I’d say it was a pretty good week for the first ever Pressure Picks article in Week 1.
- Michael Gallup (article cover boy) – 7/156/0 including catches of 36, 23, and 62 yards
- DeSean Jackson – 8/154/2 including touchdown bombs of 51 and 53 yards
- Travis Kelce – 3/88/0 with a TD called back to penalty and a hilarious no-look miss by Mahomes to a wide open Kelce in the end zone which he later apologized on Twitter for.
- Julio Jones – 6/31/1 on 68% of offensive snaps …moving on.
Over the past decade, the average passer rating for a QB in a clean pocket is 98.5. For a quarterback that is under pressure, that rating drops to 73.3. That’s about a 25% drop in passer rating. To put that in perspective, Tom Brady owns a career passer rating of 97.6, while most seasons, a 73.3 passer rating would rank in the bottom 3 for all starting QBs. Once pressure hits the pocket, the plan for that particular play often times goes down the drain.
Here are Week 2’s Pressure Picks
Mecole Hardman
Last week, Mahomes had completions with yardage of 68, 42, 21, 49, 41 and 22. Those were all exclusively to Kelce and Watkins… and all of those were only in the FIRST HALF. The two inexperienced Jaguars starting Safeties were making career starts #9 and #3 and were seen in plenty of highlights chasing after Kelce and Watkins all day (yes, that means you should consider DHop and Fuller this week)
This week, Mahomes gets to dial it up against a Raiders team on short rest coming off a big home opener win in primetime against a divisional opponent in Denver. Mahomes will once again get to face a team feeling weak over the top of their defense at Safety since Oakland lost their star in the making 1st round safety Jonathan Abrams to the IR last week. Oakland will start 27 year old UDFA Curtis Riley with 16 career starts under his belt and owner of a horrible 58.1 PFF grade last year for the Giants.
On to the pressing aspect of the matchup given the subject matter of this article. Mahomes will simply have all day to pass. Oakland was historically bad last year at creating pressure and made no notable offseason moves to improve it outside of their #4 overall draft pick in DE Clelin Ferrell.
Watkins of course is a great play in this matchup but – 1. It’s chasing points after an outlier career game and 2. Sammy experienced a massive price increase. I’m going to push myself to have the courage to take the huge discount and play 1st rd 4.33 speed demon Mecole Hardman instead. The dude was ELECTRIC in camp and preseason catching bombs and taking shotgun shovel passes and jet sweeps to the house. There’s also plenty of awesome one handed OBJ-like warm-up catch videos to watch on Twitter to get in the mood on Sunday before lineups lock. Yes he’s a rookie. Yes he did nothing last week even after Tyreek went down. I’m still playing him.
I also like Oakland to put up some points and keep Mahomes passing. Jaguars 6th round Rookie Gardner Minshew had to unexpectedly come into the game last week and started out a perfect 8/8 with his first 5 completions gaining 8, 20, 4, 11, and 69 yards against this KC Defense.
John Brown
I’ve never been a John Brown fan. His one-dimensional route tree and boy-like sized 8” hands never excited me. (Yes, hand size matters. 5 of the top 6 priced WRs on DraftKings are members of the exclusive 10” hand club. Not surprising at all to me.) I’m beginning to change my mind due to Brown’s expanding route tree and near-perfect match with his new cannon-arm QB Josh Allen. Last week against a stingy Jets D on the road, Brown had catches of 13, 9, 15, 28, 11, 14, and 38 yards (game winning TD bomb). In a similar situation to last week’s cover boy Michael Gallup (albeit without the type of O-line the Cowboys have), the Bills should not face much pressure at all from the Giants poor pass rush. If he’s likely to continue to connect on some bombs with Allen along with these types of shorter completions, I need to start playing him. I’ll be pairing him with Allen in one of my main GPP lineups this week.
JuJu Smith-Schuster
I love fading recency bias. Everyone saw PIT get destroyed by NE in primetime. I’m not sure many teams are beating Bill Belichick in Foxboro when he has nearly 5 months to scheme starting in early April when schedules are released.
Most people wouldn’t guess that of all QBs last year, Ben Roethlisberger led the NFL in attempts, completions and yards. We also know the large sample size of favorable home/road splits that Big Ben has. I love him at home this week behind his Top-3 O-line for pass protection against a Seattle team coming cross-country for a 1:00 ET game. The additions of Clowney and Ziggy Ansah (Questionable) helps Seattle’s pass rush but Pittsburgh’s O-line combined with Seattles horrible secondary gives me enough reason to play JuJu this week. JuJu is also no stranger to the big play…he is the owner of the NFL’s longest reception in two straight seasons (grabbing a 97 yard reception in both 2017 and 2018).
Oh…and not to bury the lead, but on the road for Seattle’s home opener, Andy Dalton produced a line of…wait for it…418 yards 2 TDs 0 INT.
Larry Fitzgerald
Old dog, new tricks?? Sort of. This new fast paced Kliff Kingsbury offense (1st in pace for week 1) along with a QB who can still make good throws while scrambling bodes well for Fitz. His 8 catches, 13 targets and 156 air yards in Week 1 led the team in all 3 categories. With Baltimore’s top CB Jimmy Smith out for multiple weeks now, and the 2 remaining starting CBs missing practice Wednesday, Fitz could be in for a better matchup than originally expected.
