468: Week 16 Matchups

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J. Zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at fandled at Number five dot com in this episode four hundred and sixty eight of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. As always, thanks for tuning in. Last week was a pretty good one. At quarterback, I talked up Jalen Hurts. He came through big time. I was down on Russell Wilson, he was a disappointment. Running back was solid enough. Wide receiver, I talked up Antonio Brown. He had a nice day. Now. I did miss on the Colts receivers, and my dart throw of Marquez Valdez scantling was a terrible play too, but Jordan Reid scored at tight end. The Dallas defense came through, so overall, it was a pretty good week. I hope the momentum can continue through this final week before getting to the guys that I like more and less than the consensus. This week, though, I want to let you know that the mbason has returned and there's no better place to play daily fantasy basketball than on FANDLE. For just three dollars, you can enter Fandel's NBA Clutch Shot and compete for your share of the two and a half million dollar prize pool, including a whopping one million dollar first place prize. With Kevin Durant, Lebron James, Anthony Davis, and Kawhi Leonard all on the schedule. There's no shortage of stars to choose from, so head to FANDL and get your lineups in today. For more details, visit fandle dot com or download the FANDL Mobile app. Eligibility restrictions apply. Baker Mayfield was part of the fifteen Transactions episode, and it's because I like his spot this week. I think he's a decent play. I mentioned on the show that Mayfield has been the QB two in Fantasy football over the last four weeks, behind only Ryan Tannehill. He's averaging almost twenty five points per game, and now he gets the Jets. New York is a top ten favorable opponent for fantasy quarterbacks. Before last week. They allowed six straight top ten performances, and the Browns have an implied team total of twenty eight this week. That's one of the highest of the week, so Mayfield does make a lot of sense. Now. On the fifteen Transaction Show, I also talked about Jalen Hurts and two A tongue of Ioloa. Both of those guys are in play, especially Jalen Hurts. There are very few quarterbacks that would play above Jalen Hurts. This week, I'll give you guys some other options, though, one is Mitch Trubisky. Chicago actually has a twenty seven and a half point implied team total against Jacksonville this week, and the Jags are the fourth best matchup when looking at justin fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks. Now, I do worry that the Bears will be a little bit conservative offensively if they get out to a lead. Trubisky only threw twenty one passes last week, and even though pass attempts don't correlate that strongly the weekly output, having that few pass attempts means the Bears would have to throw for their touchdowns rather than run them at a higher rate at least, and that makes Mitch Trubisky a little bit more volatile than we'd like. So to me, he's a fine play, but he's not as good as Baker Mayfield. I think Matthew Stafford is a little bit undervalued this week too. The Lions get the Buccaneers in the game. With a fifty three and a half point over under this week, that's tied for the second highest in Week sixteen. Detroit's a pretty strong underdog, but I do think they'll find some success through the air. Tampa Bay ranks ninth and raw Fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks this year, but that's actually sixteenth when you adjust for strength of opponent, So at first glance, things don't look great. If anything, the matchup might be overrated, but that secondary has not been very good of late. Matt Ryan's coming off a QB seven game. Kirk Cousins scored seventeen points a couple of weeks ago against the Buccaneers. Mahomes was QB two, Jared Goff QB four, Teddy QB ten, Breeze QB eleven, Derek Carr QB twelve. That's over the last seven weeks, and since Darryl Bevill took over as head coach for Detroit, Stafford's been a little bit more aggressive. He's thrown it deep on about twenty one and a half percent of his throws that's well above the league average, so I think Stafford's an interesting play this week. I still like Mayfield more, but Stafford's still fine. So if you need to dig even deeper than that, you could go with Marcus Mariota. I don't absolutely love him as an option, but we saw last week that he can bring some rushing upside to this offense in relief of Derek Carr. In Week fifteen, Mariota ran the ball nine times for eighty eight yards in a score, and he's done that historically too. He's a mobile passer. The problem is the Raiders don't have a super high implied team total where it's at twenty two and a half, and Miami has been the seventh toughest matchup and adjusted points allowed. I would play Mariota over someone like Ben Roethlisberger at this point, but don't get too cute now. On the other side of things, I warned about this on yesterday's show, but I don't know how you confidently play Russell Wilson this week. He's had one QB one performance since Week eight, and it came against the Jets. He's averaging sixteen and a half points per game over this time and now he gets the Rams. The Rams are the toughest matchup for quarterbacks when looking at adjusted fantasy points allowed, and they've got the best pass defense in football according to number fires Expected Points model. I would play someone like Baker Mayfield over Russell Wilson this week. It sucks, but I think that's the logical thing to do. Giovanni Bernard disappointed against the Cowboys a couple of weeks ago, but he was great against the Steelers. He was a beast. We shouldn't expect him to do what he did again this week against Houston, but it's hard to deny the matchup. Houston's now given up three straight top ten performances to running backs, and they've allowed twelve top twenty performances to running backs over their last nine games. And I think after seeing what we saw with Giovannie Bernard's workload on Monday night, we can feel decent about what's going to happen in this game against Houston. Workload wise, against the Steelers, Bernard saw eighty one percent of the team's running back rushes and almost an eight percent target share. If he sees that again, that should get it done against Houston. This is gonna sound a little bit weird, but Jonathan Taylor might be undervalued this week. People are probably nervous about the matchup against Pittsburgh, but the Steelers defense has suffered a lot of injuries. They're not as scary as they were earlier this season, and as a result, running backs haven't been totally horrible against the Steelers. Over the last few weeks. We saw the aforementioned Bernard do pretty well on Monday Night, and two weeks ago Jad McKissick was a top ten running back two and any start sit decision comes down to usage. Taylor had a game last week with a seventy six percent running back rush chare and a really really good seventeen percent target share. If he comes close to matching that this week, he should be absolutely fine. Now a lot of you are probably on the fence with Darryl Henderson because cam Akers is out. It depends on who you'd be benching Henderson for, but I think he's at least a solid play against Seattle. Keep in mind cam Akers hasn't played a full snapcount all year. He played three or fewer snaps in weeks two, six, and seven, and he missed weeks three and four s. That's five games without cam makers being a part of this offense. In those games, Henderson averaged twelve point six PPR points per game. He was fine, but he also saw sixty three percent of the team's running back rushes and an eight point three percent target chair. So I think because of all that he's fine. Is a lower end RB two this week. Lynn Boden still has running back eligibility despite the fact that he once again led the Dolphins in slot snaps with nineteen last week. That's according to Pro Football Focus. He's now seen target shares of twenty percent and twenty eight percent over the last two weeks, and he gets a matchup this week against the Raiders that's pretty solid. The Raiders are thirteenth and percentage of targets scene that have gone to the slot and their fifth worst in yards per attempt allowed to that area of the field. Boden should provide a nice floor once again. No, I don't really have a running back that I would be sitting this week because the position once again kind of sucks. It's rough. I think we'll learn more as the week moves forward, though, so feel free to reach out if you're unsure about a running back situation. I like Matthew Stafford this week, at least relative to where he's being ranked. And I definitely, definitely, definitely like Marvin Jones. Like I said on Yesterday's ten Trend Show, Jones has been a low end wide receiver one since Kenny Galladay's second injury this year. He now hasn't seen fewer than nineteen percent of Detroit's targets in a single game since Week nine, and his target share per game average over this time twenty seven point one percent. Now he gets Tampa Bay and what could be a negative game script because the Lions are nine and a half point underdogs according to Fandal Sportsbook. So if Detroit's passing a lot and Jones is seeing this high of a target share, then he's bound to see lots and lots of volume. And Tampa Bay is now a top ten matchup for wide receivers and adjusted points allowed. I am into Marvin Jones in that same game as Antonio Brown, who once again is undervalued this week. I know he's not playing as much as Chris Godwin and Mike Evans. He played thirty two snaps against the Falcons. Godwin was at sixty Mike Evans at fifty five, but we can't deny the target share. Despite those few snaps, brown finished with a target share above sixteen percent. That was better than Chris Godwin, that was the same as Mike Evans. It's a plus matchup against Detroit two. Now. I don't think he's a must play, but he's being ranked around wide receiver forty. I think he should be seven or eight spots higher at least. Jamison Crowder is in a really really interesting spot this week. He's averaged a really strong twenty nine percent target share per game over his last three and during this time he's played almost seventy percent of his snaps from the slot. He's seen thirteen of his nineteen targets over the last three weeks from that area of the field, and that's a good match up against Cleveland. The Browns this year have seen the highest percentage of targets going to the slot more than any other team. They've been fairly efficient on those targets on a yard's per target basis, but no team has allowed more slot touchdowns than the Cleveland Browns this year. So I think Jamison Crowder is set up pretty well, Chad Hanson is in a pretty decent spot too. Now I mentioned de Sean Watson has some regression heading his way positively, that's a plus. But Hanson, despite his low target share last week, he's still playing a lot of snaps for the Texans. Only Brandon Cooks at wide receiver is playing more snaps than Chad Hanson against a Bengals secondary that has been slightly below average at stopping wideouts this year from adjusted points allowed standpoint, Hanson is play if you need someone off the wire. And then there's Tyler Lockett. Oh, Tyler Lockett. Like I said in the fifteen Transaction Show, this week, Lockett has been the wide receiver fifty one in PPR points per game since his monster outing against Arizona. He hasn't reached seventy yards receiving since that game. And you mean to tell me that you're confidently playing him as a wide receiver two or a wide receiver three this week against the Rams team that is allowed by far the fewest adjusted Fantasy points to wide receivers. You're confidently starting Tyler Lockett. I understand he has a ceiling if you need to go for that ceiling, because you're a massive underdog in your championship, go for it. But Tyler Lockett can absolutely sink you. He has not been good over the last two months. I've only got one tight end that I really want to talk about on today's show. You guys have heard me talk about Cole Comet and Jordan Reed enough. I want to pivot a little bit to Austin Hooper. Hooper had a twenty percent target share in Cleveland's Week fifteen matchup against the Giants. He ended up with forty one yards in the touch in that game, he ran twenty five routes. He was very clearly the top tight end for Cleveland, despite the fact that they use a lot of their tight ends. They roll them out a lot, and this week he gets the Jets. New York has given up the most adjusted points to tight ends this year, So I think Hooper works if you're in a bind. So I talked about the Arizona Cardinals, the Washington football team in the Los Angeles Chargers on the fifteen Transaction Show. If you want more detail around those defenses, listen back to the episode that dropped on Monday. They're all in play this week as streamers and I like Arizona the most, but I want to pivot that talk and mention the New Orleans Saints. They're ranked lower than I expected this week when I look at my pressures chart, though, the one matchup that really stands out in that chart is New Orleans against Minnesota, and that's because the Saints are third this year in pressure rate and the Vikings haven't been very good at protecting Kirk Cousins. They're bottom ten and sack rate allowed, and they've given up at least one sack per game this year, and they've allowed thirteen sacks over the last three weeks. So to me, the Saints are a very strong play this week on defense. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and as always, don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. One more show this week everyone, the Mailbag episode that drops tomorrow. I will talk to you then