Throughout the month of January we’ll be rolling out a thorough review on touch, target and workload data from all 32 NFL teams in an effort to paint a complete picture of the 2014 fantasy football season and turn our attention to what things like (in the early part of the offseason) for 2015. Much will change, but understanding the relative workload distribution can go a long way to making projections for next year.
[View the full set of articles here]
2014 NFL Season Review: New England Patriots Touches and Targets
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Brandon LaFell: not a pygmy (Photo: Barry Chin/The Boston Globe).
Brandon LaFell started the 2014 season with an 0/6 performance against the Miami Dolphins which led to his benching the following week. By season’s end, though, he’d make good on preseason Brady relationship promise and develop into New England’s most consistent receiver. He’d catch 74 of his 114 targets (for a 64.9% catch rate, six points better than last season in Carolina). The oft-underwhelming WR fulfilled his early career promise with a 959 yard, seven touchdown campaign this year. Just where things go for LaFell is hard to ascertain at this point, but the team has invested a lot in draft picks at the position in years past without bearing a great deal of fruit and thus it seems unlikely that they’ll travel down that road again.
Without a logical addition in the free agent market, its possible that the Pats enter 2015 with the same group they played out 2014 with – obviously great news for anyone hoping to see a repeat performance from LaFell. His 74 catches were dwarfed by the 92 produced by Julian Edelman, who provided a solid encore to his 2013 campaign but did see the anticipated hit in fantasy value (WR18 to WR26) with the emergence of LaFell and the return to good health of Rob Gronkowski. Overall, his 125 targets are a more reasonable number in a full season and could remain comparable if the team goes status quo at WR. Afterall, Danny Amendola (40), Bryan Tyms and Aaron Dobson shared just 57 targets between them. That Edelman caught 74.8% of his targets this year (good for 7th in the league) ensures he’ll continue to see a solid dose of work in the year ahead. The real threat comes not from the outside then, but perhaps from the development of some internal prospects. Aaron Dobson, drafted in the 2nd round in 2013, played all of 56 snaps for New England and was a responsible for just five of those 57 looks after flashing potential in his rookie season. He dealt with foot issues through the offseason and was shut down with a hamstring injury during the 2014 campaign, both of which certainly hindered his progress but the team clearly wasn’t ready to put him on the field. This offseason represents a turning point, but if all goes well he may find himself in the mix heading into 2015 which will be a situation to monitor for anyone hoping for repeat lines from Edelman and LaFell.
At TE, we don’t need to spend a lot of time diving into Rob Gronkowski‘s greatness, save to note that he got back to being Gronk in 2014. He started slow, making just 13 catches for 147 yards through the season’s first month, but went off from there when it became apparent that he was back to 100%. In the season’s 5th week, Gronkowski finally started playing a significant portion of the team’s snaps and he didn’t post fewer than 6.8 standard league fantasy points the rest of the way. He’d finish with 70 receptions over the next 11 games and was the class of the TE position in virtually all measurables. His 2.53 yards per route run were .27 yards ahead of the 2nd place finisher and he and Travis Kelce were the only players at their position to top 2.0. Gronk was Gronk this year, and so he shall be in 2015. Tim Wright was an occasional, though unpredictable fantasy storyline. Still, this will never be a Gronkowski-Hernandez situation, and you can’t make fantasy hay off a player who was targeted more than three times just three times.
At tailback, I’m not even sure where to begin. I suppose it is worth noting that Shane Vereen massively underperformed expectations, even in PPR leagues which were his presumed bailiwick this year. Vereen led all New England backs in time spent on the field, with over 600 snaps, but his 96 carry, 53 reception (still good for 5th at his position) 838 yard season hardly warranted his draft day cost. Still, it wasn’t as if he was ineffective. Vereen averaged 4.1 YPC and 8.4 YPR. He’ll take that talent to a new team in 2015 presumably, and his landing place will be a situation to monitor. Again making an assumption, he’ll be joined on the free agent market by Stevan Ridley, who looked briefly better than his 3.6 YPC average before suffering ACL and MCL tears in October. That leaves New England’s RB situation in a state of flux, though LeGarrette Blount played well enough to stick around for the second year of his November-minted two year deal during his second stint with the Patriots. Blount averaged 4.1 and 4.7 YPC in Pittsburgh and New England respectively, and notched 547 yards rushing collectively on just 124 carries while adding five rushing scores. A bruising runner, Blount picked up 3.4 yards after contact per attempt with New England and his tough running style is a good fit for what New England is trying to do. Whether Jonas Gray (90 carries, all of which came in Week 11) and James White (31 snaps of offense in his rookie season) factor into the mix or not remains to be seen. All told, the backfield data means little in New England this year, which I suppose makes it a season much like most others.
In fact, the season was like most others for New England. They won yet another AFC East Championship while finishing in the top-5 in points scored, and yet produced relatively few fantasy stars. Sure, LaFell and Edelman were very useful assets but neither finished as a WR1 and there wasn’t a back you could trust from week to week. Rob Gronkowski stands out as an outlier, both in terms of his fantasy utility and within his own position. With Jimmy Graham taking a step back this year (he was still great, don’t get me wrong) Gronk enters 2015 in a tier of his own. Another constant: Tom Brady was great. He finished the season as just the 9th best player at his position, mind you, but from Week 5 on (after he was old, finished, due to retire, sent out to pasture) he was the 3rd highest scorer on a per game basis at his position. His 4100 yards were nothing to write home about, but the 33:9 TD:INT ratio is fantasy gold, and despite the naysayers he showed no significant signs of decline, save for a 33.3% accuracy rating on passes over 20 yards which has dropped every year since 2011. Still, Brady and the offense get it done just fine on the intermediate routes, as such, you’ll happily find my rosters bolstered with Patriots in the year to come.
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