As a part of my personal quest to become the greatest fantasy football player alive, I have spent most of the coronavirus quarantine making projections for every offensive skill-position player in the NFL. Yes, it is a painstaking process, but it pays off.
Let me explain my methodology for creating these projections. First, I assess what a particular offense did in 2019 as a whole, from a thousand-foot view. How many total plays did they run? Of those, how many rushes and how many pass plays were called? How many yards per play did each gain? How many plays per game did they average? It is safe to project a team’s overall numbers in these areas to fall fairly close to those of the previous season, as play-callers are generally consistent in how they call games.
However, a change in coaching staff or in player personnel typically means changes are coming. If a team has a new offensive coaching staff, we must dig into the history of those coaches or play-callers to see what we can discover about how they are likely to mix pass and run plays, or what their pace of play will likely look like. Likewise, if a team signed new players or cut other players, we need to look at what is most likely to happen with the new personnel, based on the history of that particular offense.
Starting broadly, from a team perspective, and then zooming into particular players and what they are likely to do within those overall numbers, is the key to making accurate projections. If you start throwing out numbers outside of the overall team context, it is simply blind luck if you are accurate.
Luckily for Chiefs fans, there have been no major changes for 2020. They have their coaching staff back intact, which is quite rare on the heels of a Super Bowl championship. And they have their players back as well, which is equally as remarkable in today’s transient NFL. Therefore, the Chiefs are one of the easier teams to project for 2020. Still, no two seasons are going to go the exact same way.
For example, I projected all of the offensive weapons for the Chiefs to play a full 16 games. That certainly won’t happen, but it’s easier to project for this since we have no idea who might get injured.
Let’s dive into the offense one position at a time and explore what I believe is most likely to happen in 2020.