Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
There aren’t many dividing lines in the NFL season, but the bye week is a (the?) big one. It’s hard to make adjustments at any time during the season. There’s a lot going on. But at least over the bye, teams can sit back and really address their situations, and players can get a break.
Generally speaking, even the bye week doesn’t matter that much. But for a handful of players every year, their fantasy football performances change a lot from before the bye to after. Does it mean a lot? Does it mean nothing? These are the players whose performances shifted the most from before the bye to after in 2022, and what that might mean for 2023.
Players needed at least four games on each side of the bye to qualify.
2022 Fantasy Football Post-Bye Risers
Isiah Pacheco, RB, Kansas City Chiefs
PPR points per game before the bye: 4.0
PPR points per game after the bye: 10.7
Increase: +166.3%
To be fair, Isiah Pacheco’s rise somewhat coincided with the disappearance of Clyde Edwards-Helaire as much as it did with the Chiefs’ bye week. But Edwards-Helaire didn’t hit IR until after Week 11, while Pacheco’s rise very clearly started before that. Pacheco didn’t reach 20 offensive snaps in a game even once before the Week 8 bye, but he never played fewer than 20 after (10.6 snaps per game before, 27.7 after). His touches followed that trend as well — 5.7 touches per game before the bye, 14.2 after. With Jerick McKinnon still a free agent, Pacheco shouldn’t have big competition for work in 2023. Expect post-bye Pacheco to be more representative of his 2023 value.
Kalif Raymond, WR, Detroit Lions
PPR points per game before the bye: 3.2
PPR points per game after the bye: 8.4
Increase: +160.9%
This one’s much easier to chalk up to the presence or lack thereof of DJ Chark than to any grand bye-week maneuvering. Kalif Raymond averaged 24.2 snaps per game before the bye compared to 36.2 after, but he averaged 22.2 snaps when Chark played at least 10 snaps versus 51.8 when Chark didn’t. Chark is gone now, but with Jameson Williams now fully healthy, we can expect Raymond to battle with the newly returned Marvin Jones for the Lions’ WR3 role at best, so expect more of those pre-bye numbers in 2023.
Richie James, WR, New York Giants
PPR points per game before the bye: 4.2
PPR points per game after the bye: 11.0
Increase: +159.8%
The difference here is actually even more stark than it appears — Richie James was technically active for Weeks 10 and 18 but played zero snaps in either, the former because of a concussion and the latter as the Giants geared up for the playoffs. Remove those games, where no one would have used him in fantasy anyway, and his post-bye PPG is actually 14.1, a 234.1% increase. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Giants signed about a dozen different receivers this offseason, and none of them is named Richie James, who remains a free agent. It was a good run. We’re unlikely to see it again.
Cam Akers, RB, Los Angeles Rams
PPR points per game before the bye: 4.6
PPR points per game after the bye: 11.8
Increase: +158.5%
Cam Akers was a popular breakout pick, then he played poorly, then he was sure to be traded or cut, then he wasn’t, then he started, then he was a star (RB2 over the last three weeks of the season), and now he’s a popular breakout pick for 2023. What a ride. Do you believe Akers will thrive as one of only a couple weapons in a lackluster Rams offense? Or do you believe the team’s general slide will hold him back?
Jerick McKinnon, RB, Kansas City Chiefs
PPR points per game before the bye: 6.1
PPR points per game after the bye: 15.4
Increase: +153.3%
Like Pacheco above, Jerick McKinnon’s rise aligned nicely with Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s slide. It also notably aligned much more with a ridiculous streak of scoring luck (1 touchdown through Week 12, then 9 over the final six games) than it did with any sort of playing time increase (28.6 snaps per game before the bye, 33.5 after). And with McKinnon turning 31 in May and currently unsigned, let’s just remember the good times.
2022 Fantasy Football Post-Bye Fallers
Josh Reynolds, WR, Detroit Lions
PPR points per game before the bye: 13.7
PPR points per game after the bye: 3.9
Decrease: -71.3%
Josh Reynolds was actually playing a lot early in the year, averaging 54.0 snaps per game through Week 8 (which included two games after the Lions’ bye). A back injury cost him Weeks 9-11 and most of Week 12, and after the injury he played 39.8 snaps per game. The team dropped him from 7.0 targets per game before his injury to 2.4 after. His best-case scenario is battling Kalif Raymond and Marvin Jones for snaps in 2023, and pencil me in for lower than that.
Michael Carter, RB, New York Jets
PPR points per game before the bye: 10.6
PPR points per game after the bye: 4.3
Decrease: -59.1%
It would have made sense for Michael Carter to pop up in the risers part of this, considering Breece Hall’s torn ACL happened only two weeks before the Jets’ bye — you might have expected Carter’s work and, consequently, his fantasy output to increase with the starting back out. Instead, he fell victim to the Jets’ overall offensive ineffectiveness, as the team averaged 21.8 points per game before the bye but only 12.5 after, including 15 total points over the last three weeks. Carter couldn’t do much when the team couldn’t do much. Maybe Carter starts strong in 2023 while Hall works back into shape, but his full-season outlook isn’t great.
Marquise Brown, WR, Arizona Cardinals
PPR points per game before the bye: 17.2
PPR points per game after the bye: 7.2
Decrease: -58.2%
Marquise Brown spent a chunk of the middle of the season on IR. That span (Weeks 7-11) also marked the point that the Cardinals went from a team that had DeAndre Hopkins on IR to a team that had DeAndre Hopkins on the field. That also almost coincided with when Kyler Murray tore his ACL (he got hurt early in Week 14, the first game after the bye). And it also marked when Zach Ertz was lost for the year (his last game was Week 10). So there are a lot of confounding variables to Brown’s season. But this much is true — after 10.7 targets, 7.2 receptions, 80.8 yards and 0.5 touchdowns per game before the bye/his injury, Brown averaged only 7.2, 4.0, 37.3 and 0.0, respectively, after. The Cardinals are a big mess for 2023, with Murray down for some of the year and Hopkins possibly out of town, so don’t count on a huge rebound from Brown.
Kareem Hunt, RB, Cleveland Browns
PPR points per game before the bye: 10.7
PPR points per game after the bye: 4.5
Decrease: -56.6%
Before the Browns’ Week 9 bye last year, Kareem Hunt was something of a disappointment. He had put up 23.0 PPR points in Week 1 but had only cracked double-digits twice after that and was 24th in RB fantasy scoring. It was underwhelming but not disastrous. After the bye? The Browns basically forgot about him. He never cracked double-digit points again, coming in as RB49 in Weeks 10-18. After 33.5 snaps per game before the bye, he averaged 24.9 after. Hunt is still a free agent, so his landing spot (assuming he finds one) will matter far more for his fantasy outlook than his pre-/post-bye numbers, but things are trending down.
Gabe Davis, WR, Buffalo Bills
PPR points per game before the bye: 15.3
PPR points per game after the bye: 9.5
Decrease: -37.6%
I took small liberties here, because there were two qualifying players who had bigger drops than Gabe Davis for the fifth spot in our list, but they had easily explained drops (Alec Pierce was part of a Colts offense that disappeared, while Jacoby Brissett lost his job to Deshaun Watson but still played a snap or two a game). That gets us to Gabe Davis, who opened the year looking like he’d follow through on his preseason breakout buzz, sitting at WR15 in points per game before the bye, with games of 32.1, 18.8 and 16.4 PPR points. He was a big disappointment the rest of the way, though, with only one game of 70-plus yards the rest of the season. And with the Bills already bringing in Deonte Harty this offseason and rumored to be sniffing around DeAndre Hopkins, the Gabe Davis breakout might be one that never quite actually arrives.
