694: 10 Trends for Week 7

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar esen in. This is episode six hundred and ninety four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the trends this week, I want to remind you about FanDuel Faceoff. Fandel face Off is where you compete in quick, fun games against other real people for real cash. It has all sorts of games that you're familiar with, like Home Run, Derby, Wheel of Fortune, puzzle and strategy games, and there's more on the way. Contests are action packed and lasts between two to five minutes. You can plan on your couch, waiting in line during a commercial break, wherever, and on your schedule. Plus, you can practice for free anytime, whether it be head to head, multiplayer or larger tournaments. Fandel Faceoff has something for you. Plus, in most contests, you'll be matching against players of a similar skill level, so you're never totally overmatched even as a beginner. Face Off is also tied to your FanDuel accountant wallet, so you can easily use your daily fantasy funds or sportsbook winnings in the app. Visit fandle dot com slash Faceoff or download the Fandle Faceoff app in the Apple App Store today to get in the game. Agent location restrictions apply. Voidware prohibited seefandle dot Com slash Faceoff hyphen terms for terms and conditions. The first trend this week is about the Broncos backfield because what happened on Monday Night in Week five against the Colts. Melvin Gordon handled sixty five percent of the team's running back rushes and he had an eight percent target share. He played over fifty six percent of Denver snaps. He even had a fifty four percent snap right in the fourth quarter in overtime in that game, So it wasn't a situation where his snapcount was super super high to start that game and then they benched him. Now, he was banged up entering Week six, but he openly talked about feeling fine after the Broncos lost the Chargers, and in Week six, Gordon saw three carries and zero targets. He played nine snaps to Latavius Murray's twenty seven and Mike Boone's twenty one. On Monday night. We'll see how this progresses, but you absolutely cannot start Melvin Gordon right now, and Latavious Murray looks to be like the lead in that committee, which really isn't saying that much because it's still a split backfield and the Broncos offense is a complete dumpster fire. Over the last couple of weeks. Heading into Week six, Dalvin Cook was hovering the sixty percent snap share mark. It was a reason to not be as optimistic about him moving forward, but something very good happened in Week six. He played eighty eight percent of Minnesota's offensive snaps. Now, Alexander Madison entered that game with a shoulder injury of his own, so that could have something to do with it, but it's at least a positive sign. I moved Dalvin up a spot in my rest of the season rankings this week as a result of that snapshare, and you can get those rankings over on the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. By the way, just head to Late Round dot com. I still think the fantasy community is sort of undervaluing Alvin Kamara. On the season. There are only two players with at least a seventy percent running back rush are and a twenty percent target share per game. One of them obviously Christian mccaff the other Alvin Kamara. He's been a top ten PPR back in back to back weeks. He just can't find the end zone. But fortunately, based on where he's seeing his touches, I've got him closer to two expected touchdowns, meaning he is underperforming in the touchdown column, So you could consider Kamara a by candidate. If someone's frustrated, it's just hard to imagine they're super frustrated because he's still producing. Another player who got a bump in my rest of the season rankings this week was Chris Godwin. I'm higher on Godwin versus the consensus after he saw a season high thirty two percent target here on Sunday while playing almost ninety percent of Tampa Bay snaps. His snap rates slipped in Week five. It was good to see him heavily involved in that Tampa Bay offense once again, and the Bucks have a pretty favorable schedule, not just over the next month, but for the rest of the season. Two. He's someone that I would love to have in my fantasy squad. The Seahawks have been horrible against tight ends this year. Yes, TJ. Hawkinson's huge blow up game against them that driving some of this, But on the season you have the Broncos tight ends hitting eighty five yards against them in Week one, Ross Dwelly finishing his tight end twelve in week two, Kyle Pitts had an eighty seven yard performance against him in Week three. Then you had TJ. Hockinson in week four, Adam Troutman was a top ten option in week five along with Taysom Hill. I'll get to that in a second, and Zach Ertz was a top ten option in week six. Now, fantasy points against is based on position eligibility, so Taysom Hill's huge performance against them a couple of weeks ago, it's definitely skewing this data. It's skewing the way that the Seahawks look against tight ends because he's not a traditional tight end. The Seahawks are allowing eleven point six PPR points to be scored on them over expectation each week. In other words, a team tight end group comes in they face the Seahawks, and thus far those team tight ends have scored almost twelve more PPR points than they typically score in a game. And you might be wondering, well, what happens if you take away that Taysom Hill game. I think that's very, very valid. Let's just give him a zero that week. When you do that, the number obviously changes, but it's still seven. These Titans are still outperforming by seven PPR points per game. That is still by far the worst in football. So target tight ends against the Seattle defense. Seattle to tight ends is like Vegas to quarterbacks. The Raiders are first and adjusted points allowed to opposing quarterbacks this year. Quarterbacks against the Raiders they've scored seven points, six points above their average. Clearly they didn't play last week, but Matt Justin Herbert QB five against them, Kyler Murray QB eight, Ryan Tannehill QB eight, Russell Wilson QB three, Patrick Mahomes QB two, Next up, Davis Mills. So, speaking of quarterbacks, each week on Twitter, I publish a chart that shows how often a quarterback is throwing at fifteen or more air yards and then the completion percentage that he's had on those throws. I started around week three or four, when Tua was leading the league and completion rate on those deep passes and then the leader became Geno Smith. Now the leader is Bailey Zappi. Yes, Bailey Zappi is leading the league completion percentage on fifteen plus air yard throws. Now, I'm not sure he's ever going to be amazingly fantasy relevant, but it's nice that they've got a backup unless there's a quarterback controversy. There might be, but at least they have a backup who can play well and not allow a drop off to occur with the starting pass catchers on that team. Bailey Zappi's playing great. Caleb Huntley was sort of a borderline fifteen transactions guy this week. The Falcons are running the ball a lot, and they're able to do that because they're winning and wins. This season, their pass rate has been thirty three percent that's extremely low, and losses it's forty seven percent, and they have a pretty cake schedule moving forward. Now, I don't think that we're going to see what we saw in Week six again, twenty five percent of their combined Russian pass attempts or passes. That was the lowest single game rate this season from any team. But they clearly want to run the ball and they might be able to as long as they are winning, and while they've got a mess of players in that backfield, Caleb Huntley has looked pretty good and on the season, he's tied for second among thirty plus attempt running backs in success rate, or the percentage of positive expected points runs made by a back. He's just a stash right now in case he just might be good. I wouldn't expect much, but he's playing really, really well. Daniel Bellinger led the Giants and Routes run this past week, and he ran around on eighty four percent of the team's dropbacks. That's by far a season high, and he's been trending up the last couple of weeks. His previous season high came in Week five at sixty one percent, So he's definitely someone to consider adding if you're dealing with tight end issues, which most people are. The last trend this week is about how teams score touchdowns. So a lot of you know, I like to look at pass to rush touchdown ratio whether they're scoring touchdowns through the air or on the ground, because those numbers tend to regress. Someone on the Late Round Fantasy Football Discord talking about this over the weekend and they were right to point out that teams who are more pass heavy they skewed towards having a higher passing touchdown ratio, And then the opposite is true too, Like a team throwing the ball ninety percent of the time, they won't be expected to score touchdowns the same way as a team running at ninety percent of the time. So over the weekend I did some basic linear regression work and created a very basic expected passing touchdown rate metric. It shows how we would expect a team to score their touchdowns based on their overall pass rate. So, for example, a team like Philly has seen about thirty two percent of their touchdowns come via the pass this season. That's extremely low. It's the lowest in the league. Actually, they've rushed for their touchdowns much more frequently, but they're pretty run heavy team overall, so it being lower is to be expected, just not this low. In truth, based on this metric, the team that's skewed too far in the rushing touchdown direction this season has actually been the Jets. New York has seen about forty seven percent of their touchdowns come through the air this year. Their pass rate tells us that that number should be closer to sixty nine percent because they started the season with such a pass heavy offense. The Eagles are actually third behind the Browns two. And on the other end, the team who should have more rushing touchdowns versus their passing touchdowns is Baltimore. That's because almost seventy seven percent of their touchdowns have come through the air. Their pass rate tells us that number should be closer to sixty two percent. It's at least something to give those numbers a little bit more context, and if that interests you, it's now part of the data dump that I post each week on the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. And hope to follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. Remember to check out Lateround dot com. I will talk to you tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.