Trebor "Moneyball" Pena: Syracuse's Surprise Pig
You *traded* Peña?
(Billy Beane) Yeah. And Menechino, Hiljus, Tam are all being sent down.
You are outside your mind.
- Art Howe, Moneyball (2011)
Oh… you didn’t think these profiles would stop just because the season started, did you? My friends, you should know me better by now.
The Syracuse v. Ohio game last weekend was a surprisingly enlightening experience. Not only did we learn about Northwestern transfer Anthony Tyus on the Ohio side, we were also exposed to some potential pigs at WR in Coleman Owen and Trebor “Moneyball” Pena. Owen was targeted 15 times; Pena, only seven, but he also got three carries, one of which he took for a score. Lovely.
With Syracuse ushering in a new staff, there were questions abound regarding the shape of the offence this fall. Thankfully, we received some insight on Saturday. Of course, we need multiple data points to make it a pattern before making any wild declarations. Nonetheless, Pena’s week one opener of over 32 CFF points scored in 1PPR formats isn’t a bad start. Pena, as of writing this article, remains rostered on only 16% of squads according to Fantrax.
Let’s take a deeper look at the system in place here.
Coaching & System
WR1 PPG AVERAGE — OC1: 10.8 — OC2: 15.351 (half ppr)
I like Fran Brown. Fran Brown is a baller. He did good work as the secondary coach at UGA. No-one will ever question his recruiting prowess, particularly within the Northeast of the country. The questions we had were more-so related to his coaching ability, seeing as he hasn’t been a head coach prior to this year.
The performance in the bowl game last year wasn’t very inspiring. But a week one victory, albeit over an inferior opponent, is a good start to Brown’s tenure in upstate NY.
Anyways, let’s get to the point. Fran Brown, as discussed, has no play calling experience to evaluate. Syracuse deploys two OCs in Mike Johnson and Jeff Nixon. Nixon comes over from the NFL, where he was the RBs coach for the Giants. Johnson previously served as the WRs coach for the Orange in 2022 and 2023.
Some good news is that both of the OCs last seasons as play callers in CFB saw their WR1s receive over 24% target share in the offence. In fact, both Nixon and Johnson average (over only a three season sample) 24% share for their top wideouts. I like that one of the OCs is a WRs coach, that always feels like a good omen for the WR position. The other, Nixon, peppered Denzel Mims with eight and nine targets per game in 2018 and 2019, which was the last time we saw him call plays in CFB.
Syracuse was 12th this week in the entire FBS in seconds per play run with an average of 24.1. They passed the ball 39 times to a total of 30 rush attempts, which is about a 56/44 split in favour of the air. That’s a good recipe for success at the WR position if you ask me.
Trebor Pena (6’0, 185)
WK1 STATS: 6(7)-78-2 + 3-9-1
Pena appears to be the WR1 of this offence; or at least, he was last Saturday. His main competitors for targets are actually the TE (Orande Gadsden) and the RB (LeQuint Allen).
The fifth year senior has been with the program since 2020, when he joined as a three star athlete out of New Jersey. He scored more fantasy points this past weekend than he had in his previous four seasons combined (just to give you a sense of the delayed breakout here). That’s completely fine.
You know the rule around here—he gets the ball a lot, do I care if he’s a fifth or first year player? …Pete?
(VP intern Pete) “You do not.”
Correct. And while Pena wasn’t the target leader (Gadsden had 12), he is a nice second option for ‘Cuse, a team that could be in a lot of shootouts this season if their defence in week one was any indication.
If you have the space, I would roster Pena this week vs. GT, and see what happens. If he pops again, it’ll be hard to get him on the wire next week. Especially considering Syracuse’s schedule over the next month 👀. ◾
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Sample of 2018-2023.
I'm curious if it happens again if Zeed stays healthy for the entire game as well.