5 Players with Unlimited Ceilings Thanks To Playcalling

**Josh** (0:10)
The entire goal of the all season is to identify the stats that will help you win your fantasy league. It's really that simple. But I'm sure when you watch all these videos, you read all these analysts, the same numbers are repeated every single week. So today's mission to present you with at least five underlying metrics, five completely new stats that will give you an edge in your drafts. And the perfect man for this challenge is Ryan Paganetti. First, Ryan, welcome to the show. And second, tell the people what you've been up to for the last decade that makes you perfectly suited for this challenge.

**Ryan Paganetti** (0:43)
Well, I really appreciate you guys having me.
I started in the NFL in 2015 with the Eagles, and I've sort of done a bunch of different analytics and coaching type roles there. I was there for six years with Coach Peterson, and we managed to have a lot of success there in terms of we won the Super Bowl. We were kind of ahead of the game a little bit on some of the things like fourth downs and two-point conversions and QB sneaks and whatnot. And then I spent three years with the Jaguars as Director of Football Analytics, and I was kind of diving a little bit more into the personnel side in addition to the coaching side there, and really this last year, I was with Pete Carroll, who I absolutely love and I always will love, and I hope to see him in the... He deserves to be in two Hall of Fames in my opinion, like just an awesome guy. He was kind of dealt some difficult circumstances with the team that wasn't maybe necessarily ready to go last year, but you mentioned that you worked with Pete Carroll in the Raiders last year.

**Josh** (1:38)
You recently posted that quote, we had a goal last season in Las Vegas of single season record for catches and targets for Brock Bowers before the week one injury. So Ryan, how are you guys going to achieve that? And maybe most importantly, do you think that's going to be possible? And there's another goal that Clint Kubiak might have for Brock Bowers this season.

**Ryan Paganetti** (1:57)
I just, you know, just from my familiarity with that roster, like we were basically looking at that last year and the talent that we had on hand, you know, I know a bunch of different, you know, where you really stack your team up in talent is always a little bit controversial. And, you know, it's very good from like a media perspective to do ranks and whatnot, but there was a consensus that the receiver group for the Raiders entering last season was in some cases, 30 second or quite close to 30 second. And there was a little bit of like a situation which Kobe Myers wanted to get traded. And he was kind of our top guy. And there was like some instability there.
And, you know, Brock Bowers like had, I think he was like graduating from Georgia or something like that. He showed up at some point OTAs.
And the coaches were just kind of looking around and like, this is, this is, there are some things going on. And he had just come off his first season that I believe he set like the NFL record for catches for a tight end or something. And we're just kind of looking around, like given the roster distribution saying, like, this makes way too much sense that we're, we're not doing a good job coaching if we're not figuring out how to get him the ball as much as possible. So that was sort of like the attitude. And, you know, I printed out a piece of paper for like Pete and Chip. And I just, I think it was either early in training camp or in OTAs.
And it was essentially like, what are the actual records? And I'm like, we're going to just keep a tally of this every week as like an aiming point. And the attitude from them was like, oh, let's smash those records. Like, just given where we were as a team and like what, from a macro perspective, where we thought like our kind of difference maker player was. And then week one, he had a pretty significant knee injury. I think he had 108 yards, like say two and a half quarters in the game, whatever. Don't quote me on that exact number. But he gets that injury and he was significantly hampered. And it was like an ongoing narrative. He wasn't practicing. He's like, there's can't even do walkthrough some days. They ended up shutting him down for a period. He comes back and gets like three touchdowns in a game. And but then he's still kind of managing it. And so there was considerations like managing his snaps, like was he getting, was he drawing additional attention? And it really, the combination of the injuries and, you know, some other players on the offense clearly not performing really where you would hope. And it just was sort of snowballed where, you know, then we even had a play color change during the season. And like, so all those different variables made it a little bit complex. But if I was Glenn Kubiak and I had, and I also just funneled like an insanely high percentage of my offense through one player, if I was thinking, I might do that again, like doing that for Brock Bowers makes all the sense in the world. Just given he, nobody can actually, with a serious face can like show up to their practice, look at the past catcher unit and not set. You actually might think he's the starting XY receiver. Like we were going to do that at different points. We were like, why don't we just make them our X and we just 12 will be our base offense. And Michael Mayer will be our Y tight end. You know, I was, I was keep certainly keeping an eye on like how unsustainable the JSN target share was last year, but then he just kept doing it and he kept succeeding. It's still like, if I was clit, I'd be like, I'm just going to try that again. Like why not?