333: 10 Trends for Week 16

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha, j J zacher Resa, 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 three three of the Late Round podcast and one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into the ten trends this week, I wanted to send another reminder about FanDuel's Santa Streak contest. It runs through the twenty first and all you have to do is finish in the top fifty percent of an eligible contest to build your streak. If you do, then great, your streak continues. If not, your streak ends and you can start a new one the next day. At the end of it all, you'll be rewarded based on the length of your longest streak, and the user with the longest streak out of everyone will win the grand prize. So you still have time to create your longest streak. Just head tofandel dot com and get started. Trend one this week is at Julio jo Zwans had a freaking fifty one point three percent target share on Sunday fifty one point three percent. And here's the crazy thing. In that same game, George Kittle had a fifty one point five percent target share, absolutely insane usage. The Julio usage is more interesting to me because it was the first game that we saw him without Calvin Ridley this year. There really isn't a strong second option on that team, so we could see a really high target share from Julio again here in Week sixteen. Not that high, but a projection above thirty percent isn't insane given the current state of that team. Since becoming starter again in Week seven, Ryan Fitzpatrick has averaged more Fantasy points per game than Patrick Mahomes and Russell Wilson. Now, clearly the Mahomes piece to this trend has to do with him leaving a game early with an injury, because when you remove that game, Mahomes is one point seven points per game better than Ryan Fitzpatrick during this stretch. But Fitzpatrick's been better than Russell Wilson, and he's better than a ton of other quarterbacks too. I just had to mention Wilson because he's the biggest name. As I mentioned on yesterday's fifteen transaction show Fitzpatrick is a top streamer yet again this week. Over the last four weeks, Tyler Higby's seen twenty four point seven percent of the RAMS targets per game. He's had almost a twenty five percent target share per game during this four game stretch. Cooper Cup's target share is sixteen point seven percent. Cups share this season before those four games was twenty five point five percent. This is something that I mentioned last week with Cup, but Higbee's work in the offense is what I want to focus on today more. According to Pro Football Focus, Higbee six in the NFL and routes run over this time and he's top five and yards per route run. He's been really, really good, and even though there's a tough matchup this week against San Francisco, it would be tough to bench him at this point as long as Gerald Everett is still out. Trend four is that since Week nine, DJ Moore leads the NFL with seven hundred and eleven receiving yards. Now Michael Thomas has averaged more yards per game during this stretch, but DJ Moore has been bawling out and I feel like it's not getting enough recognition, especially given his environment. Look at who's throwing him the ball. Hopefully he's going to be able to continue to do so with Will Greer under center during Championship Week, but I'd have a hard time benching Dj Moore despite that ambiguity at quarterback. Now, speaking of Michael Thomas, this next trend is an awesome one that I saw for my buddy Ryan mcdower at Ryan mc twenty three on Twitter. It's that Michael Thomas on the season has scored more Fantasy points than all Philadelphia Eagles wide receivers combined. Michael Thomas is sitting with three hundred and thirty five PPR points right now. He's dominating fantasy football, he's dominating real football. And by the way, that three hundred and thirty five point total that's more than what the leading wide receiver had in twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen, and twenty sixteen, and there's still two more games to go. In Week fifteen, Tennessee ran fifty four offensive plays while trailing. During their previous four games, they ran forty nine plays on offense while trailing combined. Derreck Henry was average for the first time in over a month this past week, and I think a lot of people are going to blame the hamstring, but there was touchdown variants because he was stuffed at the goal line a couple of times. And Tennessee doesn't utilize Henry all that much when they're trailing or when they're in a hurry up offense. This was always my fear with Henry, but then Ryan Tannehill entered the picture and the Titans became one of the most efficient offenses in the league. But if they see a negative game script, that fear is always there with Derrick Henry. I just wish that they would use him more in the passing game and get him into space, because we know that he's a monster with a football in his hands. Josh Allen currently has eighteen passing touchdowns and nine rushing touchdowns. Only Cam Newton and Cordell Stewart have finished a season with twenty or more passing touchdowns and ten or more rushing touchdowns. Cam Newton's actually done it twice. Now we know that the allure from a fantasy perspective with Josh Allen is that he's going to give you fantasy points with his legs. On the year, thirty seven point six percent of his fantasy points have come via the ground. That's the second highest in the league, behind only Lamar Jackson, and it's less than two percentage points below Jackson. It's pretty close, so Allen's really benefiting from rushing production. It does seem like this could be somewhat sustainable, the same way that we've seen it with Cam Newton. I actually think that that's not a bad comp in general, with how these guys score fantasy points, and it wouldn't surprise me if Josh Allen's one of my favorite quarterback values next season, as long as his ADP doesn't skyrocket Josh Allen and Kyler Murray. But I do have a feeling that the fantasy world is going to catch on to rushing quarterbacks and raise their ADP more than i'd like. Baker Mayfield is currently averaging thirteen point nine fantasy points per game. If he finishes there, he'd produce the second worst points per game average by a top five quarterback pick since twenty eleven. That's top five quarterback by average draft position. The worst, for those of you who are wondering, was Peyton Manning back in twenty fifteen. So if you draft if did Baker this year. First off, shame on you for not living that late round quarterback life, but I'm sure your fantasy teams are hurting enough. Trend nine this week is that no team has scored fewer tight end points this season than the New England Patriots. I think a lot of people would attribute this to Rob Gronkowski, but New England was twenty sixth in the league last year in tight end fantasy points, so it's not like they were that much better. Gronk's retirement definitely didn't help, though. New England's currently second to last in the league and tight end target chair ahead of only Arizona. They're just not utilizing their tight ends all that much. Now. The final trend this week, and really the final trend of the season, is that Odell Beckham has just won top ten performance on the year in fourteen games. That's a rate of seven point one percent. He's given fantasy managers a top ten performance and just seven percent of his games. In his fifty nine regular season games with the Giants, he had twenty six top ten performances. That's a rate of forty four point one percent. So he's gone from a forty four two percent top ten rate all the way down to a seven percent rate. With his move from the Giants to the Browns, there's no doubt he's one of the biggest fantasy busts of this season. That's gonna do it for today's show, Thanks to all of you guys for listening. If you've yet subscribed 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. And as always, if you listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, do me a huge favor and leave a rating and review. Thanks everyone, I'll be back in your ears tomorrow with the weekly Matchup show.