RADIO
Welcome back to Tape Tells All, the weekly series where I look at film and data for something that happened in the NFL this week.
Today, I want to look at a young running back who has been producing over the last few weeks: Houston Texans rookie Dameon Pierce.
In Week 4, Pierce had the first 100-yard game of his career, toting the rock 14 times for 131 yards in the 34-24 loss to the Chargers. He caught six passes, though he ended up with just eight receiving yards. What does this mean for Pierce in fantasy going forward?
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Background Information
The Texans drafted Pierce in the fourth round out of Florida this year. He was an early preseason sleeper pick because of the makeup of this Texans backfield. At the time, Marlon Mack was the lead back, with Rex Burkhead as the receiving back. People (rightfully) thought that Pierce was more talented than those two and would garner an early workload.
My issue with Pierce wasn't his talent. I was worried about him because I always worry about a back without a clear receiving role on a bad team. With Burkhead on the Texans, it looked like that even if Pierce supplanted Mack, the game script would make it hard for him to have consistent fantasy value. Houston would be behind a lot.
A few things have changed. Pierce didn't just supplant Mack—his presence is why Mack ended up on the practice squad instead of the main roster. He's now with the Niners. And then Burkhead's role after Week 1 became exclusively as a receiver, opening up this backfield to Pierce. Burkhead has 17 carries this season, but 14 of those came in Week 1. His role as a runner has completely evaporated since.
I'm right that there are limited touches available in this backfield. Houston's 84 rushing attempts are the fourth-fewest in the NFL this season. But because Pierce is essentially getting all of those carries now, the low volume isn't hurting him like it otherwise would if he was splitting carries.
The Dameon Pierce Game Tape
If we're talking about Pierce against the Chargers, the obvious place to start is his 75-yard touchdown run.
The key to this run is Pierce's ability to get through that initial hole. As the Texans tweet above indicates, the expected yards on this play were seven. He got 75. Most of that was just Pierce running really fast.
But he doesn't get to just "run really fast" without his ability to first expertly get through the crush of Chargers defenders. Pierce has to weave through the defense here to break out on the other side. The foot race he wins afterwards is impressive, but the ability to get to that foot race is even more impressive. Anyone can run fast. Not just anyone has the vision and slipperyness to get into the open field.
Above is a compilation of Pierce's runs on Sunday. Ignoring the big one since we already talked about it, let's just go through some other observations from these plays.
Pierce shows a fearlessness here. He'll run right into the heart of the defense. On the first run, he uses his feet to create some running space early on, then he plunges ahead, gets hit and drags the defenders a few extra yards.
His ability to cut quickly might be one of my favorite traits about Pierce. He can make these subtle direction switches at full speed, which keeps the defense on its toes and creates these little pockets of space for him to get out into.
Simply put, when Dameon Pierce touches the ball (in the run game), good things happen. He has a nose for where he needs to get, and he does what it takes to get there. There's a certain kind of confidence that Pierce runs with. He's not a back who waits around for a play to develop; he gets out there and develops the plays himself.
Now, the video above also shows Pierce catching the football, and that's something that concerns me. He had six catches this week, but had just eight yards.
That explosiveness we see when Pierce has the ball in his hands isn't really there in the passing game. Maybe it's because so much of his run game seems to be getting north-south quickly, whereas in the passing game, there's a lot more of a horizontal angle?
The NFL's Next Gen Stats have a metric called Efficiency for rushing, which measures running backs by how much distance they travel. The lower the number, the more of a north-south runner they are. Pierce has the eighth-lowest number in the NFL.
So while I'm encouraged to see Pierce getting targets, I'm worried that the way he plays football isn't conducive to him doing a ton as a receiver. But...that might not matter too much, as long as the Texans keep throwing to him. If he can just reliably bring passes in—he has a 100% catch rate so far—then the fact that he isn't doing much after the catch might not be too big of an issue. But it is something I'm monitoring.
Dameon Pierce Fantasy Football Impact
There are still some obvious things that concern me about Pierce. The Texans game script isn't good for running backs, and Pierce will need to keep dominating the backfield touches to make up for that. He can't afford to have Burkhead slip back into the picture. Pierce had 14 carries in Week 4, but that was EVERY SINGLE CARRY. No Davis Mills carries. No Burkhead.
And his lack of efficiency in the passing game is a concern as well. It was good to see him get six targets this week, but if Burkhead is doing more with those targets than Pierce is, those targets will go away again.
Still, there's definitely something to be said for his efficient run style. Pierce knows where to go with the football and so far, he's getting that done. He's a workhorse back who can get yards after contact and who can also avoid contact well. Per PlayerProfiler, Piece has evaded 27 tackles, which ranks fifth among running backs. He's also fourth in yards create and ninth in yards created per touch.
Pierce is a really strong RB2 play in standard scoring leagues, and a solid RB2 in PPR, just with a little more downside there since we don't know how much we can count on him getting receptions.
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