947: 10 Trends for Week 12

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zachera J. J. Zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode nine and forty seven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the trends this week, I want to remind you to check out Underdog right now. Over on Underdog, you can draft teams for playoff contests. That's right. It's November, so you may feel like it's a little bit early for this, but you can get ahead of the field if you have a good grasp on which teams are going to make the playoffs and which teams won't make the playoffs. To check those contests out, along with a ton of other variations, head to Underdog Fantasy dot com and sign up with promo code Late Round. That'll get you a nice deposit offer and it'll also get you a link to my rest of season rankings. That's if you sign up with promo code Late Round, make a deposit, and start playing. Now, let's get to these trends. Remember when the Jets were a really tough matchup for quarterbacks, Well, that hasn't been the case for some time. From Week one to Week five, the highest quarterback finished from a quarterback facing the Jets was QB twenty one. They didn't face the most amazing quarterback lineup, but none of those quarterbacks scored higher than their season long averages against the Jets. Since then, the Jets have given up four top five performances. All but one quarterback, that one being CJ. Stroud, has scored above their season long average when facing the Jets. The Jets may look a little scary on paper, but it's really not that tough of a matchup anymore. The Eagles have gone in the complete opposite direction as the Jets. They started the season off as a moderately beatable defense, but things have changed. Philly now ranks as the second toughest matchup against quarterbacks, is by justin fantasy points allowed. They're the sixth toughest matchup against running back. They're the toughest match up against wide receivers, and then the fourth toughest matchup against tight ends. They've been unreal against wide receivers of late. Since Week four, they've allowed one single wide receiver to rank higher than wide receiver forty in weekly scoring just one, and that was Jamar Chase, Who's beating everyone right now. That's it. We saw them hold Terry McLaurin just last week. Ceedee Lamb was wide receiver forty. A couple of weeks ago, Brian Thomas did nothing. Malik Neighbors back in week seven, he did very little. The list goes on and on. The Eagles defense, in total is probably the toughest defense in fantasy right now. So Shane Waldron was out as offensive coordinator in week eleven, and I talked about how that shifted the Bear's backfield a little bit on the fifteen Transactions episode. But what it also did was get Gerald Everett out of the picture because Waldron seemed to have some infatuation with him. Cole Comet, though, ended up running a route on ninety five percent of Chicago's dropbacks against the Packers. That was the first time all season where he was above the ninety percent mark. I think Shane Waldron was the only person on earth who thought it was a good idea to let Gerald Everett get run over Cole Comet. But it looks like rational thought has finally prevailed. Let's do a little Mark Andrews update in Week ten, Andrews played without Isaiah Likely that led to his best usage of the season. He ran a route on ninety four percent of Baltimore's dropbacks that week. That was by far a season high. It was the only game of his season where he reached a twenty percent target chair. The big question after Week ten was would that continue? I had him as a cell in the fifteen Transaction Show because I was nervous that it wouldn't continue, all while recognizing that if it did continue, then we would be looking at old Mark Andrews like elite production from Mark Andrews. Well. Unfortunately, the Ravens did what they've been doing all season long, and Week eleven, Andrews ran around on five fifty eight percent of Baltimore's dropbacks. He had a nine point seven percent target share. That was his lowest mark since Week four. It's beyond frustrating. Trust me, I'm with you, but this is how the Ravens are operating after eleven weeks of football. We have to accept it. The Broncos are truly going with a hot hand approach at running back. That's what it looks like. Everyone including myself, thought that things were about to change in that backfield after Orodric Estimay handled eighty two percent of the team's running back rushes in Week ten, and then the Broncos went back to Javonte Williams. Estimate had a running back rush share of twenty nine percent in Week eleven. Javonte Williams played thirty two snaps estime fourteen. This is the definition of better and best ball. This backfield looks like it's going to be completely unpredictable week to week for the rest of the year. Kenneth Walker had been seeing great pass catching usage for most of the season, but over the last handful of games things have slowed down a little bit. He's now seen single digit percentage target chairs in three of his last four games. He's averaging a ten percent target chair per game rate over this time. That number was fifteen percent during his first four games this season. But I would not be concerned at all. Walker actually saw sixty six percent route participation rate in Week eleven. That was the highest of his season by a relatively decent margin. What that tells us is that he just wasn't targeted at that high of a rate in Week eleven. That's gonna happen in some games. I would anticipate things normalizing, especially if he keeps up that type of route rate. On Thursday last week, Mike McCarthy said that Rico Dowdle is quote the lead back, and then he followed that up by saying, quote, Rico needs to touch the ball. Well, guess what, nothing really changed now. Game script and performance can obviously play a role here, but Dowdell played forty nine percent of Dallas's snaps on Monday night. That was barely above his season life average. It was lower than what he had seen in Week nine and week ten. Dwdall was at a sixty seven percent running back rush share that was right in line with where he's been at. His nine point four percent target share was actually a four week low, and his thirty nine percent rout participation that was right at his season long average. Dwdell's probably the most talented back in that backfield, but I'm not sure it matters at this point. I was around the market, maybe even a couple of spots lower. With Jaden Reid entering the year. He wasn't a target for me, and he wasn't an a void either. Then at the start of the year, I was pacing ahead of the market with my rest of season rankings. Even with the lack of target share that Reid was seeing. I thought they'd surely try to get him ball more because he was bawling out to start the year. Well. Over the last five or six weeks, I've been significantly lower than the market when comparing my rest of season rankings to the experts over at Fantasy Pros. And that's related to Jaden Reid. It's because the Packers just aren't using him enough. Jayden Reid has shit a twenty percent target share just twice this season. Let me read you his target shaars over the last five weeks nineteen percent, twelve percent, eleven percent, sixteen percent, and twelve percent. That's not going to cut it. I don't care how efficient he is. Packers coaches should be embarrassed by that kind of usage, but that is his usage, and that's why there's reason to be more bearish with Reed. Pad Fryarmouth has kind of become dust with Russell Wilson under center. Not that he was like dominating beforehand, but he's averaging just a nine percent target chair per game rate during Wilson's four starts. He has ten targets his route share. It's maybe dropped a tad, but he's being targeted a lot less than he was earlier this season. Darnell Washington has actually out targeted Friarmuth over these four games twelve to ten, despite running like forty percent of the number of routes that friar Moose's running. Washington has a targets per out run rate of twenty six percent over the last four that's according to Fantasy Life. Friarmuth is at nine percent. Now, I'm not saying Washington is all of a sudden a stream worthy play. I'm just saying that Pat Fryarmouth definitely is not the last trend this week is something I talked about earlier in the season. But Brock Purty continues to run more this year. His scramble rate is ten percent. Last year it was four percent. That's according to PFF. The year before three percent. That's resulted in Perty giving US five point one rush attempts per game. In twenty twenty three that number was two point four. He's given US twenty six point seven rushing yards per game this year. He was at nine last year. Now perties regressed as a passer across the board. Statistically, he's not a worst quarterback. He's just not doing things at such an unsustainable rate. Like his touchdown rate this year is four point two percent. It was over seven percent during his first two years. His yards per attempt has dropped by one point one yards year over year. But what's kept him afloat in fantasy football is rushing, and I'm not sure anyone was prepared for that. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you had subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are but stufting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, you know, follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and I'm on Blue Sky as well, also at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.