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Fantasy Theory: Would a run-heavy system favor pass-catching TEs?

The question came up in a discussion on Mark Andrews, who is on the Ravens; and the Ravens are definitely run heavy (most rushing attempts in 2018). Would a run-heavy system favor pass-catching TEs?



I'm not sure that's entirely the right question, but as I am always curious, AND in love with Excel, I decided to throw some data in a sheet.
I compared for 2018:
- percentage of yards from rushing; highest is Seattle with 45%, lowest is PIT with 22%.
- Total TE yards for a team. Highest is Philly with 1564 (mostly Ertz and Goedert), lowest is Jacksonville (281 yd).
I plotted those against each other to see if there is a clear correlation:
image.png.97807475bd5bbe1a7cab42aed691298b.png
Yeah, not really. Mostly this is an amorphous mess, with a slight correlation that run-heavy teams have fewer TE yards. Three groups stick out somewhat:
- to the left we have Pitsburgh, Tampa and Atlanta. All three are pass-heavy, all three used multiple TEs, none of them had a top TE: Hooper, McDonald and Howard each had around 600 yards.
- on top we have the star TEs: Kittle (SFO), Kelce (KAN) and Ertz PHI). Of the three, SFO ran the most, but still middle of the pack.
- to the right, we have teams that get more than 40% of their yards from rushing: BAL/TEN/BUF/SEA. None of these teams had a fantasy relevant TE, with the borderline exception of... our friend Mark Andrews (TE16).
I repeated the process for a random different but recent year; in 2015 I found a similar pattern, with one exception where Olsen had 1104 yards on the Panthers which had 39% of yards from the run.
So I think that in general his run-heavy team is a very slight risk for his production, but not necessarily blocking. It is not a consideration I would base my draft on.

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