Welcome to the weekly blitz report, where we look at how players’ and teams’ tendencies against the blitz can influence fantasy football performance.
For most players, 83 yards and 2 touchdowns would be a career day. For Rob Gronkowski, it’s pretty unremarkable. But when I started doing my blitz research for this week, I realized that 7 of Gronkowski’s 10 catches, 53 of his 83 yards, and both of his touchdowns on Sunday came against Jets’ blitzes. So much of my research and analysis for this column has centered on target distribution, but blitzes are also an important source of big plays. That’s especially true for the big tight end. Since 2015, no prominent touchdown-maker has seen a higher percentage of his touchdowns come against blitzes than Gronkowski (57.1 percent). That’s something I’ll make more of an effort to include as part of my player recommendations.
Players to target
Hunter Henry, TE, Los Angeles Chargers
Henry has shown signs of a breakout over the last two weeks, most obviously with his 14 combined targets, 10 more than teammate and position-mate Antonio Gates. The blitz trends show a corresponding change. Last season, Henry saw 21 of his 47 total targets against blitzes. Because he is the better blocker, the Chargers have preferred to have him on the field in situations where they expect pressure to come. It seemed like more of the same this season when Henry went untargeted in Week 3 against the conservative Chiefs, who blitzed on just 21.4 percent of the Chargers’ pass plays. However, last week, Henry saw seven total targets — four of which were on non-blitzes — despite facing a Raiders team that blitzed only 18.9 percent of the time in the game and is bottom-10 in blitz rate for the season. Nine of Henry’s targets from the last two weeks have been on non-blitzes. You have to reach back to his previous five games prior to Week 5 for Henry to match that total.
There are enough things pointed up for Henry that you should definitely add him in leagues where he is available. And even if these two games were something of a red herring, Henry faces a top-10 blitzing team in the Broncos this week, which makes it a good matchup. To my mind, the real test will be in the four games after this week, when he faces four teams in the bottom third of my projected blitz rate.
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