Statistical Breakdown of a Chip Kelly O and Why Torrey Smith Will Return to Relevance in 2016
Torrey Smith has become a forgotten name in the fantasy world. After a terrible 2015 he is not being given the attention he deserves, especially with three immense changes the 49ers have gone through in the offseason.
Change #1: Hiring Chip Kelly
Think what you want about Chip Kelly as a coach, but in terms of making his players fantasy producers, he is great. The Eagles may have struggled a bit last year, but I think that had more to do with the dysfunctional nature of the whole organization then his coaching.
Everyone knows that Chip loves to play up-tempo, which is a drastic change from last years 49ers. Taking a look at Chips last 3 years as a head coach and the 49ers 2015 stats helps to show the huge differences.
(All data is from NFL.com)
The top row is the last 3 years of the Eagles production as a team under HC Chip Kelly. The bottom left is the 49ers production last year, then to compare these two data sets I used all of the worst #s in each category the last 3 years for the Eagles and compared them to the 49ers in 2015. Looking at this data, a few things popped out at me.
In a Chip Kelly offense the LOWEST amount of yards they had was 970 MORE than what the 49ers had last year.
The Eagles ran 85 more plays than the 49ers, which is almost like playing an extra 1.25 games, depending on the team. Not only did they run more plays, but they averaged an extra 1/3 of a yard per play.
The Eagles passed for 771 yards MORE then the 49ers and they did this with a combination of poor QB play from Bradford and Sanchez.
This was the biggest one for me. The Eagles scored 21 more TD’s than the 49ers. They almost DOUBLED the 49ers TD total. Even in a year where Chip Kelly was touted as a horrible coach and got harassed out of Philly, his team scored 21 more TDS than the 49ers did last year.
Change #2: Vegas
@TheCFX Jon Moore tweeted out an interesting split about Torrey smith in games with higher Vegas totals. While I don’t expect the 49ers to have 15 games with Vegas totals of 46.5+ due to the division they play in, it should definitely be higher than last year.
I think it is also important to look at their potential game flow. Vegas has set the 49ers O/U win total at 5. This means Vegas expects them to lose about 12 games. And what do teams do more often when they are losing? Throw the ball.
Change #3 No more Boldin
Boldin has been the go-to-guy on the 49ers for a long time. He is big, physical and was great for many years. However, the 49ers did not re-sign him in the offseason. I frankly don’t think he was a good fit for the type of offense Chip likes to run. Boldin was targeted 111 times last year and that void will now have to be filled by a different receiver.
Those three changes are huge for the 49ers, and provide for loads of opportunity for someone to step up.
Say hello to Torrey Smith Fantasy community!
Every year that Torrey Smith has had over 90 targets, he has either finished as a WR2/WR3.
He finished at WR28 in 2014, WR22 in 2013, WR29 in 2012 (fantasydata.com), and then had an absolute dud of a year in 2015 finishing outside the top 50 receivers. This is the main reason driving his price down, but looking at historical data from players in this system with similar builds shows he should bounce back.
Past Producers:
Taking a look at some of the previous players in Chip Kelly’s system you can see that Torrey Smith has a very similar build to both Desean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin, except with a better vertical.
Now here is how these similar players performed:
As you can see, both Desean and Maclin were the outside receivers and performed admirably in this system. Chip Kelly does a very good job of creating space for his receivers which is made obvious by their 16.2 and 15.5 Yards/catch. The player who didn’t perform as well, Jordan Matthews, was primarily a slot receiver and struggled with drops.
For fun, at the bottom I averaged all of their stats together to see where that would have made them finish the last 3 years, and that would be WR #14, #11, and #13.
I recently had a conversation on twitter with people arguing how a non-elite WR can’t be productive with a bad QB. Not only is this false, but the three receivers above are proof. They had Nick Foles, Mark Sanchez, and Sam Bradford as their QBS, who are all mediocre at best. I would also consider none of those receivers to be elite. To me, Torrey Smith is of similar caliber to many of them and should be able to thrive off of the system despite average QB play.
So it seems like as long as you are “the-guy” in these Chip Kelly Offenses, you are almost guaranteed to perform. Smiths competition to be “the guy” is a bunch of no-names with little to no NFL production, so locking him into that role is fairly safe. But what’s his ADP right now and how expensive is it to get this bounce back player?
He is now currently being drafted right around where he finished last year: WR54! (FantasyFootballCalculator.com). Drafting him here is buying him at his floor. We witnessed the worst statistical output of his career last year and somehow this price has stuck. However, with these changes the 49ers are experiencing and the history of production, Torrey Smith should return to fantasy relevance again and be an awesome late-round pick.
