Strength in Numbers: Actionable Week 14 Stats

We’re going to get a lot of stuff wrong, but sifting through usage metrics can help us work through what matters and what doesn’t. That’s the goal of this article: to break down the most actionable takeaways from each week in a concise, numbers-filled format and work through what’s important. Let’s get right to it:

1. Jayden Reed ran just 15 routes on 24 dropbacks on Thursday and finished the game with zero receiving yards. Despite Romeo Doubs being out with a concussion, Green Bay has made no effort to increase Reed’s workload, rather trotting out Dontayvion Wicks every snap on the outside. Christian Watson‘s 35% target share in Week 14 was a season-high figure. Doubs will likely be back next week and the WR rotation will be back to normal, though it’s worth mentioning Wicks got hit hard late, so Bo Melton may remain the WR4 if he misses time.

2. Tim Patrick played 53 snaps vs. Jameson Williams‘ 55. PFF’s Nathan Jahnke noted that Patrick played more in running situations while Jamo was on the field when Detroit was passing, and Jamo still led in routes 32-27, but Patrick played well with two TDs and could eat into Williams’ routes more moving forward. Jamo’s 69% snap share was his second-lowest mark of the year.

3. Last week, we discussed how the Jaguars split their RB usage fairly evenly across different situations, with Tank Bigsby playing roughly half of the clear pass downs and Travis Etienne holding a prominent early-down role. This week, things were back to what we saw earlier in the year with Bigsby out-carrying ETN 18-4 and ETN out-routing Bigsby 18-9. Per Jahnke, both backs still played across different situations: Bigsby out-snapped Etienne 18-15 on early downs, while Etienne out-snapped Bigsby 6-3 on third downs and 6-4 in the 2-minute drill. However, the Jaguars clearly ran more when Bigsby was on the field and passed more with Etienne. This should be the expectation moving forward, but perhaps Bigsby doesn’t have as much of an iron grip on carries as the 18-4 deficit in Week 14 would suggest (and the same can be said for Etienne on pass downs) given Jacksonville was still willing to give either back snaps in all situations.