939: 10 Trends for Week 10

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zachera J J. Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode nine and thirty nine of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the trends this week, I want to send another reminder that even though you drafted your fantasy teams back in August, you can still do snake drafts right now over on Underdog. Just head to Underdog Fantasy dot com or download the Underdog app. In the draft section, click NFL and you'll see tons and tons of drafts that you can participate in right now. And if you're new to Underdog, make sure you sign up with promo code Late Round. That'll get you a nice deposit bonus as well as my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are updated for you each Tuesday once you get that link to them, but to get them you have to sign up, use promo code Late Round, make a deposit, and start playing. So over Cedric Tillman's last three games, his yards per route run rate has been one point eight zero. That's according to PFF. That's a strong number. It's not elite, but it's strong. And to be clear, this is the split with aut Amari Cooper. Tilman had a historically bad yards per route run rate as a rookie. It was point six y three. The rookie wide receiver since twenty eleven to be under that point seven yards per rout run mark were Xavier Gibson, jj Arthega Whiteside, Andre Patten, James Washington, and Zay Jones. That's among wideouts with at least three hundred routes run as rookies. Now, if you open that up to rookies with rates below one, so a one point zero yards perrou run rate, you get more players. There are sixteen of them including Tilman. There's only one big hit and it was DeVante Adams. But I was curious how many of those players had a high yards per out run rate during year two. Well, a handful of those sixteen were from twenty twenty three.

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Speaker 2: They don't have.

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Speaker 1: Next season data, but the only player from that group who had good yards parout run numbers in year two after being kind of miserable in year one was James Washington. But even Washington didn't see the uptick that Cedric Tillman has seen from year one to year two, if we assume that he finishes the year with a one point eight yards per rout run rate. Now, make no mistake, I don't think yards per rout run is a flawless metric. It's predictive, but there are flaws, including the lack of context of quarterback play, which does matter here. The main point that I want to drive home is that Tilman is pacing without Amari Cooper to do something relatively historic from an efficiency standpoint.

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Speaker 2: I think that he's looked good.

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Speaker 1: He's passed the eye test, but it's going to be interesting to see if this trend keeps up. There's something to monitor with the Tampa Bay backfield. We've kind of seen this annoying split over the last few weeks, ever since Sean Tucker had that big breakout against the Saints. For what it's worth, though, against Kansas City, Tucker had a twenty three percent running back rush share. That's his highest since that Saints game. Rashad White played a solid sixty two percent of the team snaps, but his running back rush share was the exact same at twenty three percent. He's seen that number fall in three consecutive weeks. White does appear to be the primary pass catching back. Tucker isn't running a ton of routes, and then Bucky Irving is just kind of in the middle. But don't let White's double digit PPR performance totally fool you. His backfield share was not super strong in Week nine. Now in that same game with DeAndre Hopkins, and I have to say I'm bullish.

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Speaker 2: I'm higher than the market with Hopkins.

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Speaker 1: Right now, Hopkins had a twenty one point four percent target share against the Bucks. He scored twenty nine PPR points. That was on a sixty nine percent route share, meaning his targets per route run was twenty six percent, which is a very strong number coming from Patrick Mahomes. Now, for context, Rashi Rice was at a thirty two percent targets per out run rate, and he was number one in that offense for the offseason and didn't just join the team in the number two a top five wide receiver in fantasy football. Now, the difference between Hopkins and Rice is alignment, and obviously age and all these other factors, but alignment is one of the big keys. Hopkins has lined up in the slot on twenty seven percent of his routes run for Kansas City Rashi Rice was over fifty percent this year. This is why we're able to see Kelsey and Hopkins kind of work in unison and not cannibalize each other's workloads. Kelsey said target shairs of thirty four percent and thirty eight percent over his last two games. Those are his two highest of the season Altogether, this DeAndre Hopkins trade was great for fantasy football. Taysom Hill saw his best usage of the season in Week nine. He ran around on forty seven percent of the Saints dropbacks, which was a season high. He had an eighteen percent target share, which was also a season high, and he carried the ball five times in that game against Carolina two. With all all the injuries in New Orleans and all the issues that they've been having, I think we're in a spot right now where he'll at least has consideration every single week for your starting lineups. I think Drake May is kind of undervalued in basically every fantasy format. With not a whole lot going on offensively for this Patriots team. May has scored nineteen and a half, twenty point eight and fifteen point seven fantasy points in his completed starts this year, He's now averaging over fifty rushing yards per game. He's doing what we'd want him to do in fantasy football, which is be competent enough through the air while giving us a rushing floor. Not to be fair, though, May has faced three top half matchups during that stretch, and New England quarterbacks have the six toughest schedule from here on out, so I'm optimistic about his future. I love what we're seeing from the standpoint of rushing production and how that's translated from college to the NFL, but I'd be more inclined to say that he's a must have if that schedule looked a little bit nicer rest of season. I went from being higher than the market on Jayden Reid earlier this season to now being lower. I think he's an awesome player, you know that I'm a truther, But he has a target share problem. Reid hasn't hit a twenty percent target chair in a game in four straight games. He's actually only been above a twenty percent target share twice this season. He only has a seventeen percent target share. Now, he could be fantasy relevant because he's going to be efficient with his touches. The dude is a monster, but that's a cap ceiling for fantasy purposes. Not seeing a twenty percent target share week in and week out, that's going to hurt his fantasy totals now. A big reason for this is because the Packers are allowing him to run a round on fewer than eighty percent of the team's dropbacks. He was at a route participation of sixty seven percent two weeks ago, with seventy nine percent this past week. We'd get more stability if that were to rise, but given his role in this offense, I don't think it's going to rise here in twenty twenty four, so you need that efficient sy to really pay off. I think some people are a little bit turned off by Tyrone Tracy's usage in Week nine, but you shouldn't be. Not only was he coming off a concussion where he didn't really practice last week, but his running back rush share was still seventy percent, his snap share was sixty nine percent, Devin Singletary was at thirty one percent.

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Speaker 2: We're probably not going.

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Speaker 1: To see like super elite backfield share numbers from Tracy this year to be in RB two though, that kind.

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Speaker 2: Of usage is fine. I'm still high on in the rest of season. The schedule.

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Speaker 1: Like I talked about on the fifteen Transactions episode, it's really good for the passing attack, but that should help Tyrone Tracy too. Jatavian Sanders has been producing and not many people are talking about it. He's been a top fourteen weekly tight end in PPR scoring in three of his last four. He's seen target shairs of fifteen percent, nineteen percent, thirty five percent, three percent, and twenty one percent over his last five.

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Speaker 2: In two of his.

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Speaker 1: Last three games, he's at receiving yard totals of sixty one to eighty seven. Tommy Tremble has been inactive with a back injury. If that continues, Sanders is definitely in streaming territory.

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Speaker 2: Now.

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Speaker 1: Another kind of deeper tight end to keep your eyes on is Aj Barner. No One Fan's gonna be out for some time with a groin injury, and Aj Barner, a rookie, stepped in this past week. He had a route participation of eighty six percent. For some context, just given the fact that there's more competition around when fan has been active, fans high this year in route participation has.

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Speaker 2: Been eighty one percent.

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Speaker 1: Barner finished the day with a twenty one percent target chair, So as long as Fan is out, Barner's gonna probably be Seattle's top tight end target. He may not have as high as a target chair ceiling each week because DK Metcalf will eventually be back, but it's still a name to watch, especially in deeper formats. And for the record, Seattle does have a bye this week. The last trend this week, I'm gonna go back to the Chiefs. I adjust fantasy points allowed by strength of opponent. That's why I say at fantasy points allowed all the time on the show. I look at how a team is performing in terms of raw points allowed, and then I just that number based on who they've actually played. Guys, Kansas City has been absolutely unbelievable against running backs this year. By my math team, running backs are scoring nine point four fewer points against the Chiefs than they do in an average matchup Carolina. Meanwhile, I's on the opposite side of that list. They allow eight point six more points to be scored. That means that a team going from playing the Chiefs to the Panthers would expect their team running backs to see an eighteen point swing. Again, that's team running backs, not individual running backs, but the Chiefs are over five points per game better than any other team right now. It's an impossibly difficult matchup. That's it for today's show, though, thanks Tolvy for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are bestarching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found in follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and make make sure you check out the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel. That's YouTube dot com slash at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone, I've talked to you tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show