So given that many had Ridley as a top 3 WR this season, and Pitts was usually taken in the top five among tight ends, I thought it would be worth looking into whether these players will ever deliver the return their owners expected this season.
I started out with the impression that Matt Ryan is simply cooked as a passer. After an extremely underwhelming performance against a Giants defense that made Taylor Heinicke look like a star, it was hard not jump to the simple conclusion that Ryan is done, and that Ridley and Pitts should be sold for pennies on the dollar.
As I dug into Ryan’s charts and statistics, comparing them with the previous season that made Ridley a fantasy WR1, it’s hard to believe that it’s as simple as Ryan falling off a cliff, but it could be completely right.
What We Know
We know Ridley burst out of the gate in 2020, delivering three straight 100+ yard games on an average of 11.6 targets and yards per reception (y/r) of 14.4, 15.5, and 22 in his first three games. On an average of 10 targets a game in 2021, his y/r has come in at 10.2, 9, and 7.6.
We know that Ryan’s intended air yards per attempt (IAY/PA) in 2018 to 2020 came in at 8.6, 8.1, and 8.5. In 2021 they have dropped to 4.2. Similarly, air yard per completion (CAY/Cmp) were at 6.6, 6.9. and 7.2 2018-2020. In 2021 they sit at 2.7, a staggering decrease of 63% from the previous year.
Ryan’s bad throw percentage has gone down from an average of about 14% in the three previous seasons to 12.1% this year. His pressure rate has also decreased.
We know that Arthur Smith is a new coach this year, that he came from Tennessee, and that Tennessee was one of the teams most dependent on the run for success last year.
The numbers from this year tell the same story as the charts: shorter passes, fewer big plays, lower totals:
What We Don’t Know
What we don’t know is whether this obvious decline in deeper passes is attributable to his physical decline, or his new coach and his philosophy, and knowing the answer to that tells us whether Ridley and Pitts owners should be selling for pennies on the dollar or not.
First let’s take a look at the physical decline part. Ryan is 36 years old. The team, which should know his physical condition better than anyone, elected to not take their QB of the future and instead drafted a dynamic pass catcher in Pitts at #4 overall. Smith should have had influence on that decision. This doesn’t really tell us whether Ryan was in decline or not, only that his team sure seemed to think he wasn’t.
Last year, as of week 8, Ryan was clearly capable of throwing deep. He had touchdowns of 20+ and 50+, and two completions of 20+ and one 30+. So less than a year ago this guy was still capable of throwing accurate balls deep.
Week 15 he had two long completions, 20+ and 25+, and a 35 yard and 45 yard incompletion. This season, in three games, Ryan does not have a single completion over 20 yards. So physical decline is definitely a possibility.
But given the extreme drop off, and given that he has a new coach who has shown a preference for short passes thus far, and given the Falcon’s move in round 1 of the draft, is it more likely that Ryan simply can’t throw deep anymore and Smith is coaching to hide Ryan’s physical limitations, or that Smith simply prefers shorter, safer passes? Let’s take a look at Ryan Tannehill’s best game of the latter half of the 2020 season.
Tannehill threw the ball 45 times, and only 6 (13%) of his attempts went past the 20.
For sake of comparison we will look at Tannehill’s game with the closest number of passing attempts from 2021. With Smith gone as OC, Tannehill has 5 attempts past the 20 out of 40 attempts, 13%. The exact same percentage he had under Arthur Smith.
When we look at Tannehill’s IAY/PA and CAY/Cmp for 2021 vs previous years, we don’t see any real change, less than a point of difference.
When stats fail to provide an absolutely clear picture, go to the tape. Ryan had one incompletion week 2 of over 40 yards, and here it is. It’s clear from the film that Ryan struggled to deliver a deep ball, had to take a step forward to help its velocity, and the ball still had little velocity, causing Ridley to have to come back for the ball and thus fell incomplete. With 2020 Ryan, or a different QB with a stronger arm, that would have been a 90-yard touchdown.
What We Think
3 games is still a small sample size. But as sample sizes grow, blips become trends in the eyes of your league, and if Ryan’s arm is cooked and he simply can’t propel the ball downfield as well as he could a year ago, then Ridley is likely to suffer. Ridley is not a YAC monster like Julio was, and gets most of his yardage from air yards. Just take a look at one of his better games from late 2020.
About 30 yards of 163 were after the catch, 18% of his total. Compare that with his best game of 2021 and it’s a starkly different picture.
Ridley owners would likely be best served to take whatever they can get for him now in redraft. If the picture the numbers and film are telling us about Ryan is true, he’ll have to get most of his value from short-to-intermediate passing.
Ryan’s apparent decline is so precipitous it’s hard not to attribute it to a more conservative coach and philosophy, and this is a very small sample. But everything we have seen so far is telling us that Ryan’s arm has fallen off a cliff, and even if it is just a coaching style, that’s still not encouraging for Ridley’s rest of season value.
We haven’t talked about Pitts just because he is such an enigma. He wasn’t even targeted until the Falcon’s final drive last week. Not one target. So it remains to be seen if he’s even going to be used in this offense. We know he can get yards after the catch, but whether that opportunity ever materializes remains to be seen. Unless you can get someone like Gronk or Hockenson for Pitts, I’d hold and hope for the best.
