Jun 11, 2017

Breaking down the targets: Giants offense and Sterling Shepard



For those of you who grew up in the 90s, you may remember Super Smash Brothers mini-game Break the Targets. While I may not be able to shoot fireballs out of my hand, I figured I'd take it upon myself to do the same thing for football targets. Technically this series really began with my Kelvin Benjamin article, but I wanted to make it more official. So welcome to Breaking down the targets where I'll examine specific offenses target breakdown and what it means for particular players.

 We're going to begin with my personal favorite team and the only player whose football jersey I own: Sterling Shepard. There are few players who have had a worse off-season for their fantasy outlook this coming season than Shepard. The Giants signed Brandon Marshall to a 2 year $11 million contract, and drafted Evan Engram with their first round pick in the draft.

 Many in the dynasty fantasy community are calling Sterling Shepard a sell at this point. Despite putting up a 65-683-8 line as a rookie it may be warranted. Let's take a look at the Giants offense for the upcoming season to see if you should take that advice.

The Giants Pass Attempts


Last season the Giants attempted a pass 598 times which placed them as the 8th most in the league! For reference the Panthers who I wrote about in the Kelvin Benjamin article were only 20th in the league last season. 169 of the Giants attempts went to target hog Odell Beckham, 105 to Sterling Shepard, 113 to tight ends, 110 towards running backs, 72 to Victor Cruz, and the other 26 going to "Sir not appearing in this article" aka misc.

The large amount of attempts can be explained by the simple fact that the Giants run game couldn't even win a game of Red Rover last season. They averaged a paltry 3.5 yards per carry which forced the Giants to be a pass first ask questions later team. This can be attributed to the fact that the Giants gave the bulk of their carries to a rather washed up looking Rashad Jennings.

Paul Perkins should be the lead back now, and while I like him I can't help but feel this isn't an awe inspiring backfield. Why am I talking about rushing when the point of this article is about pass attempts? To justify to you that the Giants should and will be a team that still passes the ball a lot this coming season.

In fact, since Ben McAdoo joined the Giants in 2014, the Giants least amount of pass attempts were the 598 they attempted last season. We can expect that the McAdoo lead Giants will be chucking the ball over the place. Any time there is a history of a team that throws the ball a ton you should be pushing people out of your way Black Friday style to draft those players for your fantasy team.

2017 predictions


Taking a look at 2017, I'm going to use 600 pass attempts as the baseline for what I expect. So how will the targets break down? Despite fans ranting about Odell sitting out of the OTAS, he's their star receiver. He's going to have his cake and get fed at least 150 targets too.

The Giants signed Marshall to be the guy to take some pressure off Odell on the outside. There is some talk about how he might eat into Odell's work, but I just don't see it. Regardless, they didn't bring him a former star receiver to not throw him the ball.  He should be good for at least 115 targets.

The Giants like tight ends and they don't care who knows. The 92 targets to the uninspiring combination of Tye and Donnell confirms this is a team that is looking to throw to the guy over the middle regardless of whether they have talent at the position damnit!  Taking Engram who is known as a better receiving tight end than blocker should do nothing to change that. Despite the signing of Engram, I'm still going to peg tight ends for around 100 targets as a group.

Shane Vereen was injured last season, and that goes a long way in explaining why he only saw 19 targets. You might think he is a threat to eat into some of the work of the rest of the offense, but I see Perkins coming out on third down and Vereen being used primarily in that role as long as he is healthy. 85 targets seems about appropriate for what I'd expect the Giants running backs this season as well.

Conclusion


Those of you keeping score at home might have noticed what I predicted for Brandon Marshall is more targets than Sterling Shepard saw last year. However, because I can talk about the Giants offense for days you may have lost track of something pretty important. If you bother doing the math I've only mentioned 450 targets of the 600 I've predicted.

So that leaves 150 targets. Do I expect all of those to go to Sterling Shepard? No. Odell's target have risen each year and the 150 I gave him is actually on the low end of the spectrum. Marshall could get more targets than I expected as well. Same with the tight ends and the running backs.

Shepard's eight touchdowns as a rookie were very impressive but there is reason to be concerned. At 5'10 he isn't exactly the typical red zone threat you'd expect. This is where Brandon Marshall, and more specifically Evan Engram hurt his stock the most.

Sounds pretty bad right? Maybe you should sell Shepard faster than that Beanie Baby you found in your attic that is actually worth something. Not so fast! Last season the Giants ran the most 3WR sets (92% of the time) despite having an inexperienced Shepard and a no longer good Cruz on the team. The signing of Brandon Marshall should mean this trend continues.

 This means that even though Marshall and Odell are getting a large amount of the targets, I'm actually predicting an increase for Shepard in looks coming his way. I'm going to say that he says 110 targets this coming year. Additionally, for dynasty purposes the Giants can move on from Brandon Marshall after this season while losing only $1 million but saving $5.5 million in against the cap next season.

So what can Sterling Shepard do on 110 targets? I believe he will put up a line of 75-825-6. That calls for improvement in his catch rate and his yards per rec, which I believe he can easily do in his sophomore season based on his college production.

According to May 2017 DLF ADP, Shepard is going after the likes of Willie Snead, Jordan Matthews, Randall Cobb, and Josh Docton. The only one of these I can make case for taking Shepard over is Willie Snead and I still wouldn't convince myself. It's a buyers market folks. Go buy Sterling Shepard before people realize he was the incredibly rare Princess Diana Beanie Baby the whole time.




Until next time,
Rek
@RekedFantasy









Posted by at
Labels:

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)