Fantasy: McCoy’s tendencies a key to Little’s success

Behind all of this week’s Waiver Wire talk about Ryan Torain, Tim Tebow, and Doug Baldwin, many of us in the Fantasy Football industry have been discussing the rest-of-season prospects for Browns rookie wideout Greg Little.

Head Coach Pat Shurmur recently made some comments that indicate Little will take over as the team’s starting Split End (X) beginning this week in Oakland. Although that seems like great news for his Fantasy prospects, there are several reasons to be wary.

For one, during the team’s first four games, Little was only a “reserve” in name. He paced Browns wide receivers in snaps in each game and, among the team’s offensive skill position players (RB WR TE), he trails only Ben Watson in overall snaps this season. Little was on the field for 214 plays over those four games. Mohamed Massaquoi, the team’s starting flanker (Z), has handled 173 snaps. Brian Robiskie is who Little will be replacing in the starting lineup, but he’s been on the field for only 123 snaps, 86 of which were at split end. The other wideouts involved in the passing game include Joshua Cribbs (136 snaps) and Jordan Norwood (19).

The point here is obviously that Little is already the team’s most heavily used wideout…at least in terms of snaps. Snaps don’t always lead to targets, however, which leads to the next topic: Colt McCoy’s tendencies.

When arguing against a big boost in Greg Little's fantasy value on Twitter this week, I often made the point that the team’s quarterback, Colt McCoy, has all but avoided throwing to the Split End this season. The immediate response to this was always the same: “that’s because it was Brian Robiskie!” Although that’s partially true, do you really think I’m that ignorant? As Cris Carter might say, “C’mon Man!”

Let’s look deeper.

McCoy has thrown 157 passes this year that we credit as Aimed Passes (or targets). Of those 157, 34 have gone to players lined up in the backfield, 58 went to the X or Z, 29 went to a player lined up in the slot (Y), and 36 to an in-line tight end.

Taking it a step further, we see that only 14 of those 157 went to the player lined to wide to the left (the split end). That’s 9% of McCoy’s passes. The NFL average for the “LWR” is 19%. Instead, McCoy has gone to the RWR (Z, usually Massaquoi) 22% of the time (NFL avg: 21%) and to the Tight Ends 32% of the time (NFL avg: 20%).

That still doesn’t solve the “Brian Robiskie” issue, so let’s keep going.

2011 Snaps

Here we see the snap distribution for each pass catcher by position. Sorted by snaps at the LWR position, we see the players who spent the most time at Split End. Robiskie and Cribbs were there the most, but Little isn’t too far behind. We need to go a step further.

2011 Targets / Snaps

This is the chart we want. Here we see how often each player is targeted on a per-snap basis at each of the four positions. This makes it very clear that McCoy has preferred to avoid the X position, regardless of who is lined up there. This ends any debate that the only reason McCoy doesn’t throw to the X is the fact that Robiskie is lined up there. In all seven instances, the receivers were targeted more when lined up at the Z rather than at the X. Seven for seven. Overall, we see a 17% to 7% split. Check out Greg Little. The ‘X' is easily the position he's targeted the least!

What does all this mean? It shows us pretty clearly that McCoy hasn’t thrown to the X very often this season regardless of who is lined up there. Going forward, Little will see a similar number of snaps to what he’s already seen, but he’ll be at the X more and in the slot less. He is a perfect fit for the split end job and should be able to use his size to beat press coverage, but it’s going to take more than that for him to find Fantasy success.

McCoy is the key. He needs to make it a point to take the snap, drop back, look to his left, and deliver the ball. If he does that, Little is WR3 material going forward this season. If he continues doing what he’s done during Weeks 1-4, Little will leave his owners disappointed.