931: 10 Trends for Week 8

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host, JJ Zacher. Hey, j zacherwefan. What's up everyone. It's JJ zachar Eson in this episode nine and thirty one of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. I know all of you are football fans, but I also know a lot of you are basketball fans too, and the NBA is back. To celebrate, Underdog is offering up boosts on all NBA only Pick them entries through October twenty seventh. That's on top of the boost Obra promotion that's been running throughout the month. You guys should check it out. And if you're on the site and you're ready to join, make sure you use promo code Late Round when you're signing up. That'll get you a nice deposit bonus and you also get access to my rest of season rankings. They're email to you after you sign up, Deposit and play. That's on Underdog Fantasy dot Com or through the Underdog app, and that's promo code Late Round when you sign up. Now, let's get to these ten trends. It's been a pretty disappointing start to Marvin Harrison Junior's career. When you look at his peripherals, it's tough to really understand why he's been so bad. He's got a twenty six percent target share per game rate, he's been targeted on twenty three percent of his routes run as a top thirty number at wide receiver. Those are both pretty strong numbers. His average at the target is over fourteen yards, again, really solid. The problem has really just been conversion. According to PFF data, only fifty five percent of his targets have been catchable this year. That's right in line with Calvin Ridley. It's one of the lowest rates that you're gonna find. There's a little bit of noise of that kind of data, but it does paint some picture that this is kind of situation related. He's played slightly below expectation in PPR points per game as a result. Now, I wouldn't actively be buying Marvin Harrison because Arizona's schedule is pretty tough, great for wide receivers. But I don't think i'd be actively selling either because there could be some regression heading his way right now. Marvin Harrison Junior, just to hold a player on the Cardinals who I think is actually a bye right now? Though, is Trey McBride. His short term schedule isn't fantastic, but the long term one doesn't look that bad, and he's been underperforming versus expectation, playing a couple of points per game below what we would expected given his usage. His usage, though, has been low key great. In completed games this year, McBride hasn't seen a target share lower than twenty five percent. That's basically impossible to find a tight end unless you're Brock Bowers. I'm way more on the buy side with McBride than the cell one. The Buccaneers said they were going to have this three headed monster in their backfield in Week seven, and that kind of happened, but it kind of also didn't. It just depends on what your expectation was. Rashad White played forty seven percent of the team snaps Bucky Irving he was at thirty six percent. Sean Tucker was at nineteen percent. Now, it was a negative game script against the Ravens, so they probably felt most comfortable with Rashad White. He ran the most routes, but it wasn't a ton more than Bucky Irving. It does seem like Sean Tucker, though, is the clear RB three, and I think that was kind of the expectation, but now we have a game with more concrete evidence of that. Anthony Richardson has been a problem for Josh Downs. In three games this season where Joe Flacco has thrown the ball twenty five or more times, Josh Downs is averaging nineteen point two PPR points per game. He is a twenty eight percent target chair per game in those games. In two games with Anthony Richardson, he's averaging three point three PPR points per game. His target share goes from twenty eight percent to twenty one percent. Now, obviously the Colts are a totally different offense with Anthony Richardson under center, and matchups are going to dictate some of this too, but even the secondary numbers, the non production numbers, they've been far worse with Anthony Richardson, and that's a big concern. Jordan Whittington was a popular sleeper last week, even on My Sleeper Show. He was featured alongside two two out Well. In his two games before the rams by, he had a ninety seven eighty five percent route participation. He was being used pretty heavily in that Rams offense, and then in Week seven he did nothing. He didn't run a single route. Everyone's been wondering what happened with Jordan Whittington, and it sounds like that his shoulder injury was more of a hindrance than we realized. That's what Sean McVay said post Week seven. It would have been nice to know, but at least we know that it wasn't due to performance. I still think that Whittington should be rostered in most leagues, or at least a lot of leagues, even with Cooper Cup potentially coming back, just because things were trending well before the bye and Whittington is a promising rookie. Something else kind of interesting with the Rams, but also not it had interesting given what we've seen from them in recent years, is the fact that they continue to not target their running backs or I guess in this case, just Kyron Williams. Rams running backs have an eight point eight percent target share this year. The average across the league just for context, is eighteen percent, and the team with the second lowest running back target share this year is at twelve point eight percent. So the Rams are in last and running back target share by a significant margin. This isn't anything new though. Over the last five years, the Rams have ranked thirty second, thirtieth, thirty second, thirty first, and thirty second in running back target share, but to be fair, they've never had a target share this low. This is part of the reason why Kyron Williams is such an enigma. The Rams continue to rush for so many of their touchdowns. They have by far the lowest pass to rush touchdown ratio in the league. But it's tough to just call Kyrien Williams a regression candidate and a sell because number one, the offense should be getting better with their wide receiver Pece is getting healthier, and then number two, their schedule for running backs it looks great. Everything else, though, does point to some regression happening with Kien Williams, and the receiving work just hasn't been there all season long. Something we saw from Russell Wilson in his first start was downfield throwing. His average up of target was eight point six. That's according to PFF. Justin Fields had only gotten to that number in two of his six starts, and keep in mind Russ wasn't facing the easiest opponent. That's going to help George Pickens dramatically. Pickens saw his highest air yards per target rate against the Jets, and even though his catchable target rate wasn't significantly different, the fact that he may see more down the field targets is going to play directly into his skill set. This is why the Steelers made that quarterback move. Ramandre Stevenson was back for the Patriots in Week seven, and it didn't go well. He's now scored fewer than ten PPR points in three of his last four. In his return, he handled fifty eight percent of the team's running back rushes, which isn't that far off from where he'd been all season, but his eight point three percent target share was the second lowest of his season. He also is maxed out at a fifty six percent snap rate since Week two. To put this all another way, Stevenson had awesome, awesome usage in weeks one and two. We're talking like a seventy percent plus running back rush share and an elite route participation, but that's dropped pretty significantly since that time. Antonio Gibson is digging into his workload, especially when you look at routes run in an average at best offense We're gonna need more than that from Stevenson if he wants to be a legit, legit fantasy asset. I talked about the Washington Commanders pretty early on in the season and how that secondary looked like one that we were gonna target. Quarterbacks against them had been amazing and fantasy football dating back to last year, well, this being a trend show, let's talk about it. Trent Washington has now held Andy Dalton, Lamar Jackson, to Shaun Watson, and Kyler Murray over their last four games to point totals below their season long averages. That's turned the Commanders into a bottom half matchup for quarterbacks when you adjust for strength of opponent. That's just something to keep in mind as you look at streaming quarterbacks to target. The last trend this week is about the Las Vegas Raiders backfield. Zamir White returned to the Raiders lineup in Week seven after missing some time with a groin injury, and maybe it was the fact that he hadn't played in a while, but there was a big change with how that backfield was split. White an averager running back rush here per game of seventy two percent from weeks one to four During that stretch, he was below that seventy two percent mark just once. In Week seven. During his return, he handled just eleven and a half percent of the team's running back rushes. Alexander Madison continued being the team's lead back again. Maybe they're just easing him in, but it's a good sign for Alexander Madison and it's a bad sign for Zamir White. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and make sure you're subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel that's at YouTube dot com slash at LATEROUNDFF. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll be back in your ears tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.