318: 10 Trends for Week 12

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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 Zacheresen, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode three hundred and eighteen of the Late Round podcast many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into this week's trends, I wanted to send a reminder about Number Fire Premium. Number five Premium can help you become a better better. You can get help setting your DFS lineups and much more, and you can get your first month of any of Number Five's premium packages, which are normally as much as forty nine to ninety nine, for just nine ninety nine when you sign up today with Promo Code Champion. That's Promo Code Champion. Visit number fire dot com slash premium for more details. DJ Chark is now tied for the league leading touchdown receptions with eight, but he leads the NFL and percentage of team touchdowns or receiving touch down chair. He's been on the receiving end of half of Jacksonville's passing touchdowns this year. We've only had five seasons since twenty eleven where a wide receiver ended the year with at least fifty percent of his team's touchdowns. DeVante Adams and Zay freaking Jones did it last year, Brandon Marshall in twenty twelve, Brandon Lloyd in twenty eleven, and Mike Evans in twenty fourteen. Those are the five seasons. Like I've said on past fifteen Transaction shows, though, I think that we should expect some regression from Chark, especially because he's outperforming his yards to touchdowns conversion. And it's not like Jacksonville's a high powered offense, but I've had him as a by candidate because of that playoff schedule and the fact that even with regression, DJ Shark is still a beast, especially after seeing a really high target share this past week with Nick Foles back under center. So you guys know that I like looking at yards versus touchdowns the spot regression or to at least see who's underperforming and overperforming in the touchdown column. I usually do it for running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends, but it works quarterbacks as well, And that brings me to Jared Goff. So far this season, he's thrown eleven touchdowns on twenty seven and eighty four yards. Based on that yardage total in using the last five years worth of data, he should have over seventeen touchdowns. He's left six point three touchdowns on the table when you go by that average, and you can see this when you're looking at touchdown rate. During his first two seasons with Sean McVay, Goff had a five point nine percent touchdown rate and a five point seven percent touchdown rate. This year, it's all the way down to two point nine percent. So technically, Jared Goff's a positive regression candidate, but I still don't like him all that much as a trustworthy fantasy quarterback moving forward. Trend three is that Robbie Anderson hasn't hit a target share of twelve percent in three straight games. Meanwhile, Jamison Crowder's target share is over twenty five percent during this time, when it was closer to twenty percent during the three games prior. Crowder is the clear wide receiver that you won in New York given that target share floor. Whereas Anderson, like I Tad talked about on last week's Mailbag show, he's going to be hard to predict week in and week out from here on out. Over the Atlanta Falcons first eight games of the season, they averaged point nine sacks and three point six quarterback hits per game. Over their last two games, so since their bye week, that sack number has gone from point nine to five point five and the quarterback hits have gone from three point six to ten and a half per game. And this isn't one game skewing those numbers. They've had six and five sacks over their last two contests, and then eleven and ten quarterback hits in those two games as well. Now, this may seem like complete randomness, but dan Quinn evidently handed off all defensive play calling duties to his assistance after their bye week, which was three weeks ago. There was reportedly a bit of a transition beforehand, but the Falcons shook it all up at their bye week. Atlanta's not the pushover that they were defensively earlier this year. Trend five is that since Emmanuel Sanders left the Broncos, Noah Fant has seen a twenty seven point six percent, a twenty two point two percent, and a twenty nine point seven percent target share in his three games played without him. That's an elite target share. Across three weeks. Prior to the Sanders trade, Fans target Shair was in the eleven to twelve percent range. Fans now ranked as a tight end fifteen to two and sixteen. Over these three games, he failed to finish higher than tight end fifteen with Emmanuel Sanders in that Broncos lineup, Fans honestly graduating from being a worthless fantasy asset to a high end streamer even a weekly low end starter. In fantasy leagues. It's tough to find that type of target share at tight end. DeVante Parker is the best under rostered wide receiver in Fantasy football, and I don't think it's close. He's somehow still available in forty one percent of Yahoo leagues, but since Week four he's averaged fifteen PPR points per game of all wide receivers with at least five games played over this time, that ranks as wide receiver twenty in PPR formats. Please add Devonte Parker if he's on your waiver wire. Sammy Watkins was the wide receiver one in Fantasy football all the way back in Week one. It seems like it was last season. You guys probably remember that game though, against Jacksonville. Since then, he's averaged a target share in this Kansas City Chiefs offense, one of the best offenses in football, of about eighteen percent. Even with that target share, he's failed to finish as a wide receiver too or a top twenty four wide receiver, and he's ranked as a wide receiver thirty eight or worse in all but one game. He's like the opposite of Devonte Parker, where he's rostered in a lot of leagues. He's rostered in eighty one percent of Yahoo leagues, but he's not producing at all. Trend eight this week is that Christian Kirk has seen a near twenty seven percent target share since returning from his injury. He's seeing elite usage, and that's actually generally been the case all year long. Even when you include the beginning of the season. His target share in games played is close to twenty five percent. You can play him each week no matter the matchup. As a result, when adjusted for strength of opponent, no team has allowed more fantasy points per game above expectation to opposing quarterbacks than the Arizona Cardinals. Enemy quarterbacks are scoring six point two more fantasy points per game against Arizona versus their season long averages, and if you dig into it, it makes sense. We saw Jimmy g go nuts in his two games against them. Drew Brees was the QB four, Matt Ryan the QB one, and weekly scoring Kyle Allen back in Week three was the QB six Stafford in Week one the QB four. Arizona is a matchup to exploit, and there are reason to hold on to Baker Mayfield down the stretch here. Not only does Mayfield get Miami this week, but he gets Arizona in Week fifteen the Fantasy Football playoffs. The final trend this week is a little less of a trend and a little more of I really want to talk about this thing, so I'm going to force it into this ten trend show. I hope you guys don't care, but I guess the trend is that Patrick Mahomes currently has a five point nine percent touchdown rate, when his touchdown rate last year was eight point six percent. I mentioned this on Twitter on Tuesday, and there were some responses that talked about his injury, that talked about Tyreek Hill's injury. There were a lot of excuses being made for Patrick Mahomes, but we don't really need excuses here, you guys. Saying that Patrick Mahomes has a lower touchdown rate is not me saying that Patrick Mahomes is playing worse football. It's me making note that touchdowns are volatile and we should never have projected Patrick Mahomes to have a similar touchdown rate as he had last year. Because here's the thing. Even though things haven't been as clean and perfect as they were last year for Mahomes, his yards per attempt is eight point seven this year versus eight point eight last year. He's actually got a better adjusted net yards per attempt rate. His yards per game is three hundred and twelve versus three hundred and eighteen. The list goes on and on. Patrick Mahomes in every category that's not touchdowns, and I guess interceptions too. At this point through Week eleven, has been just as good this year as last year. The difference is that he's not throwing touchdowns at his high because it was going to be really really hard for him to throw at the same rate as last year no matter what happened. This is what happens with touchdowns. It's why Tyler Lockett's not scoring at the same rate as last year. It's why Mike Williams also isn't scoring at the same rate. It's a combination of how teams score touchdowns so passed a rush touchdown ratio to go along with how frequently they score them, and Kansas City as a team was a clear, clear negative regression candidate heading into the season. I talked about it a lot during the offseason on this show. That doesn't mean they'd have a bad season offensively, It meant that they'd likely not maintain a forty and a half percent touchdown rate per drive. When someone or some team does something really really well, it makes doing that thing again or repeating that thing really really hard. Maybe it's because the team changed personnel because they couldn't afford to keep the team together. Maybe it's because the team was healthy in one season and didn't have that type of injury luck the following year. Maybe it's because the team started running for more touchdowns instead of throwing for them. Or maybe things just kind of went their way one season with scoring and some of those breaks didn't happen the following year. Regression hit Patrick Mahomes, but He's still Patrick Mahomes and he's still arguably the best quarterback in football, but regression from a fantasy perspective, because touchdowns drive fantasy regression has hit through eleven weeks. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you 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. Thanks everyone. Talk to you tomorrow with the weekly Matchup show.