Week 2 Care/Don’t Care: Fantasy football managers should stay away from the Bears for now – MASHAHER

5 things I care about

The Bears offense has serious issues

The environment Caleb Williams was walking into this season with the Chicago Bears was frequently lauded this offseason. Some even said it was the best situation we’ve ever seen for a quarterback taken No. 1 overall. I certainly felt that way about the top three wide receivers, but there are questions elsewhere. Through two games, the answers to those questions look anything but pretty.

Chicago looked like one of the most dysfunctional offenses in the league on Sunday night.

Let’s start with Williams himself. He looks like an overwhelmed rookie quarterback. No matter how much you liked him as a prospect that should be the expectation for any first-year passer. On a night where he shared the field with C.J. Stroud, it should have served as a perfect reminder that what we got from Stroud is not normal. The play we’ve seen from Williams through two games is more similar to what rookies typically give us. When you get a strong performance from a rookie quarterback, it’s usually because the ecosystem is doing some heavy lifting to elevate him. Bobby Slowik and co. helped do that early on for Stroud in Houston.

That’s not what’s happening in Chicago.

For the second straight week, the Bears had absolutely no answers to pressure. Because of all the excitement about the top three receivers, the issues on the interior offensive line were severely under-discussed. That unit has been a deadweight on this attack through two games. Watching that group go against a DeMeco Ryans-coached defensive front was nothing short of shocking. Per Next Gen Stats, the Texans blitzed the Bears on 42% of Williams’ dropbacks, which was their highest blitz rate over the last two seasons. Williams amassed 15 yards on those plays and took five sacks. Overall through two games, Williams has a 3.7 yards per attempt, three picks and nine sacks when under pressure.

That also comes back to the coordinator. I’ll discuss the Seahawks’ offense later on in the piece, and it was striking what it feels like to weigh those two units against each other right now. Shane Waldron’s 2023 offenses completely lacked any solution to problems brought on by pressure. His 2024 Bears feel the exact same way. The fact that a rookie quarterback is operating it, not a seasoned veteran who is great in muddy pockets like Geno Smith is making cracks in the dam turn into full-on floods.

Much of the excitement of this Bears’ offense did start with the receiver trio. We’re two games in and that’s just not working out. Keenan Allen didn’t play in this game because of preexisting injuries. Rookie Rome Odunze, for some reason, played every snap in this game despite coming into this week with what looked like a multi-week knee injury. I’m not even sure why he’s out there. DJ Moore is the only established great player on this offense and there seems to be no concerted effort to get him layup routes or designed targets. Moore is one of the better receivers with the ball in his hands and can line up at any spot.

Instead of taking advantage of that, we’re getting designed looks for DeAndre Carter and several snaps for Gerald Everett. If it feels like you’ve seen this story before, it’s because you have, as someone pointed out to me on Sunday night:

The Bears have a ton of role players that fantasy football managers have heard of on their roster. They have a severe shortage of players who are actually needle-movers. Some of those guys you’ve heard of are closer to net-negatives than helping the picture. Meanwhile, you have a coordinator who can’t seem to prioritize where the ball needs to go and a rookie quarterback sinking under the weight of this crumbling building.

No one is giving up on Caleb Williams. He can and likely will develop as he gets more valuable game reps. There is some real talent on this roster, and once/if guys like Odunze and Allen get healthier over the next month or so, this passing game could have some exciting moments. Until we see that happen on the field, we need to dial back the dramatically overinflated expectations for this offense that have been propagated throughout both the fantasy football and NFL worlds. Even if those receivers get healthy, the first two weeks have me hesitant about whether the protection, the design and the ecosystem will ever be good enough to reach consistently high levels this season.

We are firmly in “see it to believe it” territory with the Bears offense.

The New Orleans Saints offense

It was fair to exhibit some patience before overly praising the Saints’ offense after their Week 1 demolition of the unserious Panthers. While I came away from Week 2 with a lot of questions about Mike Zimmer’s defense — it looked like he didn’t even prep for any of the wrinkles New Orleans showed in Week 1 — there’s no question this performance carried much more legitimacy for the Saints.

The Saints put a hurting on the Cowboys’ defense from the first whistle of the game. The best part is that it looked just like last week despite the upgrade in the opponent. Derek Carr pushed the ball down the field, the play-makers got into space and the running game was efficient. Results aside, the stark differences between the Saints offense under Pete Carmichael and what Klint Kubiak showed us last week were still present.

According to Next Gen Stats, the Saints offense mainly was an under-center unit in Week 2 (75%) and used motion on 74% of its plays. It averaged 9.5 yards per play and had a 61.5% success rate when using motion. Carr used play-action on 59% of his dropbacks, the highest rate of any game in his last nine seasons. All of this is a sharp left turn from last season when the Saints were dead last in motion and play-action usage.

These wrinkles have done three key things for the Saints’ offense. Most importantly, it’s helping to hide a questionable offensive line. Whatever you want to say from a coverage standpoint, the Cowboys have a ferocious pass rush. Carr was sacked just once and pressured only six times. Next Gen Stats noted that Micah Parson’s “average get-off time of 0.99 seconds was the fifth-slowest of his career.” Everything New Orleans is throwing at you from a presnap and formation standpoint is keeping defensive players off-balance.

Play-action and motion are quarterback elevators. Carr has been much maligned the previous two seasons, but he’s not a bottom-five player at the position. He was just getting zero help from the system in 2023. He can be an above-average facilitator when the picture is clean, as it is in this offense. When the protection is solid, as it has been through two weeks because of this design, Carr becomes more comfortable showing off his arm talent to push it downfield.

Lastly, the motion and play-action have revealed just how electric some of the receiving talent is in New Orleans. We know Chris Olave is a great receiver. He got into the action today with 81 yards on a team-high six targets, including some catch-and-run plays that weren’t assigned to him in his first two seasons. Those will only improve his fantasy outlook as they continue to roll on. Yet, it’s been Rashid Shaheed who has been a revelation through two games. Shaheed has shown on film he’s one of the more underrated over-the-middle intermediate and deep separators in the game.

Shaheed’s been weaponized with motion and play-action concepts in this offense. He dropped another deep hammer in Week 2 and I don’t see him stopping momentum any time soon. When game-scripts call for it, I think he’ll be able to handle high volume as well.

I’m willing to buy all of this as stable because this is what I expected to see out of the passing game once Kubiak took over. The efficiency will come down at some point but this unit will outkick modest expectations in 2024.

The running game is the one area that’s taken me by surprise in this offense. I was a little more skeptical about how that part of the unit would come together in the Kubiak/Shanahan offense, but it was excellent once again. Alvin Kamara scored four touchdowns today including one through the air on a screen, but it’s been the efficiency that’s impressed me. Kamara handled 20 rushes and averaged 5.8 yards per carry with a long run of 15. Even Jamaal Williams and Taysom Hill chipped in with 5.5 yards per carry. Kamara will way outkick his fantasy ADP if this deployment and effectiveness keeps up.

Every year there ends up being a value offense in fantasy football that provides a ton of discounted players. Usually it goes overlooked because of fatigue of a quarterback or the industry’s willingness to ignore or misunderstand the influence of a new play-caller.

So far, it looks like the Saints could be that team.

Kevin O’Connell

I’ll admit to being highly skeptical prior to this season about the Vikings’ outlook. I’ll likely remain weary of in-season regression from Sam Darnold and the trap-door feeling for at least the next month-plus. That said, through two weeks, you couldn’t ask for a better proof of concept from this coaching staff and they showed all the reasons why in an upset win over the 49ers.

My worries about the Vikings’ outlook were unrelated to how I view Kevin O’Connell as a coach. The Minnesota play-caller is one of the best in the business and does so many little things that just outright make sense. O’Connell has gone out of his way since he arrived as the head coach to make Justin Jefferson the layup read and answer to pressure for his quarterbacks, even with Jefferson missing some time in this game.

According to Next Gen Stats, Darnold smoked the 49ers’ infrequent blitz attempts in this game for 126 yards and a touchdown, including his long heave to Jefferson. We see so many offenses struggle to give quarterbacks answers to pressure and O’Connell has been one of the best at doing it. While I remain a little suspicious of Darnold’s ability to offer above-average quarterback play for 17 games, there’s no question that this offense has set him up to find the right solutions.

It’s a huge credit to O’Connell that the offense has looked this successful through two weeks despite all four of its best skill-position players missing some time. Tight end T.J. Hockenson remains on the PUP, Jordan Addison didn’t play in this game and both Jefferson and RB1 Aaron Jones missed time in Week 2 with injuries that don’t appear to be long-term issues. Despite that, Jalen Nailor has been activated as the slot receiver and Ty Chandler averaged 8.2 yards per carry. That’s the mark of an excellent offensive ecosystem.

Finally, it would be irresponsible to examine the Vikings’ 2-0 start without discussing one of O’Connell’s best moves of his coaching tenure: hiring Brian Flores as the defensive coordinator.

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So many head coaches stick with a bad hire for far too long, but O’Connell was quick to move on from Ed Donatell after just one miserable defensive season in which the team won 13 games and quickly pursued Flores. The former Dolphins head coach has been one of the best defensive play-callers in the league over the last two seasons. Last year, he put some bad quarterbacks in the blender with his unique mix of coverage and pressure packages. That continued in Week 1 against Daniel Jones but Week 2 really showed his worth.

Flores blitzed Brock Purdy on almost half of his dropbacks (46%) per Next Gen Stats, after blitzing Daniel Jones on fewer than a quarter last week. The usually efficient Purdy averaged 6.1 yards per attempt against the blitz and ate four sacks. Now that the Vikings defense has received a boost in talent — especially at the edge rusher position with Dallas Turner and Jonathan Greenard — this is a defense opposing offenses and fantasy players need to fear.

The Vikings have been one of the most impressive operations through two weeks. Much of the credit has to come back to O’Connell, who has built an extraordinary operation in Minnesota. This will be one of the most fascinating teams to watch going forward.

The Seahawks’ passing game

The Seahawks have played two strong pass defenses through two weeks and since they’re breaking in a new coordinator, it was fair to temper expectations to start the year. Despite playing a good unit on the road in New England, Seattle’s aerial attack looked every bit like a talented unit that got a boost in route concepts with the hiring of Ryan Grubb.

The biggest issue in Seattle’s passing game revolved around pass protection and the lack of cohesion from a route design standpoint. Through two weeks, that doesn’t appear to be as much of a problem for the 2024 Seahawks. The protection still has some leaks up front, but Grubb’s offense has far more layups.

According to Next Gen Stats, Geno Smith completed 28 of 31 pass attempts that traveled fewer than 10 yards in the air. His 52.1% success rate shows that it wasn’t just dink-and-dunk football but rather an efficient outing that kept the offense moving. That led to a historic day for the Seahawks’ top two receivers.

DK Metcalf and Jaxon Smith-Njigba combined for over 76% of the team air yards in Week 2. Tyler Lockett is a declining player but he can still pop up for clutch catches when needed. It’s clear, however, that the former two are Seattle’s top wideouts.

Metcalf averaged over five yards after the catch per reception against New England, while we got the best JSN usage of his young career. He was excellent in the short to intermediate range running actual routes. He’s a strong separator against man and zone coverage and is the perfect safety blanket receiver. The more games he pushes for double-digit catches, the better the Seahawks offense will be this season.

The Seahawks haven’t played in games that have received much national attention. Overall, I still feel like most are sleeping on this passing game. Smith and his top two receivers are in a solid position to continue to ascend, especially once the matchups get a bit easier as the season rolls on.

Some concerns on the Chiefs offense

I’m never doing “Chiefs panic” again after last season. In no way am I writing off this unit overall. Especially since, for everything I am about to write in this section, they are coming off a big win against an AFC rival, which is precisely what they did in Week 1. However, it’s worth noting that through two games, there are some cracks in the armor, especially in the area where the Chiefs wanted to see a big jump.

All the talk this offseason was that the Chiefs wanted to get back to pushing the ball down the field. Through two games, and especially with the result in Week 2, it’s fair to say that there is a long way to go until Kansas City is a deep-shot offense.

The biggest issue starts up front, where rookie left tackle Kingsley Suamataia endured a nightmare game against Trey Hendrickson. The Bengals’ edge rusher amassed four pressures on 20 pass rushes against the rookie tackle, per Next Gen Stats, before he was benched in the fourth quarter. Three of Hendrickson’s pressures came in under 2.3 seconds. Suamataia was also called for two penalties. You’re not pushing the ball downfield with that play on the blindside.

In the receiver room, some of the same issues are still present from last year’s group.

The loss of Marquise Brown to IR this week was generally met with hand-waving in the fantasy community because of Xavier Worthy’s performance. While Brown isn’t a superstar player, he’s a strong separator as an outside receiver on the intermediate and deep in-breaking routes Patrick Mahomes wanted back in the offense this year. Worthy scored two touchdowns in Week 1 and is a coverage-dictator who opens things up underneath — but he’s not that guy yet.

Even when he was a super productive player in college, Worthy didn’t win against tight coverage as a boundary receiver. Anyone saying he’s the next Tyreek Hill has not watched Worthy play and is simply hyper-focused on one trait. You saw some of these flaws on the play where Bengals corner Cam Taylor-Britt, who had some harsh words for Worthy this week, produced a highlight-reel interception:

At some point this year, maybe the Chiefs offense gets into a groove and they begin hitting deep shots. As it stands right now, this attack has a little bit of the small-ball feel of the 2023 unit with some better players at receiver. For some of those flaws and his youth, Worthy is an upgrade and Rashee Rice continues to look like an ascending player, even if he primarily wins on shorter patterns. Kansas City will be a good offense this season but injuries to Brown and now Isiah Pacheco, along with youth at critical positions, could hold them back from some of the high-ceiling projections we hoped they could hit.

5 things I don’t care about

Buccaneers skepticism

As Football 301 listeners know, despite being excited about the additions the Falcons made — not so much after Week 1 — I picked the Buccaneers to win the division. I felt that the established players on the roster along with enough young building blocks were enough of a needle-mover to push this team to at least the same heights that we saw in 2023. Despite that, the Falcons were the heavy favorite to win this division. That never made sense to me.

A Week 1 win over Washington is one thing; to go into Detroit and take down the Lions is a far more impressive feat.

The Bucs offense under Liam Coen continues to impress. Not only is he pushing the buttons we want to see from smart offensive coordinators, but you can also tell he has a good feel for how Baker Mayfield wants to play. Mayfield has thrown for 100-plus yards to receivers lined up in the slot in back-to-back games. However, most of those plays aren’t going over the middle of the field. Mayfield has always been more comfortable pushing the ball deep and intermediate outside the numbers. Guys like Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan are better working from the slot, and the routes in this offense have been designed to get those guys on out-breakers when lined up inside. It’s been an ideal marriage.

Tampa Bay’s offense isn’t perfect, but the concepts and approach make sense for the players on the roster, at least in the passing game. The rushing offense remains ineffective. Then again, we must recalibrate our expectations for the Lions defense. The front line looks like an imposing group. Overall, Detroit is a stop unit on the rise. So going there and putting up a competent-to-good performance is notable.

From a fantasy football perspective, you have to love how concentrated the offense is right now. Only five players drew a target from Baker Mayfield. Only Godwin and Mike Evans cleared two looks. With that type of clarity in the distribution, these two Tampa Bay receivers will push for top-20 fantasy status every week.

The Packers’ passing game

I don’t write this header to discredit what Malik Willis did on Sunday. On the contrary, I thought Willis comported himself well, considering he was thrown into the starting gig for a team he joined less than a month ago. Willis averaged a 2.39-second time to throw, per Next Gen Stats, which is almost a second faster than his career average of 3.24 seconds. He managed the game well and got the ball out well on short passes.

Willis did his job but the Packers won this game on the back of an outrageous run game.

The Colts defense was pushed around up front by the Texans in Week 1, which defensive coordinator Gus Bradley said was because they were playing coverage against the Houston receiver trio. Not sure what the excuse was in this game with a backup quarterback under center. Green Bay amassed 261 net yards rushing and set the tempo from the first whistle.

Everyone got in on the action — including wideout Jayden Reed with 37 yards on the ground — but Josh Jacobs was the main man with a whopping 32 carries.

There was some confusion as to why the Packers were seemingly so eager to swap out the clearly still-effective Aaron Jones for Jacobs this offseason. In this game, you saw part of why they made the move. For one, Jacobs can handle extremely high carry counts. Jones is an explosive lead back, but under no circumstances do you want him to crack 20 carries in a game often, much less push north of 30. Additionally, because Jacobs is such an effective gap scheme runner, the Packers can vary up their concepts more than in previous years. You saw that in Week 2 as they threw the kitchen sink at Indianapolis.

As long as Jordan Love is out, we won’t get the complete picture of what the Packers’ passing game can be with all those talented wide receivers. We’ll get some tastes, like Dontayvion Wicks’ sweet out-breaking route touchdown catch, Romeo Doubs’ tight coverage deep reception and Reed’s explosive runs.

But that will be all we get. While Willis is under center, the Packers have a run-based formula that can win them games.

The Bengals’ loss

I’m certainly not here to tell you that all is well in Cincinnati. There are still clear issues on both sides of the ball and the offense is not firing on all cylinders. And yet, despite the loss in Week 2, I come out of the Bengals’ game against the Chiefs feeling quite a bit better about the offense after the nightmare we observed against New England last week.

The Chiefs were able to disrupt the Bengals offense by sending extra rushers. When they didn’t provide additional pass rushers, Joe Burrow was able to sit in a comfortable pocket and pick his spots. The most encouraging part of this attack in Week 2 was the contributions from the ancillary players.

Next Gen Stats notes that Trent McDuffie covered Ja’Marr Chase on 45% of his routes and allowed just one catch for four yards. The Bengals also used more motion (70.5%) than any other game during Zac Taylor’s tenure. They averaged 2.9 yards per play on plays without motion. Chase drawing the extra attention and using some eye candy to open things up allowed players beyond the big names to make big contributions.

Intriguing second-year receiver Andre Iosivas snagged two touchdowns on four targets. One of his touchdowns came on a gorgeous route in single coverage and the other called for him to make a toe-tapping reception.

Iosivas is clearly talented and shows separation skills. The fact that they can trust him to line up outside and win on his routes is enormous. This allows them to move Chase around and get him into the slot. This will lead to massive games soon enough.

Motion plays opened up a ton of space on horizontal-breaking routes that freed up Mike Gesicki, who led the team in targets and receiving yards. Rookie wideout Jermaine Burton got on the field in this game and, on a play where there was a ton of coverage shared to Chase’s side, shook free of a cornerback on an ISO go route.

The Bengals’ offense is still finding its footing. They don’t have Tee Higgins in the fold, and who knows when he’ll be 100% healthy. Burrow’s contributions from guys beyond Chase in this game weren’t enough to win, which is frustrating, but it should signal some better days coming down the line.

Slowing the steam on J.K. Dobbins

One of the most fantastic stories through two weeks of NFL action has been J.K. Dobbins ripping off chunk runs to emerge as a top-five rusher. Dobbins is averaging over 7.0 yards per carry through the first couple of games and trails only Josh Jacobs and Brian Robinson Jr. in rush yards.

The fantasy community was confident that the Chargers would be an extremely run-heavy team in 2024 given the ADPs for Justin Herbert and all of his pass-catchers. Yet, no one was bullish on a Chargers back because of the uncertainty. Dobbins, in particular, was difficult to get a read on because of the devastating injuries he was coming off. It’s worth noting that almost all of the buzz on him was promising this summer, but there was an overall conservative approach to his fantasy projection.

We must put that in the past and not hold it against Dobbins going forward this season.

There are some holes in his overall fantasy resume. He’s unlikely to ice out other backs in the room completely. Gus Edwards led the team in carries with 18 against the Panthers. Dobbins also won’t have a massive role in the passing game. He drew just one target in this contest and while he led the backfield in routes in Week 1, it resulted in just three looks.

That’s all fine. Dobbins may not be an RB1 in fantasy football but he looks like an absolute steal this season and an excellent answer to the Chargers’ long-time run game issues. Dobbins is the first Chargers back to go over 100 yards in back-to-back games since Melvin Gordon in 2018. Los Angeles has a great ecosystem for a running back to thrive with a quickly developing offensive line — they ran behind Rashawn Slater and Zion Johnson on the left side for 30 of 44 runs on Sunday, per Next Gen Stats — and a coaching staff committed to this identity.

There’s no need to slow the steam down on the Dobbins train, as he’s the guy who looks prime to take advantage of this environment.