Offseason Stealing Signals, Falcons & Colts

Player mentions

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I’ve been writing long intros, and then I spun off two long posts of their own last week, including why best ball might be making you worse at redraft . After a busy Father’s Day weekend, we’re going to skip the intro today to keep plugging through this project. Today’s piece features two mid-level offenses with first-round, superstar RBs. In both cases, I think there may be reasons for more fantasy optimism in the offense than meets the eye. Today’s post will bring us to 12 teams covered. Links to the first 10: Packers and Panthers Chiefs and Texans Cowboys and Saints , plus a longer intro into the series Vikings and Bengals Broncos and Bills Let’s jump in. Atlanta Falcons Key Stat: Bijan Robinson — 0.306 MTF/touch, 3.95 YACo/Att, 5.6% 15+ rush% (all career highs) Relevant Signals Quote: “ Kyle Pitts bounced back to a 1.71 YPRR that was the second best season of his career, really improving in the second half of the season. His 7.5 aDOT was a career low, and a lot of his work did come as an underneath outlet option while working with Kirk Cousins, a notorious check-down artist. That’s a far cry from the optimism of Pitts’ early career where it felt like he could be a dominant and unguardable downfield force. After Pitts’ epic Week 15 eruption that drove a lot of his seasonal numbers looking good (but not necessarily great), I wrote … “This part of Pitts’ big game is very situational to 2025 and Cousins and where we are with the scheme and his role, and that stuff shifts.” Pitts is still very young, as he’s 25 until early October, and there are obvious positive developments here… But we have a new regime in Atlanta (granted one that franchise tagged Pitts to keep him around)… At the end of the long thing I wrote about Pitts after Week 15, I added this: “I’ll be fascinated by where his ADP ends up next year. It might be too high, because huge playoff performances often get bumped the next year, but then maybe I’ll be fascinated by where he winds up in 2027 if 2026 is just mediocre. What I’m saying is this matters in the long view of Pitts…” As it turns out, his early 2026 ADP is TE7, which is probably about where I would’ve expected. There’s maybe a hint of value there, but I’m not super interested in the bet there, despite the 2025 season being a positive. We might be back in on Pitts in 2027 if he’s back to like TE15, though.” ( Field Tippers ) Falcons Field Tippers pass-catcher analysis Atlanta has a whole new coaching staff that projects to have a very different offense, plus a QB battle that figures to impact how that offense looks. There’s a ton of uncertainty here, and yet the skill position situations are fairly straightforward, so we can still come to reasonable conclusions. As far as the offense as a whole, it’s tough to judge Kevin Stefanski and new offensive coordinator Tommy Rees from the past couple years in Cleveland, where they both come over from, because of the many different quarterbacks they’ve used, and the level of play at that position. But they’ve tended to play with some tempo, and they’ve tended to like heavier-TE formations, with a bit of a run lean, as a few things I think might carry over. I’m projecting them to be a pretty neutral offense in a lot of respects, but that could mean the bigger thing to note might be how some of the trends from the past Atlanta offenses regress. One of my notes about previous OC Zac Robinson, who came over from the Rams, was how the production was often concentrated, much like…