1011: 15 Transactions for Week 1

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha Ja Ja Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode ten to eleven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. Football season starts this week, and there's no better way to lock in your dominance with best Ball on DraftKings, where you draft once and ride your roster all season long. And right now, DraftKings giving all customers a can't miss offer. Draft one, get one, and turn lineup in the fifteen million dollars Best Ball contest. For just twenty dollars, you'll score another Best Ball ticket to play free for share of that fifteen million dollars, giving you a second shot to win big. It's easy. Just draft your dream team once, no weekly management required, and let your top scorers automatically start each week across the whole season. 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One per customer entered the Best Ball fifteen million dollars Headliner contest by nine to four to twenty five to get one bonus entry twenty dollars entry required. Reward expires in thirty days. See terms at DraftKings dot com. Slash NFL dash Best Dashball sponsored by DK Well. We've officially made it. It's the first fifteen transactions episode of the season. For those of you who are new welcome. This is the episode each week where I talk about who to buy, sell, ad and drop in fantasy football. I write a newsletter with all these recommendations, and I turn it into this podcast episode. You can find that newsletter by signing up for freeover on lateround dot com. So with all that in mind, let's get this season started. Add Ali Gordon. Miami's backfield is kind of a mess right now. Devon Chan is set to return this week from this calf injury, but who knows what happens there. You never know what can happen with something like that. And then there's Jalen Wright who had some sort of leg operation. He's gonna be sidelined for a bit. And then as we know, Alexander Madison he's been out for the year with a neck injury. So the next man up in this backfield is Alie Gordon. Now, Gordon was a Day three selection in last April's draft, so it's really hard for him to have a great ZAT model score. And that's my prospect model, the ZAP model. It's called the zacharyes An adjusted prospect model because I'm very very creative. Draft capital is an input in that model. So a round six select, which is what Ali Gordon was, it's gonna be really hard for a player like that to have a crazy high score. But with that being said, Gordon's score was sixty three point four. That was way better than expected given that draft capital. The model saw him as undervalued. It gave him a low risk draft capital delta. All that says is that the model liked him more than the NFL did, and that's because he had good size and his age justin production was really strong, which isn't that much of a surprise, because he won the Doak Walker Award that's for the best running back in college football. He won that a couple of years ago. He got statistical comps in the model of James Connor and Ramandre Stevenson. Now, look devon a Chan's fantasy value. It really comes down to receiving. He's being selected high in fantasy drafts because of what he can do through the air. Last year, his running back rush air per game rate and non injured games was fifty eight point five percent. That's a good number. It's not an elite number, and it leaves room for another running back to see some volume. And that other running back in this backfield right now is Ollie Gordon. And Gordon's still out there in two thirds of Yahoo leagues and for the record, when I mentioned the percent roster numbers on this show, I can only work with the information that's out there. I understand that some of you are in five ten fantasy leagues and he's not available in any of them. But I found that Yahoo is a good indicator for what the average league really looks like. And I'm speaking to a wide variety of people. So please don't attack me when you hear these numbers. But regardless of all that, Ollie Gordon a very clear ad right now by Drake May. So look, if you consume late round fantasy football content this summer, you're not surprised by me saying to by Drake May right now, He to me was the most obvious late round quarterback of the season. We know that rushing production is really important for quarterback success in fantasy football, and Drake May they gave us that as a rookie. The only full time quarterback starters last year to average more rushing yards per game than Drake May, Lamar Jackson, Jaden Daniels, Jalen Hurts, and Kyler Murray, Drake May gave us over four points per game via rushing alone. As I talked about earlier, this offseason on the show. Second year quarterbacks have been really good bets in that QB seven to QB eighteen range historically in fantasy football drafts, and that's exactly where Drake May was being drafted. And there's really some chance that you won't get another opportunity to buy into Drake May. The Patriots get the Raiders and the Dolphins over their first two games of the season. According to Pro Football Focuses preseason secondary rankings, both Vegas and Miami have bottom five pass defenses going into the season. So if Drake May goes off, his price is gonna soar. Buy Traveon Henderson. So if any of you guys are fans of the Fantasy Footballers, which I'm sure a lot of you are, then you might have heard last week they had their Fantasy MVP show and I was featured on that show. I submitted my MVP and my MVP was Traveon Henderson, So naturally I've got to talk him up on this first fifteen Transactions episode. Let's talk about the ZAT model. First, Henderson looked good in that model, and that's because his breakout score, which is derived from a player's agent schedule, adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt numbers, it was an impressive eighty six point four. He had three hundred and twelve receiving yards on twenty seven catches as a freshman at Ohio State with Jackson Smith and Jigba Garrett Wilson, Chris Alave, Marvin Harrison Junior and a mechg Buca on that same team, he still had three hundred and twelve receiving yards. Now, Trayvon Henderson is on a team with way worse pass catchers than what he competed with in college, and he's in a backfield with Ramandre Stevenson who's coming off a season where he had a really poor yards per route run rate, And as we know at running back, that's predictive of future target share. I don't think it would be that surprising if Trayvon Henderson ends this season with like a thirteen or fourteen percent target share. What we should be worried about is the ground game work. But a lot of receiving volume can make up for a lack of rush attempts a lack of rushing production. In fact, since twenty eleven, we've seen five instances where a running back finished the season with a fifty percent to sixty percent running back rush share and a thirteen percent to sixteen percent target share. Both of those numbers, like I said last week in the Bold Predictions episode, both of those numbers are well within Trayvon Henderson's range of outcomes. Those five running backs and PPR points per game finished eighteenth, thirteenth, twelfth, eighth, and sixth. I really do think a top ten season is in Trayvon Henderson's range of outcomes. But he also has a really high floor because of how they're going to deploy him more than likely as a pass catcher. And just like Drake May, Henderson can get off to a hot start as well because they get the Raiders and Dolphins over the first two weeks of the season. AD xavierly Get, look, I'll just be straight up, xavierly Get was not a draft target of mine throughout the summer. I just didn't think he was that impressive of a prospect, and in year one nothing really changed my opinion. I thought that Jalen Cocher was the best rookie wide receiver for the Panthers last year, but as we know, Coker's now on IR he has his quad injury, So Xavier Leget is going to get more opportunity. And look, I know a lot of people are gonna say xavierly getting Jalen Coker. They basically play two different wide receiver positions. Jalen Coker's been more of a slot guy. Laget's gonna play on the perimeter. But that's not really how projections work. There's only a one hundred percent target share to go around in an offense. If there's a worse wide receiver now playing in the slot, that's gonna help Tedoro McMillan and Xavier Leget among other pass catchers in that Panthers offense. The question is we'll it get capitalize. Like I already said, I don't think he's that special of a wide receiver. He had question marks littered throughout his prospect profile when he was coming out last year, and he came through as a rookie with a pretty bad one point one nine yards per route run rate, and he had opportunity last year to really become an alpha in that offense. But I'll be honest, I've been adding him in drafts ever since that Cocher injury because this game of fantasy football has plenty of variants. You're throwing a late round dart throw to get Lagette, or in this case, he's just sitting on the waiver wire. He's still out there in a ton of leagues. And here's one of the main reasons that I think you should be going after him. Carolina gets Jacksonville, Arizona, Atlanta, Miami, and Dallas and five of their first six games this year. Not a single one of those secondary should scare you at all as a fantasy manager, at least not right now. So we could see some usable weeks from Xavier Lagette ad Bryce Young. So like not having Jalen Cocher, that's a slight hit to Bryce Young's overall fantasy football upside. But Young is still set up pretty well for this twenty twenty five season. I just talked about Xavier lguetz schedule. Bryce Young is gonna face that exact same schedule. There's a lot of bottom tiered secondaries he's gonna face over the first month and a half of the season, and in Week one Carolina against Jacksonville, that game has one of the higher totals in the slate. So at the very least Bryce Young is a decent streamer, but also young wasn't that bad when he came back from being benched last year. During his ten game finish, he averaged eighteen standard Fantasy points per game. He was actually providing fantasy managers with over five points per game via rushing. So I think when you combine all of this, you can bind the schedule you combine with how he finished last season. I think there's a chance that he's a QB one, like a lower end QB one, at least higher ENQB two to start this season over the first month or so of the season. Sell Garrett Wilson. Okay, let's just do a little bit of math here. Okay. New York is set up to be a very run heavy team. They lack reliable pass catching targets. They have pretty good running backs, they have a good offensive line, and they have justin Fields. Fields has started forty four games in his career. He's gotten to forty pass attempts just once. He's averaged a little over twenty five pass attempts per start, and those aren't all targeted attempts. When you have a pass attempt, it doesn't automatically get converted into a target When I talk about a metric like target share, that's on total targets, not total pass attempts. So not all of those twenty five pass attempts per start would equate to a pass catcher target. But let's just pretend that this season New York does get to twenty five targeted pass attempts per game across seventeen games. In order for Garrett Wilson to hit one hundred and thirty targets, he would need to see a thirty and a half percent target share. Now, given who he's competing, that's certainly doable, but keep in mind he's never finished the season with that high of a target share, and we usually only see two or three wide receivers get to that thirty percent mark each season. That could be a really big problem. Wilson's never had a season with fewer than one hundred and forty seven targets, and he's also never finished the season higher than wide receiver nineteen in PPR points per game. Now, I know what you're thinking. DJ Moore had a wide receiver one season with justin Fields just a couple of years ago. My counterpoint to that was that DJ Moore that season was unbelievably efficient. He finished with the yards per target of ten point zero. His yards per route run was two point three to one. Garrett Wilson has never come close to those types of numbers, Even if they're possible, we would never project that kind of production. And that's likely the type of season that we're gonna need to get from Garrett Wilson for him to be a wide receiver one in fantasy football. With ug against the Steelers and Bills to start the season, there's a chance that we immediately see Garrett Wilson's value drop a little bit. So you may need to get out right now. Add Woody Marx the new surrounding Joe Mixon's foot, it's not encouraging at all. There's a non zero chance that Joe Mixon just does not play this year. So the early down go to in that Houston offense is likely Nick Chubb. But he just didn't look like himself last season coming off of that injury. I mean get this, Entering last season, sixteen point seven percent of Nick Chubb's overall rush attempts ended up gaining ten or more yards on the ground. Last season, that rate was four point nine percent. What if Nick Chubb is just dust. Now, could Damian Pierce be the guy? Maybe he's not a terrible end of bench stash either, but we've also never seen him be much of a pass catcher in the NFL, And so that leads me to rookie Woody Marx because Marx is a pass pass catching back. His best season sixteen point one percent collegiate reception share was sixth best in this year's loaded running back class. His breakout score was twelfth among NFL combine invites. Now, his receiving work was boosted a little bit because he played under Mike Leach and Mike Leach's offenses historically had favored running backs through the air. But even when he transferred to USC last season, Marx had a fourteen percent reception share, he was still used as that kind of player. Now, the downside analytically with Woody Marx is that he's over twenty four years old already, and he's not the most athletic running back in the world. He had a ninety seven point five speed score that's a little bit below average. But I don't think either of those things are massively alarming, especially for a guy that you can just add off the waiver wire right now. So who knows, maybe Woody Marx just surprises us and he's better between the tackles than what we're projecting. And to me, he's providing something that they don't have in their other running backs right now, which is pass catching upside. And we know that the past catching upside is what we're always looking for in our fantasy football running backs. Add Chris Rodriguez. So Brian Robinson is no longer a commander. That leaves a pretty big hole in that backfield because in twenty twenty four, Robinson handled a sixty four percent running back rush are per game, and his two seasons prior he was at sixty seven percent and sixty four percent as well. Now, I know we're all excited about Bill Crossky Merritt, and of the three backs in Washington that are fantasy relevant, I do like Krosskey merrit the most, But don't sleep on Chris Rodriguez either. He's the one who's out there on a lot of waiver wires. Now. Rodriguez, on paper, he profiles as mostly an early down bruiser. In five seasons at Kentucky and College, he only caught twenty passes in the NFL, he's only seen three targets and he's listed at two hundred and twenty five pounds. But there was a report from the Athletic this past week and it mentioned that Rodriguez shed some pounds this sofseason and also quote he worked with the wide receivers coach Drew Lieberman in tending to improve his pass catching and route running ahead of another season in Kingsbury's system, which often features running backs in the pass game. So look, maybe that means nothing, but the Commanders have arguably the most up in the air backfield in the NFL right now. Krossky Merritt, he's an improven seventh round pick. Austin Eckler, he's still undervalued. I still think he's a good pass catcher. But he's thirty years old and this is an offense that's projected to be a top ten offense this season. So why not throw a dart and see what you can get with Chris Rodriguez. And the nice part about this is that we should get some information early on in the season just based on usage, so you can always part ways if things start slow for Rodriguez. But Washington does kind of have a great schedule for Rodriguez's skill set. They get matchups against the Giants, Packers, Raiders, and Falcons over their first four games. By Darnell Mooney. So, Darnell Mooney was back in practicing last week. That was the first time that he practiced since suffering a shoulder injury during camp. And there's hope that he's going to be ready for the Falcons opener. We just don't have official word yet. Regardless, I think it's encouraging news. It's good news. Hopefully he's going to be back soon, and that's really big for fantasy managers. In my opinion, Mooney was undervalued in drafts this summer. He was someone in the Late Round Draft Guide as a target. According to research in that guide, one way to find value at wide receiver in the late rounds is by looking at deep bald numbers previous season deep bald numbers. When wide outs have high totals down the field in their n minus one season, they tend to outperform expectation and their end season their current season. Mooney last year ranked third in the NFL and fifteen plus air yard receptions. He trailed only justin Jefferson and Courtland Sutton. According to PFF data, only George Pickens, DK Metcalf and Justin Jefferson had more twenty plus airyard catches. Those deep ball numbers were on a twenty one percent targets yere per game rate last year. That's really solid. And then you add in Michael Pennix. He's now starting for Atlanta and he showed off a tendency to throw the ball down the field. In twenty twenty four, he had the second highest average at the target in football among one hundred plus dropback quarterbacks. If we assume Mooney goes in Week one, then he's gonna face the Bucks, Vikings, Panthers, Commanders, Bills, forty nine ers in Dolphins over his first seven games of the season. PFF has those secondaries ranked twenty second, twenty seventh, thirtieth, twenty eighth, fourteenth, twenty third, and twenty ninth, respectively. Mooney's still out there in half of Yahoo leagues, but he could be an easy trade target as well. He's just sitting on someone's bench, so go ahead and trade for him. Add Jaden Blue. Jaden Blue is still rostered in fewer than forty percent of leagues. That number should be closer to eighty percent. The Cowboys are entering the season with huge question marks at running back. You have Javonte Williams, who's probably going to see the most work to start the year, but he's gained ten or more yards on fewer than ten percent of his carries over the last two seasons in Denver. Last season, Williams was worst among all the team's running backs and rushing yards over expected per rush, yards after contact per attempt, and EPA per rush. And there's also Miles freaking Sanders. Now, maybe Sanders just surprises all of us, but he hasn't been relevant in three seasons. He's essentially on the wrong side of the running back age cliff too, or at least he's really really close. So why wouldn't we want to invest in Jaden Blue? Despite his smaller frame, he actually scored really well in the ZAP model because he had pretty good age adjusted receiving. He's also electric with the ball in his hands. That gives the Cowboys a backfield element that they just don't have in Williams and Sanders. Now, it's doubtful that Jayden Blue is going to be a bell cow for the Cowboys only had two hundred and fourteen rush attempts in college. But there's a real chance that he starts the season with some manufactured touches, and if he does well on those touches, his talent might just be undeniable. I could see a scenario where Dallas uses him like Tony Pollard earlier on in his career. The difference, though, between Blue and Pollard is that a head of Blue is not a star running back in Ezekiel Elliott. It's Javonte Williams and Miles Sanders add Tory Horton. So another Day three picked that the ZAP model liked was Tory Horton, and the Seahawks seemed to like him too. He's gotten a lot of praise out of Seattle over the summer. Head coach Mike McDonald at one point he said, quote, I'm seeing the same thing that you guys are when talking about Horton's strong play, and then he later added that Horton's quote making multiple plays every day. I mean some of his teammates are calling him Jerry Rice Junior. Horton had a really solid ZAP score of seventy point four and the only Day three wide out from this year's class with a breakout score above fifty and a career first downs per route run rate above ten percent. His best season in yards per team pass attempt was a very very impressive three point five to one. Now, look, guys, day three wide receivers rarely rarely work out, So take all this with a grain of salt. But when there's camp pipe and when there's a good zap profile, I'm gonna lean in. He's the right kind of end of bench stash sell Baker Mayfield. Now, you've heard me talk about Baker Mayfield's upcoming regression all summer long. You even heard about it last week on the Bold Predictions episode, And I'm gonna use that exact same example on today's show because the easiest way to explain this is with touchdown rate. Mayfield was at a seven point two percent rate last season. That's a number that he's never come close to outside of twenty twenty four. Since twenty eleven, fifteen qualified quarterbacks with next season data have been between six point seven percent and seven point seven percent touchdown rate. That's plus or minus point five percentage points from Mayfield's rate. Those fifteen quarterbacks average twenty one point four standard fantasy points per game in their high touchdown rate season. The following year, they averaged seventeen point two points per game. Every single quarterback saw dip in fantasy points per game. It's just really really hard to sustain such a high touchdown rate, and with Liam cohen Gon, it's gonna be even tougher. Not only that, but after Tampa Bay's game against Atlanta this weekend, the schedule is actually kind of tough. They get the Texans, Jets, Eagles, and Seahawks over their following four games. Each of those teams rank in PFF's top twelve secondary rankings entering the season. Now, maybe you want to just wait until Week one is over to trade away Mayfield. That's understandable. I think he's in a good spot this week against Atlanta. Just know that not only is regression coming for him, but so is this tougher early season schedule. Add Chig a con quo. If you were to just dumbed down what we're looking for in a late round tight end, it would probably be this. You want a guy that has athleticism and who could also be a top two pass catcher on his team. It's that simple Chiga con Quo checks those boxes. Outside of Calvin Ridley, who's gonna be the titans number two target getter. I like elk Iamanner, but who knows what's gonna happen this year. There's a very real chance that no wide receiver steps up for them. A Conquo ran a significant number of routes with Cam Woard during the preseason, and he's got a really efficient season under his belt. As a rookie. He had a two point six to two yards per route run rate. My voice just cracked there because it's such an absurd number. Now, we might not feel great about a con Quo this week against Denver, so there could be an opening to add him next week, But I'd rather just get ahead of it, because if a Conquo has really good peripherals, if he has like a a really good route participation and a really good target share, even if the production's not there, he's still going to be featured in a lot of Waiver Wire articles. So you want to be ahead of it and add him now. By JK. Dobbins. So if you listen to last week's Bold Predictions episode, this transaction might not be that surprising either, because last week I boldly talked about JK. Dobbinson teammate RJ. Harvey both finishing a top twenty four running backs in fantasy football this year. And Sean Payton has a lot to do with that prediction, since at least twenty eleven, his offenses have ranked in the top six and running back target share in every season that he's been a head coach, and that's turned into fantasy production. Even last year, with absolute dust at running back the Broncos, they were pretty average and PPR points scored. There's a very real chance that JK. Dobbins opens up the season as Denver starter, and that could be huge for fantasy football because not only is he running behind a great offensive line within a great scheme for running backs, but the Broncos will face the Titans, coltson Bengals, and three of their first four games those games against Tennessee and Indianapolis, those could be great positive game scripts for Denver's running backs, and then Cincinnati. They're entering the year once again with one of the worst defenses in football. So I think at the end of September when we look back, JK Dobbins could be one of the better running backs in fantasy. Add the Arizona Cardinals defense. Look, none of us are excited about using the Cardinals this week, but they get Spencer Rattler in the Saints. They are on the road, but they're five and a half point favorites. That makes them a streaming option. But if you can't get the Cardinals, I don't mind the Rams either. They're at home, their favorites, and they get a Houston offensive line that has a lot of question marks. So it's the first week of the season. This is the first fifteen transactions episode of the season, and you're getting kind of sixteen transactions instead of fifteen. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are bestorting for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. Follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening to everyone. Hope you enjoyed it. I'm so glad football is back. I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly ten Trends episode.