435: 15 Transactions for Week 8

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Late Round Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at Fandel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode four hundred and thirty five of the Late Round Podcast with many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Pause. Thanks for tuning in. So I haven't brought this up on the Late Round podcast for some reason, or I don't think that I have, But every week so far of the NFL season, I've been doing a live Snake Draft with my colleagues Jim Sonas and Brandon Godoulah on FanDuel Live. They happen on Fridays at three thirty Eastern. We go through a three way weekly snake draft, talk about slate strategy and help you get ready for the games upcoming that week. For those that tune in live this week, we'll be giving away a free ticket to the Fanduels Sunday Million right after the draft ends. For more info, subscribe to Fandel's YouTube page or follow FanDuel across social media to make sure that you don't miss it. Now, with that, let's get to this week's transactions by Travis Folgum and ad Jalen Rager. Travis Folgum has been awesome since his breakout game against Pittsburgh a few weeks ago. Over his last three games, his target shaers have been thirty six point one percent, twenty six point three percent, and twenty six point eight percent. He scored thirty one point two, nineteen point five and twelve point three PPR points. No Eagles player, according to Pro Football Focus has run more routes than Folgum from weeks five through seven. But because of his name, because he's this out of nowhere breakout player, fantasy managers will likely think that this Fulghum breakout is kind of fluky, But I don't think that He's done this against pretty solid opponents, and over this timeframe these three weeks, according to PFF, he's top ten in yards per route run. And like I've talked about on the show before, he has an underrated prospect profile two but maybe the top reason to bring him up this week. And I'm bringing up Jalen Reger too because he's back in practicing and I love me some Jalen Riger. But the reason I'm bringing these guys up is Philadelphia's rest of season schedule through the end of the fantasy football season. The Eagles get the Cowboys, Giants, Brown, Seahawks, Packers, Saints, and Cardinals, and then the Cowboys again. None of those matchups should scare anyone. Six of those eight matchups are coming against teams that rank in the top half of the league and adjusted fantasy points allowed to wide receivers, meaning they're easy opponents. So now is the time to invest in the Eagles passing attack, at least the pass catchers. I really like Fulgum and Reager moving forward. Add Rashard Higgins, so Odell Beckham tore his ACL next man up Rashard Higgins, and Sunday's win over the Bengals, Higgins caught all six of his targets for one hundred and ten yards. He had a twenty one point four percent target share. If that type of share continues, and I think that it can. But if that continues, he's gonna be in the wide receiver three discussion. Maybe even better because upcoming for Cleveland are games against the Raiders, Texans, Eagles, Jags, and Titans. Each one of those opponents ranks fourteenth or better. As matchups against wide receivers according to my schedule adjusted Fantasy points allowed method, and for the record in deeper leagues, you can add Donovan People's jones. He should now get more run as Cleveland's wide receiver. Three. Buy Keenan Allen. Sometimes you have to buy high in fantasy football. I talk about this all the time, but with Keenan Allen, I don't know if we're buying high right now. I think that he can get better. He's one of two wide receivers with DeAndre Hopkins being the other one, with at least a thirty percent target share this year, and that includes a game that he left early. He's outside the top ten and PPR points per game at wide receiver. But from here on out, I think he's gonna be a top ten guy. It's not that bold, but I just at least want to say it. The biggest knock on Allen so far this year has been touchdowns. He only has two of them despite having four hundred and eighty one receiving yards. That's two hundred and forty and a half yards per touchdown. The league average at wide receiver this year is a touchdown every one hundred and sixty three yards. Now, Allen hasn't had amazing usage close to the end zone. He's tied for thirtieth in red zone targets this year, but he's still underperforming in the touchdown column, and then similar to guys like Rashard Higgins and the Eagles wide receivers. Another reason to buy Keenan Allen is the schedule through the rest of the season. The only tough matchup that LA has on paper is against New England, and as of today, no team has a better Fantasy Football playoff schedule for their passing attack than the Chargers do. In weeks fourteen through sixteen, the Chargers face the Falcons, Raiders, and Broncos. So I really like Keenan Allen down the stretch here sell Mike Evans. I've talked about Mike Evans more than any other player this year on this podcast. I understand it might seem like overkilled a all him out as a cell again, but fantasy managers don't know what to do with Evans right now. He's had back to back bad outings and they don't know what to do. So the question that I pose in the fifteen Transactions Calumn this week is Is there any hope? Is there any hope for Mike Evans? And I don't think that there is. Evans has now played three games without Chris Godwin, He's played four games with him. Without Godwin, He's averaged twenty one point two PPR points per game. He's had a target share per game of twenty two point eight percent. With Godwin, he's averaged seven point three PPR points per game. He's had an eight point eight percent target share per game. He's been absolutely horrible with Chris Godwin this year. Now, we could say that maybe this is just a small sample, maybe this doesn't really matter, but guess what Tampa Bay added Antonio Brown. There's another mouth defeat in that offense. If it was some random, replaceable wide receiver, I wouldn't really care. The mouth defeat argument doesn't really matter for something like that. But this is Antonio Brown, you guys. I know he hasn't played football in a year, But the last time we saw Antonio Brown, he was still really good. It's not like Antonio Brown had this des Bryant trajectory. It's not like Brown saw this massive decline in his production and that's why he left football. He left football because of some off the field stuff. On the field, it's a different story. That's just how it is. And maybe Antonio Brown doesn't do anything. Maybe it's a horrible signing. But there's still not a whole lot to latch onto with Mike Evans because of these splits that we've seen with Chris Godwin. And the thing is with Evans, at least you have a name that you can sell. Everyone who plays fantasy football knows who Mike Evans is, so even if he's not producing very well, you can still probably sell him for something. I actually made a poll on Twitter on Monday, and I said who would you rather have rest of season in PPR leagues? Mike Evans or Travis Fulgam And about two thirds of people said Travis Folgam. That would be in that bucket. I would rather have Folgum than Mike Evans. But considering that one third of people are saying Mike Evans, that means you can still sell him right now, add Jamichael Hasty. So the San Francisco backfield is really really banged up. Raheem Mostert's on ir. Tevin Coleman hasn't played since Week two, and then in Week seven, Jeff Wilson, who was randomly the lead back, he hurt his ankle and that allowed rookie Jamichael Hasty to build off of his nine carry game from Week six. He carried the ball nine more times against the Patriots in Week seven for fifty seven yards, and so far this year, Hasty's been pretty good on his touches. According to number five success rate statistic, which is the percentage of positive expected points runs made by a running back, Hasty has been right in line with Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson. So if each of the backs that are ahead of him on the depth chart miss week eight, he's in play hold. Chase Claypole look the Steelers wide receiver group to a lot of people this year, and to me included, they've been pretty tilting Deontay Johnson in particular because he seems to play all the time and then he gets hurt. And I've talked a lot about this Steeler wide receiver group on this show this season. I talked about them last week and I mentioned that Deontay Johnson was a goodbye and the reason for that is because people were down on Johnson as a result of Chase Claypole's emergence. This is what I wrote in my fifteen Transactions Calum last week. It says, quote Claypole hurts James Washington more than anyone else on the Steelers as long as everyone's healthy. In weeks one and two, the two games where Johnson's been healthy, the snap split between Johnson and Washington was one hundred and nine to sixty eight in Johnson's favor. The reason we've seen a spike in Washington's production, especially this past week, was because Johnson's been sidelined. And then fast forward one week and look, I'm not saying this just to pat myself on the back here. I do know the Steelers well, don't get me wrong, but I'm mentioning all this to give you guys some context about how this Steeler's offense operates and what they're doing with their wide receivers. The snap counts among Steelers wideouts in Week seven against Tennessee, Juju Smith Schuster had sixty five, Deontay Johnson had fifty nine snaps, Chase Claypool fifty one, James Washington eighteen, and the meanwhile, according to PFF, Smith Schuster had forty seven routes run Johnson forty three, Claypool thirty three, and James Washington twelve. Basically, what this all tells us is Claypool operated as the team's number three wide receiver. To me, though from my perspective that was to be expected. I'm actually looking at what happened in Week seven as a good thing because he clearly, clearly ran ahead of James Washington. That wasn't happening earlier this season when Deontay Johnson was healthy. In weeks one and two, James Washington was getting more run than Chase Claypool. So that tells us. That alone tells us that better days are ahead for Chase Claypool. Don't freak out. Maybe your expectations were just way too high for Claypool entering the game. And yeah, I thought he was gonna have a better performance than he had against Tennessee too. This is why we look at peripheral numbers. Though the peripheral numbers aren't horrible for Chase Claypole, so you have to hold him. Add Carlos Hide. So Chris Carson left that Seahawks Sunday night game, that crazy, crazy game. He left it early with a foot injury. It's being reported right now as I'm recording this as not being significant, But regardless, you should be adding Carlow's hide who's his backup. After Carson's final snap of that game in the second quarter, hide Out attempted every Seattle running back twelve to three on the ground. He played by far the most snaps of the remaining backs. He's the go to Chris Carson replacement, and he should see the goal line work too. Drop Cam Newton. All right, So, any transaction that I talk about needs context. That's why I talk through each transaction. But I think with the quarterback position in particular, there's additional context on top of that. Context that's needed, and it's more so about your league. It's league context. If you're in a league where every manager is holding multiple quarterbacks, like two or three quarterbacks, you probably can't go and drop Cam Newton. So please don't hit my mentions and say not in my league, JJ, I get it. Leagues are different. It's hard to cater content to every single league type. But if you're in a league and there's a lot of them out there where Joe Burrow was just picked up, or maybe Joe Burrow is still a free agent. Then yeah, in that type of league, you can absolutely drop Cam Newton. Now, Cam does have touchdown regression heading his way. On the positive end, He's only thrown two passing touchdowns this year. His yardage shotal tells us he should have closer to six. That difference of four touchdowns is the largest difference in the NFL in the negative end, So Cam Newton has the most regression positively coming for him in the passing touchdown column. I just don't know if there's any hope. It's sort of like how I feel about Mike Evans. Newton's thrown for more than two two hundred yards in just one of his five games, and it came against Seattle. We know Seattle's beatable through the air. And then after running the ball thirteen times per game over the first two games of this season, Newton's average just eight across the last three. You know, over the first two weeks of the season, we saw Cam Newton score four rushing touchdowns. That's what got us so excited. But we also knew that that wasn't sustainable, that wasn't gonna happen week in and week out, So we needed his passing numbers to improve, and we hoped that if he wasn't scoring on the ground, he would score through the air. The problem is none of that's happened. He has not gotten better as a passer. The efficiency is not there. New England has one of the worst offenses in the NFL, so the passing numbers are lacking and he's running the ball less. That's a combination that you don't want for Cam Newton in fantasy football, and that's why right now in some leagues you can drop him. Add Logan Thomas. This switch to Kyle Allen has been low key magical for Lowan Thomas. His target chair hasn't really changed that much with Kyle Allen under center, and we'll ignore Week five where Kyle Allen was injured, but his efficiency has. Logan Thomas has gotten a lot more efficient with Kyle Allen under center. According to PFF, Thomas has a yards per route run rate of one point eighty five across the last two weeks. That number was point seven with Dwayne Haskins under center. He is a seventeen point two percent target chair on the year. That's a number that's just been hit by seven other tight ends. So Logan Thomas absolutely needs to be rostered. And thank god because I touted him enough during the offseason, sell Or hold Clyde Edwards Hilaire. So we got our first glimpse on Sunday of what this new Chiefs backfield looks like with Le'Veon bell and on the surface, it didn't look all that bad for Ceh. He ended up running the ball eight times, he had forty six yards, he found the end zone, and he had a catch for seventeen yards. It was a top twenty performance at the running back position this week. Now, after the game, I sent a tweet out noting that Edwards a layer's running back rush are the percentage of team running back rushes that it dropped pretty significantly in that game. From weeks one through six, he was averaging about eighty one percent of the team's running back rushes per game eighty one percent running back rush share. Against the Broncos, it was forty seven percent. Now, the pushback from people was that the Chiefs didn't utilize their starters at the end of that game. They brought in their backups. And that's true, that's sort of true. Before the backups came in Clyde Edwards a Lair's running back rush share was closer to fifty seven percent, not forty seven percent. But even still, that number is significantly lower than what we'd seen from Cech from weeks one through six. Now, the good news is that Cech did see a sixteen point seven percent target share. That's a strong target share, and that's pretty much right in line with what we've seen from him as a receiver this year. But here's the problem, and Mike Clay from ESPN tweeted about this on Monday. Bell ran only four fewer routes than Cech in that game. Before Le'Veon Bell was a chief, the gap between Cech and the backup running backs on that team and routes run it was usually a little bit bigger than that, and that's kind of concerning. Now, I will say this about Clyde Edwards Hilaire, He's one of those players where it's really difficult to judge how people were valuing him. People are probably gonna value him all over the place. If someone's viewing him as a lower end RB one or a higher end RB two in your league, I think you can trade him away because I think moving forward, he's more of a mid range RB two to maybe even a low end RB two. Because keep in mind, guys, this was Game one for Le'Veon Bell. This was the first time that he was in that Chief's offense. What happens when he gets more acclimated, That's what scares me about cech Moving forward, add Denzel Mims. So we finally got to see Denzel Mims on a football field, and in Week seven he had a four catch forty two yard performance. But what matters most is he had a thirty one point eight percent target share. Now some might be nervous about that usage moving forward because Jamison Crowder didn't play in Week seven, But fortunately Crowder's a slot guy, Denzel Mims is not. Crowder's played over seventy seven percent of his snaps from the slot this year. According to PFF, Mims was in the slot on twenty six percent of his snaps. The guy who's going to be hurt most from Crowder returning is Braxton Barrios. He played seventy three point one percent of his snaps from the slot against Buffalo on Sunday. This rookie wide receiver class is very, very good. It's living up to the hype and maybe Denzel Mims can keep that rolling. Sell Christian Kirk. So things started a little slow this year for Christian Kirk, but they've picked up over the last couple of weeks. He has four touchdowns over the last two weeks, but he's done that on just seven receptions, so he's a pretty obvious regression candidate. He's now scored on twenty seven point eight percent of his receptions this year. His career average entering the season was a touchdown on five point four percent of his catches. He hasn't played in a single game this year with a target shair above twenty percent. But I will say the rest of his peripherals are not that bad. And obviously he's playing in a good offense, and the Cardinals upcoming schedule isn't that bad either. This cell transaction is more so a call out. It's to say that Christian Kirk is not going to maintain what he's been doing. Add Jimmy Garoppolo. Jimmy Garoppolo gets Seattle in Week eight. That's it. That's the transaction. But in all seriousness, we know that Seattle is a beatable secondary. They're the second best matchup in the league for opposing quarterbacks according to adjusted Fantasy points allowed to the position. To put this another way, they've given up four point six more points per game than their opponents have scored this year. So Jimmy Garoppolo his twelve and a half points per game rate, which isn't that great, we should expect that to be closer to seventeen in Week eight. That's not bad for a quarterback streamer. Add Derek Carr. Another quarterback streamer this week is Derek Carr, who's probably been way better than you realize this year. Derek Carr and a points game basis, has been better than Drew Brees, Joe Burrow, Matt Ryan, and Ben Roethlisberger. He's averaged over twenty points per game since Week one when they face Carolina, and Josh Jacobs got all their touchdowns. This week, he gets the Browns, a team that's allowed three top five performances already this season to quarterbacks in terms of justin fantasy points allowed. Cleveland's the third best matchup for an opposing signal caller, So I like car as a reliable streaming option. Add the Tennessee Titans defense, So if you look at the Titans Bengals game this weekend, and you look over on fandals sportsbook. The over under is fifty four and a half points, but Tennessee's a five and a half point favorite, so they should see a positive game script defensively, and that's obviously helpful for fantasy purposes. So far this year, the only team to rank worse than fifteenth and weekly defensive scoring against Cincinnati has been Jacksonville, and we know Jacksonville's defense sucks. The Bengals are now allowing the fourth high a sack rate in the league. With Tennessee still out there in seventy three percent of Yahoo leagues, they make for a good streamer here in week eight. The sixteenth transaction this week that you can't get my weekly fifteen transactions column over on number fire dot com is to add Eno, Benjamin. If Chase Edmonds is a free agent in your league, he obviously gets top priority here, but I'm assuming he's not. If he is after I said buy him a couple of weeks ago on this show, then I'm upset with you. But next time that Cardinals depth chart, now that Kenyan Drake is injured, it's Eno, Benjamin You guys might remember me talking up Benjamin in the offseason because my prospect model really liked him. He was an ultra productive running back in college and he's a great pass catcher. That's what I always look for. Considering the Cardinals have had some sort of split in their backfield this year with Edmunds and Drake, and considering Edmunds has one career NFL game with more than eight rushes, Benjamin should be added just to see what kind of workload he gets. Edmunds end up being a league winner, though, I am very excited about his opportunity. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching forward pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, you know. Forgot to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly ten Trend Show.