325: 10 Trends for Week 14

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha Jay Jake Zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharesen, the editor in chief at Fandel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode three hundred and twenty five of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Before digging into this week's trends, don't forget to go to FanDuel and enter this week's Thursday Nights Special pick players from the Cowboys and Bears make a lineup, enter for nine dollars and have a chance to win a share of a seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars prize pool, including one hundred and fifty thousand dollars first place prize. For more details, vi is it fandel dot com or download the Fandel app today eligibility restrictions apply. Trend one today is that from weeks nine through eleven, Jamison Crowder ranked as the wide receiver ten eleven, and thirteen and weekly wide receiver scoring. He was crushing it in Fantasy football, but over the last two weeks he's been wide receiver seventy one and wide receiver eighty nine. His target share during that three game stretch was twenty five point three percent, and it's been about eighteen percent over his last two games. Meanwhile, we're seeing Robbie Anderson do the reverse, with two top twenty performances in a row and a target shair north of twenty percent. That's over his last two games. During that great Jamison Crowder stretch, Anderson had a target share of eleven percent. So basically, what I'm saying here is that Jamison Crowder isn't the reliable fantasy asset that we thought he might end up being, and with matchups against Baltimore and Pittsburgh in weeks fifteen and sixteen, he's gonna be tough to trust in the playoffs. He's okay this week against Miami as more of a wide receiver three or a wide receiver four type play. Though. Another good example of teammates hurting each other's production is with the Green Bay Packers backfield. Over the last four weeks, Aaron Jones has been the RB forty five, the RB three, the RB forty eight, and the RB four forty three. He's been pretty bad from a fantasy perspective. Meanwhile, Jamal Williams running back finishes over this stretch are twelve, thirty five, twelve, and twenty nine. He's been better than Aaron Jones, way better than Aaron Jones and three of their last four games. And since Jamal Williams return from his concussion that he had against Philly in Week four, he's averaged fourteen point nine points per game. During that same stretch, Aaron Jones has averaged fifteen point seven points per game, but that's with a forty one point six point outing, which is really skewing these numbers. He's scored single digit Fantasy points, he scored eight or fewer points and four of his last seven games. Jones should still be started moving forward, but the threat of Jamal Williams is very, very real, and I think the fantasy world is sort of undervaluing Williams and overvaluing Jones, or at the very least, they're not putting them as close together as they should. So I was into Jared Goff last week because of his splits against good defenses and bad defenses, and obviously against a bad defense. He did well again this past week, but the splits are legitimately insane, so I wanted to bring it up on today's show. Goff has now played five opponents who rank in the top ten and schedule adjusted fantasy points allowed to the quarterback position, so five matchups against top ten defenses. In those games, he's ranked no better than QB twenty six and weekly scoring, and he's failed to hit ten fantasy points in a single contest. He's averaging four point eight fantasy points per game in that split and one hundred and seventy eight yards per game. Now, obviously that means GoF has played seven games against bad defenses. He's played seven against defenses that rank sixteenth or worse and adjusted fantasy points allowed. In those games, he's averaged twenty points seven fantasy points per game, so an increase of sixteen points per game, and he's averaging three hundred and sixty one passing yards in those contests. Upcoming for the Rams are the Seahawks, Cowboys and forty nine Ers. Seattle's eighteenth and adjusted points allowed, so that's a borderline start. But Dallas is eleventh and San Francisco is second, so GoF is probably going to be a tough quarterback to trust in the face NFC playoffs, but I think that you can at least make the argument that against Seattle and Dallas he won't be that bad of a play but definitely not against the forty nine ers. Speaking of the Rams, Robert Woods still doesn't have a receiving touchdown this year. Based on his eight hundred and thirty five receiving yards, we'd expect him to have over five touchdowns right now. That's according to how wide receivers have scored over the last five years, but he has zero. And get this, there have only been four NFL seasons where a player had eight hundred or more receiving yards without a receiving touchdown, and the highest number of receiving yards without a touchdown that happened all the way back in nineteen ninety one al Toon had nine hundred and sixty three yards without a score. So Robert Woods is pacing towards history right now. Trend five is that Dak Prescott has thrown at fifteen or more air yards on just ten percent of his throws over the last two weeks. He had averaged a deep ball attempt on double that number heading into week twelve, which is when this trend started. This more than likely has to do with matchups against New England Buffalo. On the season, the Patriots and Bills have allowed the fourth fewest and second fewest deep ball completions in the league, so I wouldn't worry about this a whole lot. Dak should be fine for fantasy purposes, and he was actually fine in Week thirteen against the Bills. He had a QB ten performance since Week four, so a huge chunk of the fantasy season. But since Week four, DeVante Parker is the ninth best fantasy wide receiver in PPR formats on a points per game basis, He's averaged over seventeen points per game and his lowest outing during this stretch is eleven point nine points. And since Ryan Fitzpatrick took over again as starter, which is back in Week seven, Parker is the wide receiver three in fantasy points per game. He's behind only Michael Thomas and surprisingly Marvin Jones. You shouldn't be benching Parker and the fantasy football playoffs, especially with games against the Jets, Giants, and Bengals upcoming, so we now have a larger sample size. With Kareem Hunt back and playing for the Browns, he's now played four games. In those four games, Nick Chubb has averaged fourteen point four points per game versus the eighteen point nine that he was averaging before Kareem Hunt. Chubb seen his per game running back rush share go from about ninety one percent to seventy seven percent, and his target share of almost twelve percent has dropped to eight percent. Kareem Hunt has surprisingly brought some standalone value, but he's also digging into Nick Chubb's production, and that's worrisome as we enter the fantasy football playoffs. Trend eight this week is that before Ryan Tannehill became starter, the Titans ranked ninth in offensive plays run while trailing. Since Tannehill has been starter, they ranked twenty second with Mariota. They were third worst in yards per drive with Tannehill their ninth best. Like I said on yesterday's fifteen Transaction Show, this was my biggest mistake with not buying into Derrick Henry a few weeks ago. I should have been more open to Tannehill being significantly better. Maybe not this much better, but it was hard to be that much worse than how the Titans were performing with Marcus Mariota unders over his last three games, Jacob Hollister has averaged a twenty four and a half percent target share. With everything that's going on with Tyler Lockett, which could be injury related, Hollister is a must add off the waiver wire. And don't forget the Seahawks get the Cardinals in Week sixteen. The Cardinals have been atrocious against tight ends all season long. So the final trend this week is about something that I had brought up on the show before. With the Broncos offense with Joe Flacco, they were heavily utilizing both of their running backs in the passing game. With Brandon Allen, those numbers dropped, but on Sunday we saw both Philip Lindsay and Royce Freeman utilized a lot as receivers, and on Sunday Drew Locke got his first start. But Philip Lindsay had three targets and Royce Freeman had four, and that accounted for about twelve and fifteen percent of the team's targets. The highest target share that either of them had seen since the Flacco injury was twelve and a half percent, and they had only seen a target share above six percent once. So essentially, if Lindsay gets more looks in the past, he could really come through in the Fantasy playoffs given the Denver Broncos Soft schedule. That's gonna do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone. Be back tomorrow with the weekly matchup show.