the new Arizona regime, but I think they're going to lean into a bully-ball offense that centers around the run game. I also really worry about Arizona's defense, which may provide even more reason for the Cardinals to lean on the ground game to control the clock and protect the defense. Williams is my QB10 currently, so I often leave season-long drafts with him. I want upside at QB. |
| Beyond him, I am open to any of the Bears pieces at the right price. I have almost no exposure to Kmet and very little to Swift, but either could prove to be overlooked values. Just bumping the target shares for those two a bit puts them into an interesting range in my projections. Swift currently projects for 66 targets over a healthy 17-game season. If his target share were to reach something similar to what we saw during his time with the Lions, Swift could sneakily post 80+ targets in a healthy season. The Bears made it a priority to go get him this free agency period. Similarly, Kmet could creep into the 100+ target range if his target share is higher than I expect. If one receiver misses time with injury, suddenly Kmet projects pretty similarly to players like David Njoku and Evan Engram. |
| And lastly, I want to encourage you to at least consider grabbing Khalil Herbert anywhere that he is free. He might not get to play, in which case you just drop him. No worries. He's the clear-as-day best option for this team as an early-down rusher, though. |
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| Displayed below are the top cumulative yardage after contact per rush rates across the 2022-23 seasons. |
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| And here is the range where D'Andre Swift falls during that time: |
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| I'll be back in your inbox every weekday with a new team preview until August 8! Wednesday, we will be covering the Minnesota Vikings. If you have any feedback on the team-by-team previews or any questions about the upcoming teams, feel free to send them my way. |
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