938: 15 Transactions for Week 10

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Speaker 1: This is the Lab Podcast with your host JJ Zachera, J J. Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode nine and thirty eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the transactions this week, I want to remind you that even though you drafted your fantasy teams back in August, you can still do snake drafts right now over on Underdog. Just head to Underdog Fantasy dot com or download the Underdog app. In the draft section, click NFL and you'll see tons of drafts that you can participate in right now. And if you're new to Underdog, make sure you sign up with promo code Late Round. That'll get you a nice deposit bonus as well as my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are updated for you each Tuesday once you get the link to them, but to get them you have to sign up, use promo code Late Round, make a deposit, and start playing ads. Zamir White, So, just last week on this show, I talked about Alexander Madison being a bye because he'd been performing like a bell cow, but no one seemed to care. Now when talking about Madison, I talked about how fragile his situation was. When we're talking about non elite players in fantasy football, there's always a chance that their usage changes. We're not talking about Bjon Robinson here, We're talking about Alexander Madison. He's not locked in to see a bell cow workload, and that can impact a fantasy assets bottom line. That's part of the reason that he has a lot less value despite the fact that he was seeing a lot of work. Now on Sunday, obviously, Madison went out and he had his lowest running back rush share in a month. And it wasn't that Zamir White was just taking over that backfield. Madison saw significantly more snaps than White did. It's just that a negative game script hit and a mire Abdullah and ended up playing the most snaps in that backfield as they're pass catching back Now. I'm bringing all of this up because these situations are not set in stone when discussing these mid tier players. Things can change in a literal instant, and that's especially true when the people making those decisions are no longer around. The Raiders fired offensive coordinator lu Getzi on Monday. Things are changing for the Raiders, and if that means that the Raider's wing to divvy up that backfield differently, then they're going to divvy up that backfield differently. They have a bye week this week. What if they come out of their buy and they say that Zamir White is now our lead back. So I would be willing to stash Zamir White in order to find out And this could obviously go in the other direction too and severely favor Alexander Madison. We just don't know. We should prefer Madison based on how he's performed, based on how he's seen work. But this call out on today's show during a week waiver wire week, this is to say that, yes, Zamir White has had a year, but volume is volume, and if his coaching staff wants to give him more volume than Zamir White could be viable in fantasy football because coaches at running back, they're the ones who are dictating how much work a particular player is gonna see. And what if this coaching staff, what if these changes mean that Zamir White gets a little bit more work By Marvin Harrison Junior. So there's been a real lack of consistency for Marvin Harrison Junior this year, and I know that fantasy managers who have them, they're annoyed. He had three straight weeks of fifteen plus PPR points earlier this season, and then it was a stretch of just horrible outings. And then in Week eight he had that twenty three point outing and then he followed that up with just two catches for thirty four yards in a fumble. The Cardinals passing attack was not very good in Week nine. They had a tough matchup, but it was also partially because they didn't have to be that good. They only had nineteen total targets, and the good news for Marvin Harrison Junior, he had five of them. Twenty six percent target share. Since Week one in completed games, Harrison Junior has averaged a target share per game rate of twenty seven and a half percent. He hasn't fallen below twenty one percent in a single game during the stretch. Those are really good numbers. He just hasn't converted very well. But a fifty one percent catch rate, which is where he's at right now, that's a pretty low number. Like sustaining that low of a number might be hard. To do and yees. Some of that has to do with a low catchable targets rate, but the Cardinals have a chance to turn that around down the stretch. According to what Justin Fantasy Points allowed, they have the third best short term schedule for wide receivers. The rest of season schedule is ninth best. Now, it might be a little bit tough against the Jets this week, but after New York the matchups look pretty good. You don't need to be overly aggressive here. It's just always a good idea to try to get someone cheap who's coming off a bad game or multiple batout. When the target chair is there and the talent is there, you want to always match those things up. And to Mario Douglas, so I talked about Damrio Douglas on the show in the past, but he's still rostered in just twenty two percent of Yahoo leagues. That number needs to be higher. Drake May and to Mario Douglas have really only played two games together this year. May's made four starts and he finished three of them, but Douglas was sick during one of them. He didn't play that much against Jacksonville after quote vomiting all day leading up to the game. That means there's basically been two games of Drake May and to Mario Douglas. And in those games, Douglas has seen target chairs of twenty nine percent and twenty three percent. He scored twenty one point two PPR points and ten and a half PPR points. I said it before, I'll say it again. There's a chance that to Mario Douglas is Drake May's new Josh downs by the New York Giants passing attack. I hope none of you are driving listening to this because you might have gotten an accident when you just heard me say that. Buying the New York Giants passing attack. Why would we do that now? No one's trying to sell this as the Giants being a top notch offense. It's just that their rest of season schedule is amazing. Let me just read out their final games through the fantasy season. You ready. This week, they get Carolina, Then it's Tampa Bay, Dallas, New Orleans, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Indianapolis. Those matchups give Daniel Jones the number one fantasy schedule a quarterback, both in the short and the long term. The wide receiver schedule is fourth best rest of season. Now many are rightfully concerned about the sustainability of this Giants offense without Andrew Thomas on the offensive line. Well through the end of the fantasy season, they'll be facing just one below average matchup in pressure rate, which is Dallas. That should be very helpful for this passing attack. So Daniel Jones is a good streamer this week because he does get Carolina. But you could go out and trade for Elik Neighbors right now. That'd be a by low moment. You could even go out and add Darius Slayton off the waiver wire because we know how Slaton performed without Neighbors. He's almost like a handcuff. And then you layer on this schedule these opponents in these matchups, things are looking decent. And I stress the word decent for this Giants passing attack sell Rico Dowdell. So just going back to what I was saying earlier, when we have a non elite player, there's a lot that can change with his usage from one week to the next. And that's what scares me with ric o'dowdell. Dak Prescott is set to miss some time and even though he's had a pretty average season by Dak Prescott standards, a below average season, He's still the Cowboys starter for a reason. Prescott being out will lower the number of scores this Dallas Cowboys offense generates, and fewer scores means less opportunity for the players than that offense, including ric O'dowdell. Donald's coming off a game where they hit season highs in snapshare and running back rush share, but as we know, Ezekiel Elliott didn't play in that game. Dowdle's the most talented back on that roster. But I don't think anyone would say that Rico Dowdell is a special running back, and there were obvious different circumstances in Week nine. So where I'm at with him is that if you look at their next two games, they get Philly and Houston. Those are two of the three toughest matchups for running backs by justin fantasy points allowed. So if you're sitting there right now with three wins, four wins, maybe even five wins, you might want to consider flipping Dowdell this week because this could hypothetically be a high point the Dallas playoff schedules. Kind of average their running back matchups after the next couple of weeks, they're okay. So if you want to hold Dowdell, that's fine. This is more of a recommendation if you need production right away. I am concerned about Dowdell over their next couple of games, and this could be a cell high moment because he had over twenty PPR points in Week nine. Add Quinton Johnston, so this one's gonna be quick. Quentin Johnson returning the Chargers lineup in Week nine, he had a great outing. He scored twenty two PPR points. He had a nineteen percent target chair. He's now been at that nineteen percent target chair mark in four of six games this year. Now, I don't think you're getting a league winning player with Johnston and Lad McConkey. He's been the dude seeing the most targets in that offense. He's the one that you won. But I think that Johnson's a solid option, a bye week villain for like a twelve team league by Jalen Waddle. When it comes to how the market is viewing Jalen Waddle right now, there's no doubt in my mind that he's at a low point now. Could his production remain the same, Could he continue playing pretty poorly, which would make him even less desirable. Sure, but how much further would that drive his value? Right now, my mentions on Twitter are filled with people asking if they should drop Jalen Waddle. They're a Reddit threads talking about dropping Wattle. Now, I want to be clear here, I had Waddle as a draft target entering the season. So some of you are probably listening to this and saying that, oh, JJ just can't take an L. I can take an L. The Jalen Wabble recommendation that was more than likely an L. I say more than likely because the season's not over yet. But as I wrote in the newsletter this week, I'm a big boy. I can take an L. It's gonna happen all the time. I've taken many of them throughout my career. This is just a probability driven play, nothing more than that. This is game theory. We have three years of data showing us a Jalen Waddle is a good wide receiver. He's seen his yards per rout run rate prior to this year get better every single season across his first three years in the league. That yards peru run rate was never below one point seventy five. That's something that only seventeen other wide receivers have been able to accomplish since twenty eleven. And all of those wide receivers are perennial Pro bowlers aside from Hunter Renfro. And again, those are players who for the first three years of their career had at least a one point seven to five yards per route run rate each season. Let's just look at the facts here, Let's just lay it out. Wattle's played in four games this year with TUA. Two of those games were against the Bills, that's a team that's been more of a run funnel this season. He also faced the Jags and the Cardinals, and in those games he had one hundred and nine and forty five receiving yards. That's not totally abnormal. Now, Like I talked about on last week's Mailbag episode, Wattle's target shaars they've been a little bit lower this year. That's because the running back target ers and the tight end target shares on the team have been higher. But as I said on the Mailbag episode, Wattle had a tough matchup in Week nine. Not only that, the exact same thing can be said about Tyreek Hill. It just hasn't been as bad as Jalen Wattle. Miami's also been losing. And to reiterate what I've been saying, we're working with a small sample size. It's been four games, technically less than four games because too was knocked out of one of them. We're working with small sample sizes. Four games is not a big sample. It's not a big enough sample in my opinion, at least to all of a sudden say that Jalen Wattle is bad. And look as I'm not saying that everything's just gonna turn around for Jalen Wattle, that he's all of a sudden gonna live up to his draft day cost. I highly doubt that's gonna happen. What I am saying is that he's a talented player who has underperformed. Maybe that's not enough for you, but for me, I would gladly send some bench assets to get Waddle and throw him on my bench. I would love to have a talented player like Jalen Wattle just sitting there in case things do turn around. That's what this transaction is all about. Add Mike Kasiki. So Mike Kasiki had a really big game in Week nine for two main reasons, well, maybe three, I'll say the first one is the matchup. The second one, though, is that T Higgins was out. In games with T Higgins this year, Kaseki has averaged a target share per game rate of just five point two percent. When Higgins has been out, that number shoots up to nineteen percent. The third thing, though, is that Eric All tore his ACL. That contributed to Kaseki running around on sixty one percent of Cincinnati's dropbacks. That was a season high. We don't know when T. Higgins is going to be back, and this All injury does open things up for the tight ends on Cincinnati, obviously, including Mike Kasiki, so I think he should be rostered in most leagues now by Juwan Jennings. We're not that far removed from Juwan Jennings posting forty six PPR points against the Rams that happened back in Week three. Jennings has only played in three games since then. Those three outings have been pretty average, but he also hasn't been active since Brandon towards ACL. He's about to be more of a full time guy in this offense. He's likely going to take on a lot of slot work. And that's really big because when Juwan Jennings has played this year, he's been good. PFF has him charted as a top fifteen wide receiver this year. Fantasy Points just a couple of weeks ago, had him as a top three player in their separation win rate metric. Juwan Jennings yards per route run rate this year two point seventy five. That's amazing. I'm not calling him out because San Francisco has this really great schedule or something. It's pretty average. I'm just calling him out because I think people have forgotten that Juwan Jennings is about to take on a serious workload, or at least he has the potential to. And he's been very good this year. He hasn't played in a few weeks, but I'm expecting if he is active, I'm expecting him to do well. Add Aaron Rodgers. So look, I don't think Aaron Rodgers is going to be some league winning quarterback, but he's been averaging over seventeen points per game over his last four and two of those four games came against teams that are pretty good against quarterbacks by justin Fantasy points allowed, we know the weapons are there for him, and the Jets get the Cardinals, Colt, Seahawks, Jaguars, and Rams and five of their next six games. Those are all top twelve favorable opponents for quarterbacks by justin fantasy points allowed. So Rogers could be in store for a pretty nice stretch in fantasy football. And right now, he's only rostered in about forty three percent of Yahoo leagues by Breise Hall. Having Breeze Hall on your fantasy team has been a roller coaster this year. I totally understand that, but I do think that we're staring at an obvious by low opportunity right now. He's had back to back down performances. He scored nine point nine and ten and a half PPR points over his last two games. His Week eight usage was a little bit concerning. He only had a fifty seven percent running back rush here, but his Week nine running back rush jumped up to seventy nine percent and then all the while Halls dip below a twelve percent target share just once this season. The usage is there. He's seeing a lot of work. He might give up a little bit of goal line work to Braylen Allen here and there, and his carries might fluctuate a bit, but in this running back environment where it's not easy to find a bell count, Breeze Hall is a bell cow. That's why we shouldn't assume that he's gonna continue down this ten point per game pace. And that's especially true because Jets running backs have the fifth best rest of season schedule by justin Fantasy points allowed, and they have arguably the best playoff schedule. Two in weeks fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen, the Jets get the Jags, Rams, and Bills, Jacksonville and Buffalo in particular, their top three opponents for running backs by justin Fantasy points allowed. So I'm expecting Breeze Hall to be totally fine. Add DeMarcus Robinson. I guess we got to talk about DeMarcus Robinson because he's been playing pretty well over his last two games. He scored almost forty five PPR points over that timeframe. Now, there are obviously a lot of caveats here. Two weeks ago, Cooper Cup and Pooka and Akua didn't run their normal number of routes, and then this past week, in the middle of the game, Poka and Akua was ejected Robinson two weeks ago had just a nine percent target chair, but this past week it was twenty one percent. I don't think we should be super bowlish here. I just don't think that the waiver wire this week is very strong. But we saw Robinson with a nice stretch last year. What if he does it again this year? Add Noah Brown. To be honest, if I were to compare Noah Brown to DeMarcus Robinson, I'd probably prefer Noah Brown. I've talked about Brown a lot on the Sleeper Show this year. He was actually a sleeper last week. He came through a five catch sixty yard performance and he had a thirty one point six percent target chair. He's been Washington's number two wide receiver for a while now. With this strong performance, though, you have to wonder if more work might be going his way. Add Ray Ray McCloud. So, as I've been saying, I don't really love this week's waiver wire, I'm not gonna repeat transactions like adding Taysom Hill like I talked about last week, or Cedric Tillman like I did a couple of weeks ago. You guys already have that information, so we can move on and look at a deeper play, which is adding Ray Ray McLeod. Drake London has an injury that doesn't sound super serious, but there's a chance that he could miss this weekend's game against the Saints. Now McLeod does not play the same position that Drake London does. Yes, they're both wide receivers, but they're not the same kind of wide receiver and they don't mine up in the same spots. But without London, hypothetically more targets could be funneled McLeod's way, and he doesn't have a bad matchup this week against the Saints. So just monitor this Drake London injury as the week goes on. Add the New York Giants defense. So I know that the Saints didn't come through last week when they played the Panthers. They weren't a good streaming option, they were a little bit banged up, and they also haven't generated that much pressure defensively this year. They've been a bottom three team and quarterback pressure rate. That's different with this New York team. They've been fifteenth in pressure rate and they're first in the NFL and sack rate. That could cause some serious issues for Bryce Young and company, so as four and a half point favorites. I do like this Giants defense this week. 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 bestreating for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly ten Trends episode.