831: 10 Trends for Week 10

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacher rethas j Jake zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight hundred and thirty one of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the ten Trends this week, I want to send an update about the Tony Pollard information that I talked about yesterday on the fifteen Transaction Show. I mentioned that the Cowboys have faced the fifth toughest schedule so far this year for running backs. That was wrong. It's closer to average. Everything else though still stands. Pollard's been totally fine in plus matchups. He's still a by candidate. But I wanted to revise that statement because I was looking at the wrong data, So my apologies for that. It's a ten Trends episode, though, let's get to it. We've seen a lot of teams start to regress when it comes to how they score their touchdowns. In Minnesota finally has a couple of rushing scores. Tampa Bay they're finding the end zone more on the ground. Two one team that's a definite regression candidate in the opposite direction, meaning they've run for way more touchdowns than they should have. So far this year, it's Baltimore. The Ravens have twenty seven offensive touchdowns, seventeen of them have come via the ground. Thirty seven percent of their touchdowns have been rushing ones. Based on their pass rate, that's roughly seventeen percentage points lower than expected. Gus Edwards has benefited greatly from this, but I do expect regression. I had mentioned a few weeks ago in the fifteen Transaction Show that the Dallas Cowboys passing attack was a by candidate, specifically Cede Lamb. So far, so good over their last three games where they face the Chargers, Rams, and Eagles. Dak Prescott has ranked as the QB one, QB three, and QB two and weekly scoring so far this season, He's averaged eleven point one points per game when facing a team that ranks in the top half the league, and adjusted points allowed to quarterbacks when facing bottom half opponents that number jumps up to almost twenty four Moving forward, Seventy percent of Dallas's matchups are favorable matchups. Dak could continue to be a nice fantasy starter for you moving forward, Things have not been good for Patrick Mahomes and fantasy football. He's currently the QB five and points per game, he's averaging nineteen point one points per contest. He's pacing for his worst fantasy season as a starter by far. He hasn't even taken advantage of good matchups this year. This isn't just a schedule thing. When you adjust Kansas City's performance for strength of opponent, they come in with just the twelve best quarterback numbers in the league. So really, Mahomes's number right now might even be considered inflated, which is crazy to think about. And unfortunately, from now through the end of the year, Kansas City has the second toughest quarterback schedule by adjusted Fantasy points allowed. Now. I called Mahomes a by low a handful of weeks ago because of a good upcoming schedule. He's completely whiffed. It was an l by me. I sort of hinted at buying Alexander Madison on this week's fifteen Transaction Show, and I do think that he's an interesting buy when you consider the sentiment around Madison as purely a running back. He hasn't been very good this season, but it's really hard to deny their upcoming schedule. Alongside his usage without cam Akers this year, Acres started to get run for Minnesota in Week four against the Panthers. From Week one to Week three, Alexander Madison averaged a running back rush share per game of about eighty five percent. His target share per game was twelve and a half percent. That running back rush share with cam Akers dropped by about eighteen percentage points, the target share by roughly four percentage points. If Madison's able to get back to his pre Acre's usage, He's got a chance to surprise a lot of people in fantasy football. He finally saw a shift in the Indianapolis backfield in Week nine. Jonathan Taylor played a season high seventy five percent of the team's offensive snaps. He ended up seeing seventy two percent of the team's running back rushes and an amazing twenty point eight percent target share. That's been really great to see from Taylor this season. In three of his last four games, he's h an eleven and a half percent target chair. His target share per game over this time is fourteen percent. For some perspective, Taylor's never finished a season with a target share per game rate over ten point six percent, so he's been used significantly more as a pass catcher this season and that's huge for his fantasy value. According to Fantasy Life's utilization report, which again you can look at this for free over on fantasylife dot com. But according to that utilization report, over the falcons last two games, Taylor Heineke has had average depth of targets of eleven point seven and nine point four. When looking at every game from Desmond Ridder this season, he surpassed an eight out of nine point four or zero times. So Heinike at the very least is pushing the ball down the field a little bit more than Desmond Riderd did. That's a good thing for the pass catchers. In this past week, the team's running backs still saw a healthy twenty three and a half percent target chair, so the volume coming their way hasn't taken that much of a hit. Another fun one with average up the target is with the Tennessee Titans. They've used Will Levis for two games now. In those two games, Levis has had eight dots of eleven point eight and ten point eight. According to Fantasy Life, Ryan Tannehill across his six game sample this season was north of a ten to a dot just once. So Levs, just like Heinike, is chucking it down the field a lot more for his team. Aaron Jones' past weekend had his best outing since Week one, and his volume metrics shed light to that. He saw season high sixty one percent running back rush share and a season high twenty four percent target share. The main issue that I have, well, there's probably two issues. One is that Green Bays offense really bad. That's gonna limit anyone in that offense. But Jones still played just fifty seven percent of the team snaps. They're still splitting that backfield. But Jones is such a good player when he's healthy that he can still be impactful in fantasy football even with a non elite snap share. But for context, that snapshare this past week at ranked twenty first in the league at running back. The Baltimore defense has been insane against quarterbacks this year. They rank as the toughest matchup by justin fantasy points allowed, and they've given up just one top fifteen performance this season. That performance Josh Dobbs, of course, but Gino Smith last week two point seven fantasy points. Jared goff in week seven nine point four fantasy points. You probably shouldn't start Deshaun wattson this week. The last trend this week is about Jerome Ford, a player who gets the Ravens this weekend. We got a lot more for in week nine, which was good to see after his ankle injury because in week eight, Ford handled just twenty seven percent of Cleveland's running back rushes and he had a six point seven percent target share. This past week, his snapshare almost doubled and he hit a fifty four percent running back rush share that was his third highest of the season. His twenty five percent target share was his absolute highest, and his route participation of sixty seven percent was the highest of the season two. As I mentioned a few weeks ago before that ankle injury, Cleveland running backs have a very juicy rest of season schedule. It's now seventh best according to my numbers, and its third best during the fantasy playoffs. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by starching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show. H