On Target, Week 3: Go get Darnell Mooney, more fantasy football pass-catcher analysis

On Target is a periodic feature where we examine a combination of pass-catcher data. Some of the analysis will be tied to common stats and some of it will center around modern metrics.

There are a lot of numbers floating around, so let’s try to see what’s what through two NFL weeks.

Thanks to Pro Football Reference and Fantasy Points for the data used in this article.

Those are half-point PPR ranks, the standard scoring format for Yahoo leagues. What do these three players have in common, in addition to being talented receivers?

They’re all tied to a rookie quarterback.

Obviously, the rookie QBs are works in progress. Caleb Williams, Jayden Daniels and Bo Nix are still looking for their first touchdown pass. The Broncos are 0-2, the Bears should be 0-2 (thanks, Will Levis), and the Commanders are only 1-1 because the Giants are a train wreck, too.

I probably have the most confidence in Sutton justifying his summer ADP because I trust Sean Payton to figure some things out in Denver. Moore and McLaurin don’t offer a similar luxury, as their play-callers are Shane Waldron and Kliff Kingsbury. After watching Waldron mismanage the Seattle offense last year, I’m stunned the Bears hand-picked him to run their 2024 offense. The Commanders have been shockingly vanilla with their deployment of McLaurin, making him easier to defend than he should be.

Cooper’s stat line through two weeks is difficult to accept. He’s been targeted 17 times but has just five catches. It’s strange to see a 29.4% catch rate tied to a veteran player who’s made five Pro Bowl trips.

Cooper is partially at fault, with three drops through two weeks. He only dropped five passes all last year. But Cooper’s also been hurt by Deshaun Watson‘s struggles — just 58.8% of the passes to Cooper have been deemed catchable (per Fantasy Points data), as opposed to 100% of the Elijah Moore targets and 71.4% of the Jerry Jeudy targets.

Like most of you, I have low confidence in Watson. But I trust Cooper, and I trust play designer Kevin Stefanski. Any reasonable buy-low list should have Cooper somewhere on it.

Everything points to Rashid Shaheed being a cheat code

Let’s run through the stats Shaheed currently leads the NFL in:

• Touchdown catches, 2 (tied with several others)

• Yards per target, 18.8

• Punt return average, 20.0 (useful in hybrid formats; we see you, Scott Fish)

About half of NFL teams changed their play-callers in the offseason, and it looks like Klint Kubiak is as much a home run as any hire. Kubiak, son of Gary Kubiak and thus an extended branch on the Mike Shanahan coaching tree, has completely changed the New Orleans offensive strategy. The Saints rarely used play-action and pre-snap motion last year; now they’re using those concepts as much as anyone. It’s helped turn the Saints into the best (and surely the most improved) offense in the league through two weeks.

The Saints are being more creative with Shaheed this year — he had three carries in the Dallas game after seeing just seven all of last year. He’s playing on about two-thirds of the offensive snaps, a role that could definitely increase. And the New Orleans offense has been highly concentrated, with Shaheed, Alvin Kamara and Chris Olave drawing 25 of the 39 targets so far.

I wish I had Shaheed on all of my rosters, and sadly, given his reasonable summer ADP, that was somewhat attainable. He’s fully in the circle of trust moving forward.

Gardner Minshew leads the NFL with a 78.5% completion rate

Obviously, this is a quarterback stat and not a pass-catcher stat, but it’s such a stunning outlier, I had to squeeze it in here. Minshew completed just 48.5% of his passes in the preseason, with most of his action coming against backup defenders and vanilla defenses. I was afraid the Raiders offense had look-out-below potential.

Maybe I underrated Minshew or the boost he would get from the luxury of playing with all of the team’s first-string players. And maybe I underrated the dynamic young-and-old duo of Brock Bowers and Davante Adams, who have both been fantastic.

Bowers strikes me as the player we expected Kyle Pitts to be; he has a chance to break a ton of rookie TE records. And Adams is off to a terrific start, catching 14-of-18 targets and earning 9.4 yards per target — the highest YPT average of his career. And it’s not like the Raiders have played an easy schedule — they opened with the Chargers and Ravens.

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Minshew’s making a lot of his good luck, with 82.4% of his passes graded as “on target” and only 8.8% of his passes judged as “bad.” Those are the highest rates of his career, in both stats. His teammates are also coming through; just one of Minshew’s 71 passes has been dropped.

The Las Vegas schedule is bumpy after the Week 3 date with Carolina, but this passing game should outkick my summer expectations.

Perhaps Mooney let the cat out of the bag Monday at Philadelphia when he scored a snappy 41-yard touchdown and finished with a 3-88-1 line, sparking the upset. However, Mooney also deserves our attention for his route participation rates. He’s currently running a route on 91.5% of Atlanta‘s dropbacks, which is sixth in the NFL. And although Kirk Cousins is still kicking off some rust, at least he played under center in Week 2 and the team welcomed play-action back into the plan.

I’m stunned Mooney is rostered in a modest 21% of Yahoo leagues.

Henry is also coming off a showcase game, a juicy 8-109-0 line against Seattle. But what really excites me is how much the Patriots prioritize Henry. He’s running a route on 86.9% of dropbacks, which is the highest rate among tight ends in the league.

Maybe you trust Daniel Jones, maybe you don’t. But the Giants have made good on their promise to heavily feature Nabers in the passing game. Nabers has a whopping 50% of first-read targets through two weeks, one of just two players who’s over 40% in that stat (Cooper Kupp, now hurt, is at 52.1%).

It’s also worth noting that intriguing sophomore WR Quentin Johnston is third in this stat.