1060: 10 Trends for Week 13

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha j J Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode ten to sixty of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Just a reminder, you're getting this ten Trends episode right now obviously, but the Sleepers episode that usually drops on Thursday, that's gonna be out later today. Cool. Cool, Let's get to the trends this week. A Mecca Buca is really struggling, at least for fantasy purposes. He's failed to reach double digit PPR points in five of his last six games. That's despice seeing a target chair per game rate of twenty eight percent during that timeframe. Now, one thing I will say is that this started in week six when he had that hamstring injury. Then in week seven he wasn't expected to play, or at least not that much. He did play, and he played more than anticipated because Mike Evans got hurt. But for argument purposes, let's just forget about that right now. From weeks one through five, Abuka was averaging twenty and a half PPR points per game. Since then, he's been at nine point nine the question is why what's going on here? Well, first off, during that first stretch, seventy six percent of Abuca's targets were deemed catchable by PFF. That's been just forty eight percent since then. That's a huge difference. A forty eight percent catchable targets rate is really really low. We're talking like second or third percentile stuff. If that continued throughout the entire season. Another problem, though, is deep ball conversion. From weeks one through five, Abuka saw thirteen targets that traveled twenty or more air yards according to PFF. He caught eight of them for two hundred and ninety one yards and four touchdowns. The dude was feasting on big plays. Since then, Abuko only has five of those targets, five deep ball targets. He's caught one of them for thirty one yards. That difference alone is literally more than ten PPR points per game. Now, we knew that regression was gonna hit eventually for Abuca, just given the way he was producing to start the year. I even did a trend talking about that, But this is too far in the other direction. Regression does not mean an over correction, and this is an over correction. A forty eight percent catchable targets rate is not something that we see last a long time, and the lack of deep ball looks should regress at least to some degree. The good news is that Abuca is seeing a lot of volume. He is averaging over ten targets per game over his last five. If the quality of those targets goes up even a little bit, he can go back to giving fantasy managers wide receiver two type numbers. But those are the high level statistical reasons as to why things just aren't working for a Mecha Buka right now. Tyrone Tracy saw pretty good usage in Week twelve, worthy enough usage to call it out on today's show. Now, I talk just last week about aw Tracy was seeing more volume than Devin Singletary since camp Scattaboo's season ending injury. But Singletary was seeing all the work in the green zone or within the opponent's ten yard line. Entering last week, and since camp Scattaboo's injury, Singletary had ten green zone attempts, Tyrone Tracy had zero. Well, that changed in Week twelve. Tracy saw three of a possible four rush attempts from within the Lion's ten yard line, and Tracy hit his highest routhare of the season and his highest snap share since Week one. If that usage continues, and that's obviously a big if, but if that usage continues, then we're going to see a lot more production from Tyrone Tracy down the stretch. I thought JJ McCarthy was worth a shot this year. You've got a great system with Kevin O'Connell, you've got great weapons, and he was a late round pick in Fantasy. Worst case he doesn't work out, you move on. He most definitely has not been working out. McCarthy ranks thirty third out of thirty four qualified quarterbacks and completion percentage over expected according to Next Gen Stats. His passing EPA per dropback minus point four to two. That's dead last in the league. The player in second to last is Dylan Gabriel at minus point two six. McCarthy is a quarterback rating a fifty seven point nine. The player in second to last cam Ward seventy five point seven. I mean, guys, this is really, really, really bad. McCarthy scored fewer than six Fantasy points in half of his starts this year, and his receivers are feeling a two. Justin Jefferson is averaging eleven point seven PPERO points per game with JJ McCarthy. Without him, he was at sixteen point three. JJ McCarthy has completely torpedoed this Minnesota Vikings offense. The Steelers' offense is honestly just stupid. It's obnoxious. If you thought the low average that the target thing was specifically an Aaron Rodgers related thing, you'd be wrong. Because Mason Rudolph, he started this past week. He now has forty nine pass attempts on the season. Among relevant quarterbacks, they're forty nine of them to qualify, Rudolph is dead last, and average depth of target at four point six. Kyler Murray is forty eighth on that list. He has an eight out of six point zero, and then, of course Aaron Rodgers He's forty sixth. He has an eight out of six point three. The Steelers have targeted their wide receivers on just forty three percent of their targets this year. That's easily the lowest in the league. DK Metcalf has seen roughly twenty two percent of their overall targets, so more than half of their wide receiver targets essentially, and really DK Metcalf's problem. It's not deep ball volume. He ranks eighteenth in the league right now at wide receiver and twenty plus air yard targets. It's according to PFF, that could be worse given these circumstances, given the fact that these average up of target numbers are so low. The problem is conversion. DK Metcalf on deep balls is basically Keon Coleman. He's caught just three of his fourteen deep ball targets. That's the fewest receptions at least tied for the fewest receptions among all players with twelve or more deep ball targets. Metcalf is now averaging fifty two yards per game as a result, that's the lowest of his career, which includes his rookie season. So it's just a mess. In Pittsburgh. It's DK Metcalf or bust at wide receiver, and it's mostly been bust from that perspective. Now, speaking of the Steelers, they really leaned into this whole Kenneth Gainwell thing. In Week twelve against Chicago, Gainwell out snapped Jalen Warren thirty seven to thirty six, and arguably more Importantly, he ran twenty three routes to Warren's eleven. Gainwell had a twenty percent target share Jalen Warren zero percent. Warren saw a sixty four percent running back rush air when there was a four game stretch about a month ago where his running back rushair was closer to eighty percent per game. But Warren hasn't seen a double digit percentage target share since Week seven. That's pretty crazy when you consider how he's been deployed throughout his career. And yes, I know that he had that ankle injury, but I don't know if that really impacted the usage in Week twelve. Now, I could make the argument that Warren's better statistically than Kenneth Gainwell, but I don't think it's so glaring and so obvious that Pittsburgh needs to change things up. Warren's still been usable enough, but he's more of a floor play in Fantasy now not a ceiling play, and gain Well in PPR formats he can sometimes be flex now. It's kind of hard to say otherwise when he has target shaars of fourteen percent, eleven percent, twenty eight percent, and twenty percent over his last four games. The Raiders run game is absolutely terrible. It's horrific. They've been stuffed on twenty seven and a half percent of their runs this year according to Next Gen Stats. That's the worst rate in Next Gen Stats history, which dates back to twenty eighteen, or at least the data that we're able to see. Somehow, the Cleveland Browns have a worse success rate than the Raiders do, but Vegas is second wors in success rate. Now, clearly this funnels down to Ashton genty. According to PFF, gent's bottom five in the league in yards before contact per attempt, which is partially an offensive line based metric, but he's also bottom five in rushing yards over expected per attempt. Really, at this point, you're not using a rostering genty because of what he can do on the ground. He hasn't had a game with more than three and a half yards per carry since Week five, but since week four he's averaged a target chair per game rate of sixteen point six percent. We'll see if that keeps up now that Chip Kelly's out of the picture, but you have to imagine it will to some degree as long as Gent's healthy, because this team has not been able to get any push at all running the football. Houston's defense is really good. We saw that on full display on Thursday night. But man, it's crazy how well they're playing. On the season. No quarterback has finished as a top twelve passer in weekly scoring against the Texans. Why They rival Denver as the toughest matchup for quarterbacks by justin fantasy points allowed, they also have allowed the fewest yards per game, the best EPA per drop back rate, and the fourth best sack rate. Now, I don't want to say that they're a defense that you have to play in fantasy no matter what, though Seattle and Houston. They currently lead all team defenses with nine point six fantasy points per game. I track the defensive streaming picks that we make on my other podcasts, Living the Stream. I track those picks each week, and those picks are based on percent roster numbers pre waivers. I don't have that benefit with the Sleeper Show, though I do track those two our main defensive streaming plays. They're at about nine points per game via Living the Stream, so not that far off from the Houston Texans, which means the Texans they're the preferred choice generally, but they won't always be no matter what if you have them, though, you shouldn't drop them and start streaming. They've been too good for that. Kyle Mnunguy saw sixty percent running back rush share against the Steelers. That was his second highest share of the season, and it was the first time he was above the fifty percent mark in a game. With DeAndre Swift, Mnunguy played thirty five snaps according to PFF Swift twenty nine, and he ran three more routes. In other words, we saw a shift in usage this past week. Now, maybe this had something at least something to do with DeAndre Swift's fumble in the early second quarter, but it's not like Swift was just straight up benched after that. Manunguy is not much of a threat in the passing game. That's gonna limit his upside, But he does have a success rate that's five percentage points better than Swift's, and their rushing yards over expected per attempt almost identical. It's clear Manunguy brings a different style, a different element to this Bears offense and to this rushing attack. So I wouldn't be shocked if this sticks to some degree. I just be worried about Mnunguy's receiving upside. He's seen target shares of three percent, four percent, and zero percent over his last three. Things have not been great for Rashid Shahed in Seattle, at least from a fantasy perspective. He's seen target shairs of eight percent, twelve percent, and eight percent in his three games there. His routehairs have been in like the seventy to seventy five percent range. He's just not very usable. Meanwhile, without Shaheed in New Orleans, Chris a Lave has had back to back games with at least a thirty percent target share, and yes he's been there before this year, but leading up to the last two games, he had three straight under a twenty five percent target share. According to Fantasy Points Data, a Lave's first red target shairs have been forty four percent during these two games without Shahed. With Shahed, a Lave had a first red target share of thirty percent. So this move has been really good for Chris a Lave and even if it might be a good thing in real football for Shahed, it hasn't been a good move in fantasy. I'm fully aware that I'm looking at an l with my Lamar Jackson by recommendation. Over the last couple of weeks, he's been horrible. He's scored four point seven and seven point two standard Fantasy points, and that's my bad. He's now averaging fewer than eighteen rushing yards per game since returning from injury. He's under the thirty rushing yards per game mark on the season, and that's by far the lowest mark of his career. Since becoming starter, He's never had a season where his rushing yards per game has fallen below fifty. That's because his design rushes are down. According to Fantasy Life data from weeks one through four, Lamar was averaging three design rush attemps per game. Since his return, in his four games, that number is nearly cut in half at one point eight, and he's gotten five of his seven rush attempts since returning from injury and one game that was against Minnesota in Week ten. For Jackson to take advantage of this really great schedule, he's gonna have to run more now. In my eyes, he hasn't exactly looked one hundred percent, but hopefully he can get there or else I'll be definitely taking an l with that buy recommendation. That I made. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are bustretching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Like I said, I'll have the Sleepers episode for you later today. I'll talk to you then