302: 10 Trends for Week 8

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher Reson. What's up everyone? It's JJ zach Reeson, the editor in chief at Fandel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode three hundred and two of the Late Round podcast on the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. FanDuel's Marquee Sunday Million Contest is back with three million dollars in prizes up for grabs in week eight for just a nine dollars entry fee, take your shot at the one million dollar first place prize this Sunday with the added wrinkle of fandels fifty thousand dollars overtime touchdown bonus. Simply roster a player in your Sunday Million lineup that scores a touchdown in overtime and you'll want to share a fifty thousand dollars in bonus cash in addition to any other prizes that you win. For more details, is it fandel dot com or download the Fandel app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Now let's get to what you hit play for today, and that's this week's ten trends trend one is that Le'Veon Bell has seen three point two percent and twelve point nine percent of the Jets targets over the last two weeks, and those are two weeks with Sam Donald back in the lineup. In four games prior to Donald's return, Bell's target shares per game were twenty two percent, thirty three percent, eighteen percent, and thirty six percent. I'm not sure this is a time to panic about Bell, especially considering the upcoming schedule for the Jets. That's what I highlighted on yesterday's fifteen Transactions episode with Robbie Anderson. But I do think that Bell was seeing too high of a share when Donald was sidelined, mostly because he was an easy out for Luke Falk. To be clear, though, I wouldn't expect his share to be consistently under ten percent from here on out, and actually I kind of consider Le'Veon Bell by candidate. Speaking of the Jets, Sam Donald completed just one of fifteen deep ball passes against New England on Monday night. That's bad news, and yeah, it's pretty bad news. The good news is that almost us thirty percent of his passes have gone fifteen or more air yards this season. That's the highest rate in the NFL among relevant quarterbacks. He faced a pretty tough matchup in Week seven, arguably the toughest matchup that he's gonna face all year, So the deep passes will eventually hit. And considering that schedule that I just talked about, it's another reason that it could be Robbie Anderson's season pretty soon. Trend three is that Alan Robinson has finished as a top twenty wide receiver in each of his last three games. After failing to record a touchdown after four games but having two hundred and eighty receiving yards, Robinson has three touchdowns in his past two games. This is a good example of why receiving yards and volume in general are going to be more helpful for you to look at when you're examining a player's output, rather than looking at straight up touchdowns. It's why I look at yard to touchdown conversions all the time. Touchdowns, regress and touchdowns come from players who are seeing lots and lots of looks in an offense and gaining lots and lots of yards. That's been the case for Robinson, who, by the way, way can we get him a freaking quarterback. So a trade went down with the Patriots and the Falcons on Tuesday where Mohammed Sanu was sent. So I figured a sannew trend would be worthwhile. On today's show, he's seen a fifteen percent target show this year for the Falcons, but he hadn't hit that high of a target share in a single game since Week four, So basically things were trending down for Sunew and as a result, Calvin Ridley's been trending up. I do think this move is a boost for Ridley, but he had also been seeing about nineteen percent of Atlanta's targets over the last few weeks. That was a bump from how he started the season. But if you have Ridley, you can feel a lot more confident plugging him into your lineup each week. Now. The Patriots have the second lowest pass to rush touchdown ratio in football right now. Arizona is the lowest, but the Patriots have run for twelve touchdowns while throwing for eight since Tom Brady entered the league. New England's never had a pass to rush touchdown ratio below one. They were at one during his career, meaning they threw for as many touchdowns as they ran. But it was the year Tom Brady missed the entire season. So essentially what I'm getting at here is I would expect this ratio to start to favor the pass a little bit more moving forward. I'm not sure Brady is a buy candidate, because buying a quarterback who doesn't run isn't generally a smart idea, but we should expect some positive regression to hit. Trend six is that Alshon Jeffrey has seen at least twenty percent of Philadelphia's targets in each of his last four games, and he's averaged about a twenty seven percent target share over this time. You may have noticed that he hasn't been very usable, though, and it's because he has just five deep ball targets over this time and his season long average depth of target is just eight. So despite the volume, I wouldn't necessarily be trying to get him aggressively, especially since he's got the name value and Deshan Jackson is eventually going to be back. The Eagles also get the Bills, Bears, and Patriots over their next three games. The Falcons haven't recorded a sack in four weeks. According to Rich Reebar of Sharp Football Analysis. That's the longest streak since two thousand and eight by any team. Now, the Falcons secondary is banged up and not very good, but the lack of pass rush has really helped opposing fantasy quarterbacks as well. Those two things are connected. Over this four week span, Atlanta has allowed four top five fantasy performances to quarterbacks. Dawson Knox has seen seventeen percent and twenty percent of Buffalo's targets over his last two games, and according to PFF, he's run forty four routes during that time. The reason this could be important, aside from the fact that it's hard to get that type of target share from a tight end, is that Tyler Kroft played in Sunday's game for the Bills. Without a ton of alternative pass catching options in that offense, Knox could be a decent higher end tight end two, or even a lower end tight end one from here on out. Dalvin Cook has seen fewer than ten percent of Minnesota's targets in each of his last two games. That never happened across his first five, with four of those games featuring a time target chair north of twenty two percent. Now, I'm not necessarily concerned about this two week trend, but I think it's at least worth noting. This final trend is that Keenan Allen hasn't ranked higher than wide receiver thirty four and weekly scoring over the last four weeks. That comes after three performances where he was wide receiver seven, Wide receiver sixteen, and wide receiver two. I do see a rebound coming, though. Alan saw a near thirty percent target chair on Sunday after seeing a slight dip in weeks five and six, and during this four week span he still ranks tenth in the league in air yards. You can probably consider Keenan Allen a nice by low candidate. Right now, that's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round podcasts, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and if you're listening to it on Apple Podcasts, do me a favor and leave a rating review, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Tomorrow's the matchup show. I'll talk to you then. Thanks for listening,