I love stats. There’s nothing I love more than combing the NFL wreckage on Monday morning in my spreadsheets.

There are huge advantages to be made via modern stats and analytics in both real football and fantasy football. But they don’t necessarily tell the whole story. If you do want the whole story, the best way to get it is to pull the stats then confirm via the tape. That’s the only way you are going to know the context of what the numbers are showing.

So, to review the rookie season for Rome Odunze and project his outlook for dynasty fantasy football, I first combed through the stats from numerous sites like Pro Football Focus, Fantasy Points Data Suite, PlayerProfiler, Pro Football Reference, etc. And then I watched 500+ routes of his from various angles via NFL Pro’s Film Room. 

The good news for you is that I took those key stats and some important clips and put them all together in this article. So, you don’t need to do all of that to get the full story. That said, let’s dive into the tale of Rome Odunze’s 2024 rookie season right now!

 

 

 

Rome Odunze’s Performance

The Good

In a vacuum, there is a lot to like about what we saw from Rome Odunze. Especially when the ball was actually in his vicinity. The 53.5% overall catch rate that you will see floating around doesn’t necessarily paint the full picture because a good chunk of those passes thrown his way weren’t even remotely catchable (more on that later). A site like PlayerProfiler uses True Catch Rate to only look at catchable balls - for that statistic his catch rate was 91.5%. And that’s what we see on the film.

One aspect where Odunze was among the top in the league was on contested catches. Of the wide receivers that had at least 15 contested catch opportunities, only two players had a catch rate over 70% - Rome Odunze at 72.2% and Terry McLaurin at 70.6%. Basically, anything over 50% is good, over 60% is great, and over 70% is quite rare. 

For instance, no player in 2024 that got at least 15 chances had a catch rate over 60% and the only other player over the last three years to have one higher than Odunze is 2022 Nico Collins. Here’s an example of a great contested catch by Rome Odunze from Week 15 against the Vikings.

I was also impressed with his route-running on short to intermediate plays where he had a lot of wins, even if the ball wasn’t always coming to him. He had no trouble getting off the line against the jam and was fairly fluid in his cuts when changing direction. 

It was a little surprising that he wasn’t asked to run more routes like the one below, especially early on in the season. Though knowing what we know about Shane Waldron, perhaps it was not that surprising. 

 

 

 

The Bad

There were some things on the tape that I didn’t like. There were definitely times that he and Caleb Williams were not on the same page, especially with Odunze not looking for the ball at the right times. Odunze also needs to do a better job of maintaining separation once he gets leverage on corners. 

In the big leagues, cornerbacks are going to grab you and, even though it’s technically a penalty, it’s part of your job to make sure you win the hand fighting so that’s not even an option. These two issues are fairly minor though and can be chalked up to being a rookie. 

One thing that was evident on multiple occasions that is absolutely on him to improve upon is not giving up on plays. There were times that he was even lazy at the BEGINNING of plays if he knew it was a screen, or he wasn’t on the primary play side You still need to sell the play and taking plays off like this is a bad habit.

Per FantasyPoints Data Suite, he was only the first read on plays 19% of the time compared to 31.9 and 28.9% for DJ Moore and Keenan Allen, respectively. If you are not the first read and you have a quarterback that can extend plays you want to play every play out and give yourself every opportunity. And, though Odunze did a great job of route running during the designed portion of plays, he struggled to make himself available at times when plays were extended.

In his defense, he doesn’t have much experience with this. In his final year of college, Michael Penix only scrambled six times per Pro Football Focus. According to Fantasy Points Data Suite, Caleb Williams ran the ball scrambling 50 times and had 119 total plays where he was scrambling to his left or right and either ran, attempted a pass, threw it away, or was sacked.

If I’m new WR coach Antwaan Randle El, I’m making sure there are plenty of drills in practice to simulate when a play breaks down, if that’s how Caleb Williams is going to play.

 

 

 

Rome Odunze’s Opportunity

The Good

Thanks to the heavy three WR sets the Bears ran, Rome Odunze’s 954 snaps on the season was the most of any rookie and it was 11th of any wide receiver overall. A guy like first round pick Ricky Pearsall found himself stuck behind Brandon Aiyuk, Deebo Samuel, and Jauan Jennings and, even worse, a second-round pick like Ja'Lynn Polk didn’t have much competition and still couldn’t get on the field. So that’s a win.

They lined Odunze up all over, but he spent much of his time out wide as a split end or field stretching flanker as Keenan Allen prefers the slot. In that capacity, he actually got 14 end zone targets which was the 8th most of any wide receiver. He couldn’t capitalize on many of them, but it was good that they were looking his way in the red area. As the field stretcher, he had the 15th most air yards of any player at 1,390 per FantasyPoints Data Suite. And when they were able to connect, it looked great. 

 

 

 

The Bad

Folks that have been playing fantasy football for a while know that “field stretcher” isn’t a super fantasy-friendly term. Oftentimes you are being used to open things up underneath, being sent on routes where there’s next to no chance you’ll actually get a look.

 Like this play here - the play is designed for Odunze to take the safeties with him. Rome being double covered and having no shot at a play is by design. And it worked - but we don’t get any fantasy points for that.

The 1,390 air yards sounds great until you realize that he wasn’t catching a ton of those throws. He actually had the third most unrealized air yards per Player Profiler with 917. And, as we mentioned earlier, a lot of those were not his fault.

In terms of catchable target rate, Player Profiler had him as WR98 and Fantasy Points Data Suite had him as the WR119. Which is pretty obvious on the tape. There were a lot of blatant throwaways in his direction that were never even meant to be catchable. And then there were also a number of times he was open where the throws simply were off target, like this one. 

Or where he’s wide open but Caleb doesn’t see him, so the ball isn’t even thrown at all.

As we all know, the Bears offensive line was brutal. And Caleb Williams was sacked a league leading 68 times, 16 more times than the next-highest player. 

When you add up those 68 plays, the 113 scrambles where he wasn’t sacked, the early throwaways, and the plays where he simply was not able to get through his read progressions to the deeper routes, a big chunk of the deeper routes Odunze ran never had a chance to be relevant. And his aDot of 14.2 yards per PFF was 15th amongst all WRs that got at least 30 targets so he was up there. Even when he’s wide open on a shallow route like this, there is nothing that can be done in that little time.

 

 

 

Rome Odunze’s Future

When you simply look at the statistics for Rome Odunze, they are pretty brutal. Of the WRs that got a minimum 25 targets, he was WR75 in targets per route run per FantasyPoints Data Suite. 

Given his lack of production despite his big snap share, he was outside of the top 90 wide receivers in fantasy points per route run as well. Player Profiler had his route win rate at only 37.5% which is WR95. 

But when you boil all of that down in the context of his usage, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it seems. Obviously you are going to attempt to beat your man on these field stretching routes but, if the goal is to draw coverage, that’s not going to be friendly to your win rate. 

The line wasn’t holding up for deeper developing routes most of the time and that led to a lot of uncatchable garbage being thrown in the deep guys direction - those “targets” are going to hurt your catch rate.

In a vacuum, it’s hard not to like what Rome Odunze put on tape for the most part. But football is not played in a vacuum. There are essentially three keys to unlocking Rome Odunze:

  • The first is hoping that Keenan Allen leaves in free agency - he’s too much of a target hog. 
  • The next is that the Bears can improve this offensive line. It might not happen overnight but it can’t be as bad as it was last year.
  • The last is that Ben Johnson will improve the role of Rome Odunze. If he were in that “power slot” role that Amon-Ra St. Brown runs, then great. But even the Jameson Williams role is one that Odunze can thrive in.

 

 

 

Dynasty Fantasy Football: Rome Odunze Outlook

For a lot of folks just looking at the numbers, Rome Odunze might be a sell. For me, he is pretty squarely a hold. And he’s a lot closer to a buy than he is a sell. Despite all of the issues above that he was facing, he came out as a rookie and had 734 yards. 

This isn’t a N'Keal Harry-like faceplant we are talking about here - it’s a talented player who was thrown into a bad offense with a rookie quarterback behind two target hog wide receivers. There’s a very real possibility we just saw the worst season of Rome Odunze’s career. And I want to be there for the good ones.