Press conferences: They’re either the most important thing in the world or something to be entirely ignored, depending on if they validate how you already felt or not. Nonetheless, they are an important window into an NFL organization. Much as the eye in the sky don’t lie about players, coaches can’t cover up every emotion or lean they have when they’re asked questions. In omission, or in tone, even someone as tight-lipped as Bill Belichick or Nick Caserio can give something away. And that’s what this column scans for.
Let’s look at some of the trickiest situations for Week 5 lineups.
Tyreek Hill‘s sudden onset quad injury
The biggest news on Thursday’s practice slate was the surprise additions of Tyreek Hill (quad) and CeeDee Lamb (groin) to the injury report. This may be column suicide, but I’m going to trust the Cowboys and Lamb that despite the fact that Lamb had an MRI and was made questionable, it doesn’t deeply matter. The overwhelming force on the front from the player, the beat, and the coaching staff is that Lamb will play.
But Hill? Hill’s a little bit more interesting. Mike McDaniel stopped short of saying that Hill would play Sunday when asked on Friday morning, and Hill got in another limited session that didn’t really tend towards easy speculation of his status.
Mike McDaniel on Tyreek Hill pic.twitter.com/C8hByrsqTc
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 8, 2022
Let’s pretend that Hill does play through this injury. The recent history of Tyreek Hill playing hurt has been a little disheartening. He played through a quad injury in Week 7 last year against the Titans and wound up with 6 catches for 49 scoreless yards and 18 rushing yards. He caught 8 passes for 75 yards and a score on the same quad in Week 6 that year against the Commanders, albeit in limited action. Hill played off a questionable hamstring tag in Week 16 of 2020 and had four catches for 65 yards.
I don’t have a ton of personal conviction in Hill playing this weekend -- I just don’t see a lot of optimism from any beat reporters, anybody pounding the table and saying that he’ll play, or anything like that. But I know that this doesn’t mean much. But I do think he’s probably an easy DFS fade based on his recent past when playing through something like this. In season-long leagues, you’ve got to start him -- the odds are just too good that he’ll run into a touchdown -- but I’d have lower expectations if he plays.
Kyle Pitts and the quick rule out -- what will happen in Week 6?
This is one of the least-covered teams in the NFL, so let’s look at what’s out there. When did Pitts first have this hamstring injury, why did it seem to come on so suddenly, and why was it so bad that it cost him an entire week of practice and a Week 5 date with the Buccaneers? The only public tidbit of information directly from Arthur Smith comes from this update given to Michael Rothstein, not on camera:
Some more from Falcons HC Arthur Smith on Kyle Pitts' hamstring injury:
— Michael Rothstein (@mikerothstein) October 7, 2022
-Not expected to be long-term.
-Woke up more sore than usual in the days after the Browns game, so Falcons being smart/safe with him throughout a long season rather than forcing & creating a lingering issue
Well, I did what I had to do and watched Arthur Smith‘s dog-and-pony shows. He actually only has two televised pressers weekly, and one of them happens after the game so we got nothing on Pitts out of it. You get the highlights on Twitter when he goes into Russian bots, but he stonewalls about 40% of the total questions in his presser. I listened to him say that he might put in the Wing-T or the Wishbone this week, I listened to him say that “the game plan” was a reasonable answer to a question about snap distribution, he answered a question about how PFF grades compare with in-house grades with “C’mon.” I’m not saying that this is the objectively wrong way to run a presser -- it’s honestly very funny to watch since I don’t have to ask any questions -- but he’s very combative and getting information out of this staff is going to be a challenge.
Gotta help some of these Coaches out, who are claiming a lot of good Qs are "scheme" questions. If we ask, are you running the "Double Wing?" That's a scheme question. If we ask, who's replacing Kyle Pitts if he can't play, that's not a scheme question. It's a personnel question.
— D. Orlando Ledbetter (@DOrlandoAJC) October 6, 2022
Here’s the problem: I watched 80 minutes of pressers from Falcons offensive staff this way and came away with nothing that leads me to believe that Pitts is close to playing. We’ve got no practice participation, no quotes that would lead us to believe he’s close to coming back. Hell, we don’t even have an Athletic article about the injury with a real lean. And the same staff just pulled the nagging injury thing with Cordarrelle Patterson over the past few weeks and surprise IR’ed him on Monday. Are we absolutely positive that Pitts is going to be okay? He didn’t play his full snap allotment last week. The Falcons are more than entitled to keep things in-house, but this is a situation that gives me Bad Vibes. I have quite a bit of Pitts, and I’m holding it because there’s not much else to do with it, but I wouldn’t blame you for selling low.
Amon-Ra St. Brown and the desperate injury report comeback
After two days off, things seemed to be tending towards yet another DNP for Lions wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown. The Lions have a Week 6 bye, St. Brown’s ankle injury has been enough to keep him out of five straight practices, and the story was written. But then it wasn’t: We got a limited practice for St. Brown, and I think in tandem with what head coach Dan Campbell said, we might have an interesting scenario for St. Brown in Week 5:
Dan Campbell on Amon Ra St. Brown Wk 5 pic.twitter.com/vQN9YYix9p
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 8, 2022
What really caught me here is “in any capacity.” The Lions don’t have Jameson Williams ready yet. They ruled out DJ Chark and D’Andre Swift. They don’t have a ton of healthy pass-catchers with depth guys like Quintez Cephus down. We’re talking about potentially seeing Kalif Raymond in two-wideout sets if St. Brown doesn’t play.
Between “in any capacity” and “any time you can get a player like him back, it helps” -- the fact that he phrased it as possible rather than making a real negative out of it, I’d be cautiously optimistic that St. Brown will give it a go. I think you might see a limited version of him, perhaps not one you want to chase in DFS or anything, but given the lack of targets on the field for Detroit right now you might as well fire him up in season-long leagues if you don’t have options that have more upside hanging out on the bench.
Kicker Inferno
We’ve done a ton of kicker blurbs over the last few days -- I literally can’t believe how many kickers are hurt right now. Harrison Butker, Jake Elliott, Dustin Hopkins, Matt Prater, Evan MacPherson, and Austin Seibert (mercifully released on Friday) have all been blurbed recently. MacPherson seems like he’s good to go after two full practices, but let’s listen to what we’ve heard on the first four and reveal the very consistent trick that NFL teams have been using with hurt kickers.
Here’s Brandon Staley on Hopkins, who is the only one of the big four kickers that looks remotely questionable right now:
Brandon Staley Dustin Hopkins Week 5 pic.twitter.com/weVaxX0Z3J
— rivers mccown (alt) (@mccownclips) October 8, 2022
Game-time decision is the ruling, but let’s talk about what happened on Thursday, when the Chargers added Taylor Bertolet to the practice squad. This is becoming the en vogue NFL trick. We’ve talked about practice squad signings prefacing the chance that someone misses a game, but it is especially so with kickers because there’s only one kicker playing in each game. In fact, if one were to only roster replaceable kickers, one could argue that it would save the team a roster spot to just elevate kickers (you can only use three standard elevations) all season, and rotate them out as necessary.
Anyway, the Cardinals did this with Matt Ammendola. The Lions did it with Dominik Eberle and now Michael Badgley. The Eagles did it with Cameron Dicker, and the Chiefs with Matthew Wright and Ammendola. This is a tell that makes it extremely evident if the kicker has a real chance of missing time, because nobody uses one of these valuable practice squad spots on a kicker unless they have to. Thus, there was never much reason to believe that MacPherson would miss time because, well, they had no backup lined up.
It sounds like Hopkins is more day-to-day than week-to-week, while Butker, Elliott (with the quick rule-out), and Prater could be longer-term injuries. Kickers require their own blend of fantasy analysis because so much of their value is tied to implied points, but the main thing I want you to get out of this is that if you see a practice squad kicker added, you should be prepared for that team’s real kicker to sit out.