How blitzes impact the target rate for fantasy TEs and pass-catching RBs

Football is wonderful because it is like chess. When one team takes a certain strategy, it impacts the decisions of every player in their assignments, movements, and decisions. Blitzes are a perfect example. When a defense blitzes the quarterback, he must recognize if and where pressure will come from and decide whether to abbreviate his progression of reads to release the ball more quickly. Running backs and tight ends need to recognize blitzes, as well, and adjust their pass protection assignments and routes accordingly.

When you watch a play, it is easy to identify a strategy like a blitz and all of the reactions that follow, but those subtleties tend to become lost when the game is done and summarized in a box score of yards and touchdowns. They do not need to be. Teams have different tendencies, both with respect to defensive strategies like blitzing and offensive strategies like reacting to blitzes. Once you recognize those tendencies, their impact on player statistics become just as clear as a specific strategy’s visual impact on a play.

Tight ends provide the most compelling evidence of an offense’s strategy for dealing with blitzes. That’s because tight ends tend to fill both seemingly opposed roles of providing extra protection for the quarterback and providing a safe target for a quick throw given the end’s typical advantage in either size or speed over his assigned defender. For fantasy, it is really important to know which of those roles a tight end tends to fill when blitzes come.

Last season, there were five tight ends who saw a marked increase in their target rate against blitzes:

Travis Kelce, Martellus Bennett, Greg Olsen, Jimmy Graham, and Eric Ebron are security blankets for their quarterbacks in the face of pressure. And while fantasy owners may not be able to predict when blitzes will come within a game, they can identify which defensive teams rely more heavily on that strategy. Against those heavy blitzers, Graham and Ebron, for example, can expect greater production. In contrast, Kyle Rudolph and Jack Doyle become less useful fantasy options in those matchups despite having similar or better fantasy expectations in general.

Many of the prototypical receiving backs like Theo Riddick and Darren Sproles see little decline in their target share against blitzes. But that is not universally true. James White, for example, saw a massive 10.1 percent decline in his target share against blitzes.

It seems likely that the individual strengths and weaknesses of a team’s skill-position players impact their strategies. LeSean McCoy is a poor pass protector, and he tends to run routes against blitzes. White didn’t grade any better in pass protection than either Riddick or Sproles, but White did share the field with Bennett, who Tom Brady clearly enjoyed throwing to in the face of blitzes. That example is particularly interesting because Bennett is now on the Packers. Maybe White will start to see more balls in those situations, or maybe Dwayne Allen will fill Bennett’s role. That situation and many others will merit watching during the season.