1052: 10 Trends for Week 11

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacherathas Jay Jake zacher Reefan. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode ten fifty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Now, before I get to the trends this week, I've got a favor to ask you. If you check out the description for this episode, you'll see there's a link to a survey. That survey it shouldn't take long to fill out, but it's really really helpful for myself and David Kitchen, my COO, to get honest feedback from you guys. I went Late Round Fantasy Football, this podcast. The content I'm producing, I want it to be as helpful and entertaining as it possibly can be, and the best way to get that done is through listening to what's working for you guys and what isn't. So if you could fill it out, it would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Now let's get to these ten trends. The Raiders played their first game without Jacoby Myers in Week two. It resulted in a lot more Tyler Lockett. Locket ended up running a round on eighty percent of Vegas's dropbacks against the Broncos that resulted in a twenty five percent target shair. Now, Trey Tucker was the other primary wide receiver. He ran a route on every single Raiders dropback. He's now done that two weeks in a row. Lockett wasn't a transaction this week on the Transactions podcast because it's the Raiders and Lockett himself is thirty three years old and passes prime. But Vegas does get Dallas this week. Anything is possible against that defense. There was a huge shift in the Texans backfield in week ten. I know I mentioned what he marks being a by candidate last week, but I can promise you guys, I did not expect this. It was, no doubt a weird game script, but Mar's played seventy eight percent of the team's offensive snaps, which was by far a season high. Nick Chubb he was at fourteen percent, a season low. That resulted in Mark seeing a seventy four percent running back rush air, which was a season high, and a fifty five percent route share which was another season high. Based on their rest of season schedule and all the stuff I talked about last week, if this usage continues, we're looking at RB two production for what he marks, but it's just one game. That's still a pretty big if. Another backfield that flipped last week was with the Giants. A couple of weeks ago, Devin Singletary out snapped Tyrone Tracy, seeing a fifty five percent snapshare versus forty five percent one In week ten, though that flipped, Tyrone Tracy had a sixty six percent snapshare Devin Singletary thirty four percent. Now, Tracy only scored eight point one PPR points, but he was used a lot more than he was the previous week. Now a huge problem for Giants running backs. They have a brutal rest of season schedules. Specifically, the next few weeks are absolutely terrible. They'll get the Packers, Lions, and Patriots, three bottom five matchups for running backs by justin fantasy points allowed. Now it eases up a little bit after that, but they do get the Vikings in Week sixteen, which is another bottom ten matchup. So overall this is good for Tracy, but the offensive environment the schedule just brutal for him. Teteroa McMillan is seeing good target shars. He's been at forty four two thirty five percent target shares over his last three games. Those are some pretty crazy numbers that's resulted in twenty four targets, but that number is so much lower on the Panthers than it would be on another team, most other teams, because Carolina loves to run the football. Since Week four, according to Fantasy Life data, Carolina has a minus twelve percent dropbacks over expected rate. Only Seattle's had a lower rate during that timeframe. But Seattle's averaging over thirty points per game in this stretch, Carolina is averaging sixteen point four. It's just not conducive for fantasy purposes. Otherwise, McMillan could be smashing this year. After Kyle Manungai's big performance against the Bengals in Week nine, no one knew exactly how the Bearers would split their backfield in Week ten. Well, the results are in. DeAndre Swift basically just played his typical role. He saw sixty one percent snap share, exactly his season long average. He had a fifty six percent route share, higher than his season long average, and he had a sixty five percent running back rush share and a season high twenty two percent target share. Those peripherals were kind of awesome for DeAndre Swift. Honestly, in general, DeAndre Swift has been low key awesome just himself this year. He scored double digit PPR points in every game. Since Week one, He's averaging almost sixteen PPR points per game. This appears to still be DeAndre Swist's backfield. Definitely from a fantasy perspective too, given that pass catching ability. The Philadelphia Eagles have one of the most frustrating offenses in football for fantasy purposes, and they're winning games, which makes us even more tilting. But if you remember I talked about this earlier in the season, over their first three games, they really were running the ball a ton. According to Fantasy Life dropbacks over expected rate, the Eagles were thirty first. From weeks one through three, they had a minus seven percent rate. Then we saw that shift a little bit. Weeks four, five, six, and seven they were mostly neutral, and actually during that stretch, because of one big game and drop back rate over expected, the Eagles were first in the NFL and drop backs over expected. That was from week four through week seven things were moving in the right direction for fantasy purposes, and then the last two games Week eight and Week ten they've been at minus six percent and minus twelve percent. They had a dropbacks over expected rate of minus twelve percent against the Packers. The issue with this is that the Eagles offense just isn't as good year over year period. Through ten weeks, just thirty six percent of Philadelphia's drives are ending with a score of some sort That rings twenty fifth in the NFL. Last year, across the season, that number was forty five percent. Philadelphia ranked eighth. Kevin Bittulo. In this offense, they're just not doing as much to confuse defenses. This is also something that we talked about earlier on in the season. Last year, the Eagles ran play action on twenty five percent of their dropbacks. This year, that's following the twenty one percent last year. The Eagles had an RPO rate of fourteen percent this year, it's ten percent. They used motion on forty six percent of their plays this year forty four percent. All the while, the offense is just running a little bit slower too. They're not running as many plays, so it's sort of all of these small things not converting as well, not being quite as creative, not running it as quickly. All of those small things have combined to create more of a mess for fantasy purposes, especially for that passing attack. Zay Flowers has not scored a touchdown since Week one, and this is beyond a trend at this point. Flowers has now scored ten NFL touchdowns on two hundred and ninety targets. He had five touchdowns as a rookie, he had four as a second year player. He's got one through nine games this year. Now, Obviously he's a smaller wide receiver, so the initial thought is that he's just not that much of a red zone threat, and you would be correct. Flowers has seen one end zone target this year, just one. It came all the way back in Week one. He had seven of them last year, but those seven came in just four games. It's not like they've been consistently coming in. Meanwhile, on that same team, and just for comparison, Rashad Bateman had eleven en zone targets in the regular season last year. He's got three this year. Despite the fact that Flowers is lapping him in target share. Now, this doesn't mean that Zay Flowers is never gonna score a touchdown again. I'd be shocked with his target share. If he doesn't find the end zone a few times rest of season, it's just more difficult for him to get there, and that's why he hasn't hit fifteen PPR points in a single game since Week one, and it's what's limiting him from really reaching a great ceiling Fantasy Football as long as this usage continues. It's been about a month since I've talked about Quinn Shawn Judkins on this ten Trends episode, and unfortunately, not much has changed with his overall usage. Judkins has hit a double digit percentage target share just once this season. That happened all the way back in Week four. He has just a twenty six percent route share on the season. That's worse than David Montgomery for just some perspective, and it ranks outside the top fifty at the position. Judkins now has a six and a half percent target share per game rate on the year. Since twenty eleven, we've only had fourteen running backs finished a season in the top fifteen and PPR points per game with a target share per game rate below seven percent. So it does happen, but it doesn't happen frequently. But of those players who got there, of those fourteen running backs. All but three of them played in an offense that ranked in the top seven in touchdowns per game. Two of them were in offenses that ranked eleventh, and then the other one in an offense that ranked seventeenth. As we know, the Browns do not have a good offense. Judkins is the RB twenty and PPR points per game right now, so he's not that far off from that top fifteen spot. He also has a great schedule that's made me so close to making him a buy candidate. But the lack of receiving usage just matters so much in fantasy football. It's really capping his ceiling right now. Chase Brown is back this week out of the bye, and something very important could be happening to his role. Samaj p Ryan could be sidelined. Now I don't have that information right now, whether p Ryan will play or not, but entering thereby, p Ryan was week to week with a high ankle sprain and the last time we saw Cincinnati that made a huge difference in Chase Brown's role. Brown ended up seeing an eighty six percent route share back in Week nine. That was by far his highest route share of the season, and the way receiving sort of funnels down statistically. You've got receptions in yard and targets at the box score level. Then you look at target share, or the percentage of targets that a player has within his team's offense, and then that stems from routchare A player can't have a high target share without running routes. There's going to be a natural correlation between route share and target share. And in week nine, the last time we saw the Bengals Chase Brown within eighty six percent routchair saw a thirty one percent target share. And it's no coincidence that it happened when Samaj p Ryan got hurt. So if pe Ryan is out, you should feel really good about Chase Brown's usage. It has a chance to be better than you think. The last trend this week is about Jamison Williams. The Lions are using more Williams, at least compared to the first few games of the season. Now, I went to see if I could find anything in the data with the type of routes that he ran in Week ten with Dan Campbell calling plays, I couldn't really find anything significant, But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't shout out what's been going on since week four. From weeks one through three, Williams never saw a target share of fifteen percent. He was averaging a target chair per game rate of just thirteen percent. Since then, his target share per game rate is eighteen percent, so a nice five percent bump, and he's now scored sixteen points six or more PPR points and three of his last four. Now I mentioned I couldn't find anything super interesting about the kind of routes he was running, But sometimes players will play the exact same role and just get targeted differently, which is what I think is going on here. Since week four, Jmo has had an average depth of target of eight point seven yards. That number was twenty point five during weeks one through four, So when he's been actually targeted, it's coming on plays that are closer to the line of scrimmage. That allows him to do more after the catch, and frankly, just gives him a way better floor in fantasy football. Given the amount of dome games that are upcoming for the Lions, I'm pretty optimistic about Jamison Williams maintaining better production down the stretch. I don't think we're gonna see first this month Jamison Williams during the final months of the season. 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 bestarching for a pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll catch you tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.