When I was 11, the Playstation 2 came out. One of my neighbors had it and I was so jealous. I kept begging my parents to get one. I just needed to have it. Everyone always wanted to be at Kevin’s house and play the games with him. I wanted to have friends over. I wanted people to hang out with me. I was eleven. Who doesn’t want to host bomb overnight video game sessions where you stay up until 3 am and then pass out across the living room? I was jealous.
So finally my parents got me the PlayStation 2. I quickly became glued to every game I purchased. I’d spend hours and hours playing and slowly began to realize that I was losing myself. I have an addictive personality. Once I do something and I enjoy it, I will go full overkill with it. I thought owning a Playstation 2 would make me cool and improve my life but it was a change that I didn’t really need. While I did enjoy my time on the console, I definitely think I could have developed a lot more social skills if I hadn’t used so many hours playing GTA3 or Final Fantasy X.
Sometimes the grass just isn’t greener. That is something that many Landry and OBJ
owners are about to learn this year. Last year most Browns fans and fantasy owners complained consistently about Freddie Kitchens and the offense that he ran in Cleveland. No one was happy with the results. Everyone was calling for his head and for someone who wasn’t a complete moron to run this offense that had so many amazing pieces to utilize. In steps Kevin Stefanski. The former offensive coordinator for the Vikings is supposed to be the savior for this offense, but I’m not so sure it will be for these WRs. As I researched for the Monocle Dynasty Podcast that I co-host with John Arrington (duckiespressure), I found that OBJ and Landry owners might be in a bit of trouble next year.
Before I begin, I want to say that this is all based on extensive research that I’ve done when looking at Kevin Stefanski and his play calling for the 19 games as an offensive coordinator for the Vikings. My findings shocked me. Based on them, I’m projecting Jarvis Landry to fall to WR3+ range and for OBJ to be a WR2. We already know he loves to feed his RBs. We saw it plenty with Dalvin Cook and Alexander Mattison. But what we weren’t paying attention to was what he did to the dynamic duo of WRs on that team. He all but eliminated the value of both Diggs and Thielen and I think he will be coming for OBJ and Landry next. Minnesota’s elite duo works well with Thielen in the slot and Diggs posted on the outside. Likewise, we saw Landry dominate the slot while OBJ posted up outside for Cleveland’s offense. Ok, let’s dive in.
In 2018, Diggs and Thielen were the WR duo to own. Diggs finished WR12 and Thielen finished WR5 in PPR formats. They were extremely hyped and extremely over-drafted in 2019 as a result. If we paid close attention to Stefanskis play calling in the final 3 games, we should have seen that those numbers would not have been sustainable. Thielen took a particularly big hit in the final 3 games of 2018 as he received an average of 4 targets a game. That was nearly 7 targets less per game than the prior 13 games. Diggs also had over 2 fewer targets per game (9.8 to 7.6) once Stefanski took over in 2018.
Next, I took a look at how Diggs and Thielen did in their time with Stefanski over the 19 games that he was the offensive coordinator and calling plays. In those 19 games, Diggs averaged about 6 targets, 4 catches, 69 yards, and 0.4 TDs per game. Over the course of a full 16 game season that would give him 212.8 fantasy points. That’s good enough for WR19 last year which is right around where Diggs landed (WR24). When looking at Thielen’s production, I took out Weeks 7-14 along with Week 17 because he was injured during the game and played under 12% of the snaps in games those weeks (if he even played). So we have a smaller sample size of 11 games to work with on Thielen’s averages. He averaged 3 catches, 42 yards, and 0.5 TDs per game. That was good enough for 163.2 fantasy points or WR37 (!) in 2019.
In the 19 games (3 final games of 2018 + all of 2019) that Stefanski was the offensive coordinator and play call in Minnesota, the team averaged 29 pass attempts and 29.75 rush attempts per game. During this period there were 11 games where both Diggs and Thielen were healthy and playing together on the field at least 50% of the time (it was usually about 65-70% of the time). In those 11 games, Thielen’s target percentage of 19.8%. Diggs saw a higher 23.2% of the target. However, both numbers were lower than their target share under John DeFilippo before he was relieved of his duties toward the end of 2018. Under DeFilippo, Diggs saw 24.2% and Thielen was seeing 27.3% of the targets. This combined with injuries and other issues led to worse fantasy numbers for both men in 2019.
This makes us turn our attention to Stefanski’s news WR duo in Cleveland. OBJ fits the Diggs role in this offense, while Landry will probably fall into the Thielen role in the slot. Here is what this means for both men. Last year under Kitchens, the Browns threw the ball 539 times. OBJ was targeted 133 times for a 24.9% target share. Landry was targeted 138 times for a 25.8% target share. If we take Stefanski’s pass attempt per game and multiple it by 16, we get 464 attempts. Nearly 75 fewer passes than what Browns pass catchers saw the year before. If we transfer over the target share percentages that Diggs and Thielen saw in Stefanski’s offense to OBJ and Landry, then their targets fall from 133 to 107 (OBJ) and from 138 to 92 (Landry). That is a massive drop, especially for Landry. It’s over 30% fewer targets than he saw in 2019. Landry has never seen less than 112 targets in his career. But he also hasn’t played in an offense that is focused on the RB position as much as Stefanski’s offense is.
To find the projection for OBJ and Landry, I then looked at their fantasy point per target (PPT) from the last 5 years. What I found was that OBJ has a much worse year last year in PPT than ever before. I think the injury definitely played a part in that. Over the course of the last 5 years OBJ has averaged about 1.79 PPT but only 1.51 last year. Landry actually performed better than his average 1.63 PPT over the last 5 years but a 1.72 PPT last year. So in some ways, Landry should be expected to regress a little already. If we take those numbers and multiple them by their expected targets over next season you’ll find that OBJ should be projected for about 191.53 FP and Landry should be projected for about 149.96 FP. That would place OBJ as WR30 and Landry as WR46 in 2019. While I can’t imagine it getting that bad for these guys, I think that there is no way that I can buy into them next year. Not unless there is a fundamental change in Stefanski’s approach. There is too much risk in that offense. So while everyone is talking about Chubb and Hunt, maybe we should be paying a bit more attention to what this does to OBJ and Landry.
Cresson Sorby
@Twooohnine