798: 15 Transactions for Week 2

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha Jay Jake Zacher reson what's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode seven and ninety eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. I'm gonna check out the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. Within the Patreon, I've got in season weekly rankings, rest of season cheat sheets, live stream q and as, and more. You can also get access to the discord, which one of the best places for fantasy football conversations in the space, and my humble opinion. You can check all of it out over on lateround dot com. It's a fifteen transactions day, Let's get to it. Add Pooka Nakua. One of the things that I wrote in the fifteen Transactions Callum this Week or the newsletter this week, is that you don't always have to nail the exact outcome for a player in order to be right in fantasy football. What I mean by that is I liked Pukinnakua during the draft process and earlier this offseason. There was a lot of hype around him throughout the summer, and I bought into that hype because he was a good prospect, and since he was a late round pick in fantasy football, I said to myself, why not? Why not throw that dart? That's why he was featured in the Late Round Draft Guide. Now, I'm not saying that to pat myself on the back. I know it sounds like that, but that's not why I'm saying this. Trust me, there are plenty of guys I'm me talking about on today's show that I was high on that didn't live up to expectation in Week one. I'm just saying this about Nakua because it's possible to be right without actually being right. No one expected this. Pokin Nakua's best friends and family, they didn't expect this. He ended Week one with a forty and a half percent target share that is unheard of. Not only is that unheard of for any wide receiver, for any player, but it's unheard of for a rookie wide receiver who was drafted on Day three. Clearly, that type of target chair is not going to maintain, especially if and when Cooper Cup returns. But one of the positives here with Pokinakua is that he hit that forty percent target chair while running seventy four percent of his routes on the outside. He didn't just simply take the Cooper Cup role. Cup has been a wide receiver who's taken advantage of the slot. These two players, Pukinaku and Cooper Cup, they could live together in this offense. Now, I'm a believer and data backs this up that you should be pretty aggressive on the waiver wire with young players who have these breakout games, whether the breakout comes with production or just peripheral numbers. And that's especially true when the player was a good prospect. And I think that Nakua, who wasn't perfect, was still a good prospect. He was second in college football last year in yards per route run. He got the ball in a variety of different ways during his final collegiate season. That signals that he has that versatility and has that talent. So definitely try to get Pokanaku off waivers this week. And for the record, if you can't get Nikua, don't forget about to tow out well. He played an almost identical amount of Nikua, ending the day with a twenty one point six percent target chair and seventeen point nine PPR points. So if you can't get Nikua feel free to go after to two at well add Kyron Williams. Phoka. Nakua's teammate Kyron Williams also a nice start to the season. Now. I talked about Williams on last week's Sleeper Show, but I have to admit it wasn't because I saw this coming. I want to be transparent with you, guys. I saw Kyron Williams as a game script oriented play. There were reports throughout the summer from Jordan Rodrieg from the Athletic in particular, and those reports said that Williams could have a bigger role in this offense, a bigger role than we expect. And the idea to me was that he could play as the team's backfield pass catcher. Maybe cam Akers was more the early down guy, Kyron Williams the pass catcher. That's what he did in college. I talked about that quite a bit in August on this podcast, and then as underdogs in Seattle, maybe he could get some cheap catches if you look at the results, that's not really what I meant. I didn't mean that Kyen Williams is gonna take over this backfield the way that he did. He saw both of LA's backfield targets on Sunday. That's obviously a good thing, but he also just simply out snapped cam Akers by a lot, and it was in a positive game. Script Williams doubled up Acres in the snaps department. He had seventeen point four PPR points. Now Acres had twenty two carries to Kyen Williams fifteen, but that was largely driven by how they used Acres to close that game when the game was out of hand. He saw eight of those attempts during the Rams' final drive. The Rams had already won at that point during the first half, and I sent this tweet out while the game was going on. But in the first half, when the first half concluded, kyn Williams had twenty six snaps. Cam Akers had four. It looks like Kyron Williams is the back to roster in LA. Now we could be in store for a headache as the season goes on, but he at least should be added this week. By Jamiir Gibbs. This is probably one of the more obvious transactions of the week, but it does need to be said. I would be shocked if we see Jamir Gibbs's Week one usage continue through the rest of the season. He only had seven carries and two targets against the Chiefs. On Thursday, he had eight PPR points. David Montgomery had seventy five percent of the team's running back rushes, Jamiir Gibbs the remaining twenty five percent. Now, the target share total for the Lions running maxes past Thursday was six point three percent. That number across last season was twenty one point two percent, and it was even higher when they got rid of TJ. Hockinson. There's no chance that we see a sub ten percent target shair for these running backs throughout the season in Detroit. So this is just a simple reminder that you drafted Jamiir Gibbs for a receiving role, and while that wasn't there in Week one, it's bound to be there in Week two beyond. Don't panic, add Justice Hill and Gus Edwards. So the first thing I want to say about this is you have to just feel awful for JK. Dobbins. We hope he gets well soon. Hopefully he can get back on the football field now without JK Dobbins because of that, Achilles injury, the Ravens are going to look to Justice Hill and Gus Edwards and maybe Melvin Gordon too, And this could go in a lot of different directions, and we should be prepared for it to go in a lot of different directions. I think the most likely scenario here is that we have a completely split backfield. We have Justice Hill and Gus Edwards seeing the most work, and then Melvin Gordon sort of sprinkling in, and there's a possibility that the Ravens add someone too. Now Hill ended up seeing more snaps in total this past week compared to Gus Edwards, but as Fandel's jim Son has pointed out after Dobbin's injury, things were pretty split. Edwards had eight carries for thirty two yards on thirteen snaps. Justice Hill had seven carries for nine yards on fifteen snaps. Because Guswards has a history of being productive, his career yards per carries impressively over five. But because he has that history, I'd probably give him the slightest edge over Justice Hill. If this were Greg Roman, if we were looking at a different offensive scheme, then I'd easily say Gus Edwards. But it does seem like Todd Monkin likes Justice Hill, so I very slightly lean Gus Edwards, but both of these guys should be added this week. Chances are, though we're looking at a committee ad Rashi Rice and hold Canarius Tony. Routes run correlate very strongly to targets. This should be pretty obvious. In order for a player to get targeted, he's got to be out there running routes. In Week one, the Chiefs had some really really strange underlying data. Their top two wide receivers in routes run where Marquez Valdez Scantling and Sky Moore. The two of them, according to Pro Football Focus, had sixty two routes run and they combined for five targets. Meanwhile, Rashi Rice and Kadarius Tony they ranked fifth and sixth the routes run at wide receiver for the Chiefs. They had twenty three total routes, but together they had ten targets. So to put that another way, Rice and Tony had twice as many targets as mvs and more on roughly a third of the routes run. You'd have to think that after that Week one performance that things could shift. Things might move Rice was the one who had the most production in Week one. He caught three balls on five targets for twenty nine yards in a touchdown. Obviously, Kadarius Tony he did not. He had one of the worst wide receiver performances that I've ever seen. And maybe Kadarius Tony is really just a gadget guy and nothing more. I think that's very, very possible. But even still, if I had Kadarius Tony on my roster, I would try to hold him for one more week. I would just see if things turn around a little bit. But I think of all these wide receivers right now, the most attractive is probably Rashid Rice hold Drake London. Now, look in season, I don't take w's and l's. I've talked about this before, but I have to say after Week one, Drake London is definitely trending to be an l We shouldn't totally ignore situation in fantasy football, but we also can't ignore talent because talent can often win in poor situations. But at the end of the day, this Falcons team might be an exception to that role. Because unfortunately, we saw nothing different in Week one than what we saw last year, and you're probably sitting there listening to this and say, yeah, what do you think was gonna happen? They went out and drafted b Jean Robinson. Of course they were gonna be run heavy, and yeah, I agree. We knew they were going to be a run heavy team. That was never the argument for Drake London. The argument was that if they were just a little bit more pass heavy, Drake London could easily outplay his ADP Because London was a stud in year one a yards per route run rate and a target's per route run rate that we only see from stud wide receivers. But Week one was a complete disaster. London led the team in routes run, but he saw just one target and he did not catch that target. Desmond Ritter has more receptions this season than Drake London does, and the Falcons, just like last year, they ran the ball a lot. They had a forty point nine percent pass rate in that game, and they tied the Seahawks for the fewest passing rush attempts on the week. That made things even worse. It just compounded things. If you're gonna have a low pass rate, hopefully you can combat that a little bit with a lot of plays run, but the literal opposite happened for this Falcons team. Here's the thing, if you want to think about this more optimistically for London, I don't know if it can get worse situationally. At least last season, the Falcons had ten more Russian pass attempts than they had on Sunday. They should run more plays moving forward. And in Week one one, Atlanta targeted their running backs at a fifty three percent rate. Their running backs at a fifty three percent target share. That number was sixteen point five percent last year. Yeah, I know, I get it. They added Bjean Robinson. That doesn't mean that they're going to target their running backs at a fifty percent plus rate. That's not sustainable whatsoever. So that's the good news for Drake London. I don't think that situationally, things can get much worse. Here's another problem, though Atlanta gets green Bay this week. That's not a good matchup for London. You can't start Drake London after what he did in Week one, and then if that bat outing happens in Week two, which is very very possible, You're probably not gonna have any faith starting him in week three, but at least Week three and Week four they feature games against the Lions and the Jags. Those are two opponents where the game script could easily favor Drake London. So he's more of a hold for me right now. He's definitely tumbling rest of season rankings. It's just gonna take some patience with him. A Zay Jones so according to Sharp Football Analysis is rich Reebar, the Jags ran out of twelve personnel on sixteen percent of their plays last year. In Week one that shot up to a league high thirty two point four percent, and that had a major impact on Christian Kirk in particular. Calvin Ridley and Jay Jones played in those two wide sets, Christian Kirk was sidelined and that led to ten fewer routes run than his teammates. Kirk ran ninety percent of his routes from the slot on Sunday. That was seventy five percent last year. With Calvin Ridley in town Zay Jones as the team's number two wide receiver. It may not play out that way in fantasy football, but from an alignment standpoint, he's their number two and in Week one he looked great. He caught five of seven targets. He had fifty five yards in a touchdown. He had a twenty two percent target chair. Ridley was at a thirty four percent target chair, Christian Kirk nine point four percent. Zay Jones right now is still available in seventy percent of Yahoo leagues. He's worth adding. It's nice to get a piece of an offense that's not totally incompetent. Sell Mike Evans. The Buccaneers look better than expected in Week one. That's good for Tampa Bay and all of its fans. That's bad for fantasy football. We want passes, we want pass attempts, We want them to throw the ball. Tampa Bay finished with a fifty point eight percent pass rate against Minnesota that led to thirty two team targets. In twenty twenty two, the Bucks average almost forty three team targets per game, and in twenty twenty two, Mike Evans was a wide receiver three in fantasy football for the most part. He had that blow up game in Week seventeen. Outside of that game, he was not very good in fantasy football. So consider me a little bit concerned about the Buccaneers passing volume here in twenty twenty three. It's not really news because I've been talking about this, but Week one only confirm those beliefs. Now, I don't think that Mike Evans is going to totally burn you this year, but he's coming off a good game, and it's hard to envision both him and Chris Godwin getting it done together week in and week out. I think it's going to be more so one or the other, just the way this offense operates. So the volatility makes me want to sell Evans after a solid Week one outing and Joshua Kelly. The Chargers have a new offense, and that offense used Joshua Kelly more than most anticipated. Kelly finished with the same number of rushes as Austin Eckler in Week one. While Eckler served as the primary pass catcher out of that backfield, and Kelly was effective hid an eighty one percent success rate, thirteen of his sixteen rushes helped improve the Chargers' chances of scoring. There could be some standalone value for Kelly even without an Austin Eckler injury, but it was reported on Monday that Austin Eckler is dealing with an ankle issue. Maybe that played some role in Week one split. Regardless, it makes Kelly that much more important off the wire this week. Add Taja Spears, so similar to Joshua Kelly, Taj Spears got more run for Tennessee in Week one than most thought. In fact, Spears ended up out snapping Derrick Henry and he ran seventeen routes to Henry's ten with a twelve point one percent target share in Week one. There could be some flex appeal for Spears even when Henry's healthy, But if Henry were to go down knock on wood, then Spears would benefit greatly and see a ton of work in that backfield. So he liked Joshua Kelly is a potential flex play with injury upside. By Jalen Waddle, one of the things that I noticed with Week one is that it looked a whole lot like twenty twenty two. There were just a handful of teams that really helped your fantasy football squads, and then there were a ton of teams that just didn't. Miami was one of those teams that helped our fantasy football squads. Had the highest air yards per attempt in football this past week, and they ranked in the top five in pass rate. So if you like fantasy football, send some thank you notes to Mike McDaniel. Now, in Week one, it was the Tyreek Hill Show. Jalen Waddle had just four catches on five targets for seventy eight yards. He had just as many targets as Braxton Barrios. But I would not hesitate at all to trade for him right now. He ran just two fewer routes than Hill, and his eleven point four percent target share was the second lowest mark of his career. He's not going to maintain that low of a target share, So go ahead, get a piece of an actual good offense and get some fantasy points. Add Rashid Shahed. Derek Carr ranked in the top five and air yards in Week one, and that greatly benefited Rashid Shahed. He had eighty five air yards on six targets and those six targets gave him an eighteen percent target share in the New Orleans offense and he scored nineteen PPR points. Now, Michael Thomas and Chris Alave they played as the top two receivers and understandably so. But Shaheed has been so so good. Per target. Since entering the league last year, this number three role can still make him valuable. Since the beginning of last season, Shahed has run two hundred and thirteen routes. His yardage total gives him a two point seven zero yards per route run rate. In twenty twenty two, the only player with a higher yards per route run rate than that was Tyreek Hill. Shiet's probably gonna be pretty volatile week to week, but he's a good fill in and he does have injury upside. If something happens to Chris Lave or Michael Thomas, he's gonna see more work. That's why he should be rostered. Sell Courtland Sutton so. In twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two, when Courtland Sutton played without Jerry Judy, he averaged fifteen point two PPR points per game. With Judy. That falls to seven point five and his target shaars take a hit two Without Judy. During this time, he had a twenty four point eight per cent target chair per game rate when Judy's been active, it's nineteen percent. On Sunday without Jerry Judy, Sutton came through with thirteen point two PPR points his target share that was only fifteen point six percent. Jerry Judy's going to be back soon. Marvin Mims is developing. Are you going to be surprised if Sutton doesn't have this monster season? After all, he hasn't hit a thousand receiving yards since twenty nineteen, so given his Week one performance, you might have a cell high moment AD. Kendrick Bourne. One of the lower key ads this week might be Kendrick Bourne. It probably shouldn't be an under the radar move, but fantasy managers usually don't want to have anything to do with his Patriots passing attack. But that passing attack under new offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien, it looked okay in Week one. All things considered, it was a tough matchup and New England finished in the top half of the league in net yards per attempt. But more importantly, mac Jones threw it down the field a bit after Sunday. These games concluded only to a tongue of Ioloa had more air yards than mac Jones, and Kendrick Bourne benefited from that. He ran eleven more routes than any other Patriot. That led to a twenty point four percent target chair and he scored a pair of touchdowns. Now, Devonte Parker being out might have helped Kendrick Bourne a little bit, but Bourne may have also played into a bigger role in this offense. Either way, don't sleep on this Patriots passing attack, whether it's Born or someone else like Hunter Henry, who ran a decent number of routes. Add the New York Giants defense, So Corn and FANDL Sportswik. This week, the Giants are four and a half point road favorites against Arizona in a game with a thirty eight and a half point over under. In Week one, the Cardinals allowed the most tackles for loss to go along with three sacks, and that was without Chase Young. Now, the g Men had some issues against Dallas, but this is a bounce back spot for them. It's a much easier opponent. They should be able to get it done in fantasy. That's it for today's though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed 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 forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Remember to also follow the Late Round Fantasy Football account on Instagram. You can find it there at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly ten Trend Show