I wrote this before the Chiefs played the Browns in the AFC Divisional Round game this weekend. I am going to assume that Cleveland didn’t hand them their third loss of the season. But, this isn’t about the playoffs. This is about the Kansas City Chiefs and their 2020 season. As we start to look forward to 2021 fantasy football, what do we take from their Super Bowl title defense? What should we remember about the 2020 Kansas City Chiefs?
What to Remember from the 2020 Kansas City Chiefs Season
- There was a whole whack-a-mole game that we played with the non-Tyreek Hill Kansas City Chiefs wide receivers. Deciding between Demarcus Robinson, Mecole Hardman, Sammy Watkins, and Byron Pringle was not a game worth playing. Nailing the correct guy to play each week didn’t yield a top-40 WR on the year, unfortunately. If you could get the highest-scoring player correct each week, that netted you 10.09 fantasy points per week on your roster. In HPPR, DJ Chark ranked WR40, with 10.1 fantasy points per game. It wasn’t a game that was worth playing in the 2020 season.
- Let’s go for some low-hanging fruit here and talk about Clyde Edwards-Helaire before Le’Veon Bell’s arrival. Before Bell’s arrival, CEH averaged 113.7 total yards per game on 21 touches. He played at least 60% of the offensive snaps in every game. People panicked, however, since he had just two touchdowns in six games. If CEH kept his fantasy points scored in the first six games over the course of the season, he would have ended the season as RB13 in fantasy points per game. After Bell’s arrival, those numbers plummeted to 59.7 yards per game on 12.7 touches, but he scored four touchdowns in his seven games. So, all those “the touchdowns will come” people… you were right! But the yardage collapsed. Enjoy your monkey’s paw wish. By the way, it’s me, I’m the “the touchdowns will come” people.
- Clyde Edwards-Helaire lost, rounding down, eight touches per game after Bell’s arrival. He also lost (if you account for injuries) about 9 snaps per game. If you assume that Clyde Edwards-Helaire was going to touch the ball on literally every single snap that he didn’t play, then you would have a case that Lev Bell caused CEH’s downfall. In actuality, it was Darrel Williams inexplicably playing about 25% of snaps in the games they all shared together. Inexplicably, Williams played 12 snaps per game when all three were active, a drop of just 7 snaps per game pre-Lev arrival. None of this math makes any sense. Luckily, Lev Bell is a free agent and it’s not like there’s another RB waiting in the wings to gum up the works or anything.
- It’s unlikely that we ever see the 2018 Patrick Mahomes ever again. His 8.6% TD rate is unsustainable, and sits above the previous post-merger career leader in TD rate, Aaron Rodgers, by 2.5%. if you think that Mahomes can throw touchdowns at a rate significantly higher than Aaron Rodgers, be my guest. I think that Mahomes has a chance to beat that record, so his 6.5% this year is more in line with what we should see going forward. It’s also worth noting he now carries a 6.8% TD rate, which passed Rodgers for the record. Mahomes’ interception rate is an under-discussed part of Mahomes’ 2020 season. Mahomes had a 1.02% interception rate. His 2019 rate was 1.03%, which means Mahomes has lowered his interception rate in each season of his career. Both 6.5% TD rate and 1.02% INT rate would be all-time records for a career. Both would beat Aaron Rodgers for that title.
- Tyreek Hill ended the week twelve Chiefs-Buccaneers game with 13 receptions for 269 yards and three touchdowns. That ended up being 57.9 PPR points, an astonishing feat. It was the most fantasy points from a wide receiver since Jimmy Smith had a 15/291/3 line in 2000. That one game from that one player accounted for 34% of the fantasy points yielded by the Buccaneers this season. Had Hill not scored those points, they would have gone from the #10 defense against wide receivers to #21.
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