423: 15 Transactions for Week 5

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Late Round podcast with your host JJ Zacherretha Jay Jay Zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode four hundred and twenty three of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. If you missed out on the first four weeks of the NFL season, don't worry. The stage is set for you to play for a big payday and Week five with the FanDuel Sunday Million. For just four dollars and forty four cents, you can enter the Week five NFL Sunday Million and compete for your share of the two and a half million dollar prize pool, including a one million dollar first place prize. For more details, vi at fandel dot com or download the Fandel app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Now let's be concise as we do on this show and get to this week's fifteen transactions. Buy Chase Edmonds so Kenyan Drake was supposed to be the guy in Arizona this year, and he's sort of been that. He's handled eighty point seven percent of Arizona's running back rushes. He's played sixty seven point three percent of the team snaps. Those are both top ten numbers at the position. It's just that it hasn't resulted in fantasy points. Drake has now finished outside the top thirty in fantasy scoring in each of the last three weeks. He hasn't had a touchdown since Week one, and I do think that there is some concern. A couple of weeks ago, I thought that Kenyan Drake was a decent by low candidate because of the upcoming schedule. He wasn't seeing that much volume through the airback then, and you were hoping for more. You were hoping that he saw a little bit more volume there, and it's actually gone in the opposite direction. He's only seen three point seven percent of the team's targets this year, and his target share over the last two weeks has been three percent and zero percent. And for some context, when Drake was traded to the Cardinals last year, he dropped below a ten percent target share in just one of eight games. And then you look at Chase Edmonds and what he's doing. He's seen twelve point seven percent of arizonas targets this year out of that backfield, and he had a nineteen point four percent target chair in Week four. Edmonds now has four total red zone touches as does Kenyan Drake, and he has the same number of goal line touches as well. I don't think this means that you should sell Kenyan Drake. Don't get me wrong. He's still seeing volume. His rushing numbers aren't as bad as they appear. He's a three point eight yards per carry average. But his success rate, which is the percentage of positive expected points runs made by a player according to Number five's and unexpected points model, his success rate's fine, and the Cardinals still have a very very good upcoming schedule. You would just be selling Kenyan Drake very very low. But in Drake's range of outcomes, is Edmonds taking on a slightly larger role on the ground and that could result in a higher valued fantasy asset because of the volume that he's seeing through the air that Kenyan Drake's not seeing. So from a value standpoint, I think Chase Edmonds is the by right now, and that's whether you have Kenyan Drake or not. In fact, i'd be more inclined to not trade for Chase Edmonds if I have Kenyan Drake, because then I'm looking at a floor and not a ceiling. Add Justin Jackson. So Austin Eckler's hurt, he had a really tough hamstring injury in Week four. He could miss a lot of time, and that's going to open things up a lot for Joshua Kelly, of course in that backfield, but also Justin Jackson. On Sunday against the Buccaneers, Jackson saw a third of LA's running back rushes and he had a pair of targets. He's going to be involved, especially as a pass catcher with Austin Eckler out, and that makes him a priority off the waiver wire this week, sell Or hold Joe Mixon. So I've got a lot to say about Joe Mixon this week. I was very pleased with what he did in Week four. It was honestly a perfect outing. He scored forty two PPR Fantasy points. He had ninety three percent of Cincinnati's running back rushes. He had a seventeen point one percent target share. The question we need to ask ourselves now, though, is not whether or not Joe Mixon is capable of doing this. Joe Mixon's talent has never been in question. What we have to ask is is this usage the new norm? And I'm a little bit worried about him being able to maintain this. Now, on the plus side, the Bengals got a win, and that was a win with Joe Mixon seeing this type of workload. But anything with Mixon comes down to his receiving. His highest single game target share last season was thirteen point nine percent. He hit the ten percent target share mark in fewer than half of his games during his three NFL seasons before this twenty twenty season, Mixon's top single season target share has been ten point four percent, and that was during a season where Giovanni Bernard missed four games. Now, please understand, I think Joe Mixon is a way better receiver and player than Giovanni Bernard, and that's what makes this whole situation so tough. If I thought that Joe Mixon sucked, then this would easily be able to be sold off as an anomaly, as an outlier. But I think Mixon's good. But as a numbers driven analyst, I can't let one game against the Jags overshadow the fact that historically and from weeks one through three, Mixon has not been used this heavily as a receiver. And let's just be honest, prior to Week four, Mixon sucked. Whether it was Mixon himself for his offensive line or situation, it doesn't matter. Number fires, Expected points Model hated Joe Mixon. His efficiency was awful. This has nothing to do with Mixon as a talent. Like I said, this has to do with the coaching staff and the environment that he's in, and that environment is one that doesn't always feature him as the top pass catcher in that backfield when they're in negative game scripts and then hurry up offenses. We've seen Giovanni Bernard on the field this year in those situations, and that's the fear, point blank. And moving forward, Cincinnati gets Baltimore, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Tennessee, and Pittsburgh. There are some softer matchups later in the season for them, but there's a chance that we don't see the Bengals with that much of a lead in the short term. So here's where I stand. Overall, I know I just threw a lot of information at you, but here's where I stand. If you're a winless or a one win team, you might be able to sell Joe Mixon high. You need the wins right now, and the upcoming schedule does not look super great for Mixing and this Bengals offense, or at least the rushing attack. Now, if you've got Mixing on a competitive roster, I think that you can hold tight. He's the most talented running back in that backfield. He's a more than capable pass catcher. And maybe, just maybe this wasn't just a fluke. Maybe it's a sign of what's to come. I hope it's a sign of what's to come, because Mixon is a very very good running back. By Marquise Brown, Look, you know what you're getting when it comes to Hollywood Brown. He's a big play receiver. He's likely not going to have a high target total week in and week out thanks to Baltimore's defense in their run first mentality, But right now he's a pretty clear by candidate. His lowest single game target share has been twenty two percent this year, and he ranks well inside the top fifteen in overall target share at the wide receiver position. That's very important. He needs a high target share in this type of offense. It's not like he's part of the Cowboys offense, although that would be amazing to see Marki's Brown in that Dallas offense. But in a Dallas offense, you can see a sixteen seventeen percent target chair and be fine. In a Baltimore offense, you need a twenty five percent target chair. You need a high target chair to be a week in and week out starter. But of course Brown is also seeing his typical high average up of target two. He's top ten in air yards so far this year. The issue is that he hasn't found the end zone yet and he's not going to be targeted that heavily within the red zone, within the ten yard line or in the end zone week in and week out. But even still, given his big playability, given his air yard total, Brown should have scored by now. He was actually down at the one this past week. So the peripherals are there for Hollywood Brown. A huge game for him is coming. Add Key Sean if you listen to this podcast last week. Last Mailbag episode, I talked about key Shan Vaughn and how he was a decent deeper roster ad before this weekend's games. And then what happened in that Buccaneers game. Leonard Fournette was already out and then Leshaw McCoy got hurt too, and that left the Buccaneers with just Ronald Jones and Keyshan Vaughn. Vaughn played twenty five percent of Tampa Bay's snaps. He caught two of his three targets for twenty two yards in the touchdown. He actually had more receiving yards than Ronald Jones on just a third of Ronald Jones's targets. And not only in that but according to Pro Football Focus, Ronald Jones had two drops. You could even argue that he had three drops in that game, and he's now tied for the league lead among relevant running backs and drop rate. Now, the statistic of drops is pretty irrelevant in fantasy football, doesn't have that much predictive power. But this is nothing new for Ronald Jones. This has always been an issue for Rojo. He has stonehands, He's always been a good early downrunner. That's never been the issue. The issue has been pass catching, and that's where key Sean Vaughn can thrive. He was one of the better pass catchers in this year's draft class. So maybe all of this leads to Keishan Vaughn seeing more playing time and that makes him a worthy speculative ad sell Mike Evans. So on this same team, we saw Mike Evans this past week and have a really strong outing. He caught seven of his eight targets, he had one hundred and twenty two receiving yards, and he had a touchdown two. He's now scored five touchdowns this year on twenty six targets, and that's an obvious reason that he's a sell. It's unlikely that he's going to be able to keep up this touchdown scoring pace. Now. He does rank higher than average and end zone targets and targets within the ten, the targets that you want players to see in order to get a high touchdown total. But his targets per touchdown rate of five point two is higher than his seventeen point four career average, and he's scoring a touchdown for every forty six receiving yards. His career average is a touchdown on every one hundred and fifty one receiving yards. There's also the Chris Godwin effect. Godwin's been out for two games this year. In those games where he hasn't played, Evans has seen twenty eight point six percent of the team's targets and seventeen point eight percent of them. In the two games with Chris Godwin, those target share marks have fallen below twelve percent. Now, look, guys, there's nothing wrong with Mike Evans. Without any cost involved, you would want Mike Evans on your fantasy team. He's just playing a little bit over his head right now in the fantasy points score department. Sell Tom Brady. Now, the obvious transition here from Mike Evans is to go to Tom Brady as quarterback. Any time you have an opportunity to sell high in a pocket passer, so not a guy who can run, you should jump on it. In fantasy football, that's what we have with Tom Brady. He has eleven touchdowns and twenty two yards through the air since twenty eleven. A player with that yardage total and remember, guys, yards strongly correlate to touchdowns. But a player with that yardage total twenty two yards, he would have been expected to have thrown fewer than seven touchdowns at this point. That's larger than a four touchdown difference for Tom Brady and that's the second highest in the league, behind only Russell Wilson and Russell Wilson is a unicorn, and Brady's touchdown rate shows that as well. He's thrown a touchdown on seven point one percent of his attempts this year. That's a rate that he hasn't hit since twenty ten. So touchdown regression is coming for Tom Brady. By Darius Slayton. So one of my favorite lower key buys this week is Darius Slayton. The Giants have been an offensive disaster this year. They only have two passing touchdowns and they rank third worst in yards per play, but they've also faced the Steelers Bears forty nine ers in rams and through this tough stretch, one of the positives has been Darius Slayton. He's seen almost twenty one percent of the team's targets and he ranks inside the top twenty across the league in air yards. He's seeing, he looks, and he's seeing looks down the field. That combination is going to come in handy when this Giant schedule opens up, and that starts this weekend against Dallas. Add Teddy Bridgewater. So Teddy's coming off a game where he threw for two hundred and seventy six yards two touchdowns, and he showed off some mobility too. He had thirty two rushing yards in the touchdown on the ground. And the great part about Bridgewater is he's still underperforming this year. He has a touchdown rate of just two point eight percent, that's well below the league's average. He's only thrown four passing touchdowns on forty seven yards. So just do the same conversion that we just did with Tom Brady. Brady's overperforming, but Bridgewater he should have three more passing touchdowns than he currently has. And then you combine that with a game against a beatable Falcon secondary this weekend, and he is a very very good streamer by Jonathan Taylor. So look, guys, Admittedly things have not trended in the right direction for Jonathan Taylor. In Week two, which was his first game as a starter, he had a seventy four point three percent running back rush share in eight percent target share. Things were fine. And then in Week three those numbers fell to forty four point eight percent and four percent not great. And in this past week it was forty eight point six percent and three point six percent. So things are trending down, They're trending in the wrong direction. Now, the good news is that over the last couple of weeks where Taylor's seen this rushing shared dip, He's been the most effective Colts running back. He has a thirty six point seven percent success rate and that's eleven percentage points better than Naihim Hines and fourteen percentage points better than Jordan Wilkins. Now, Taylor's target share has dropped two, but according to Pro Football Focus, he's ran the most routes on that team at running back since taking over in Week two, and over the last two weeks, Nahim Hines has seen just five more routes run. It's just unfortunate that the Colts aren't throwing that much, but within the context of his team, things haven't been so horrific. And remember, guys, this is about buying into a good running back. Two. Jonathan Taylor had one of the best analytical profiles that I've ever seen a running back have in my time in doing this, he should be a very very good running back. He's only four games into his career, and that's a rookie season that didn't have a preseason and then most importantly, Indianapolis is going to continue to see a nice schedule moving forward, especially over the next three weeks where they get the Browns, Bengals, and Lions. So I like Jonathan Taylor a lot long term, but then I also like him a lot in the short term. Add to Ernest Johnson, So Nick Chubb's gonna miss several weeks with a knee injury. Kareem Hunt gets a massive, massive boost, but the Ernest Johnson does too, and their Week four game against the Cowboys, Johnson saw thirty seven point one percent of Cleveland's running back rushes. He had thirteen rushes for ninety five yards. He's going to be in a split backfield with Hunt moving forward. He's going to see some looks and that might give him some flex appeal. In a Browns offense, it's pretty run heavy, But then in deeper leagues, don't sleep on Dontreil hilliards. He'll also probably have a shot to get some work, and he's got far far better measurables than Johnson does. Add Damian Harris. So Damian Harris made this episode last week, but after a pretty strong performance on Monday Night against the Chiefs, I think this transaction needed to be restated because he still only rostered in about thirty percent of Yahoo leagues. Sony Michelle is on injured reserve with a quad injury, and that allowed Damien Harris to be the number one early down guy for New England on Monday. He ran the ball seventeen times and he had one hundred yards. He accounted for fifty four point eight percent of New England's running back rushes. There's nothing wrong with that. Right now, he's worth an ad to at least see how things unfold. I thought he looked pretty good on Monday night. Add Robert Tanyan. So originally this was going to be a drop carry on Johnson transaction. So if you have Johnson, feel free to drop him. But then Robert Tanian happened on Monday night to be on this week's list. Against the Falcons, he caught six of his six targets for ninety eight yards and three touchdowns. And that's coming off a game where he had a sixteen point seven percent target share and he caught all five of his targets for fifty yards in a touchdown. Now, his uptick has definitely correlated with DeVante Adams being sidelined, but given how Tanyan is playing right now, they may have to keep using it. Add Justin Herbert. Justin Herbert right now ranks in the top five in yards per attempt across the NFL. He's posted twenty two plus fantasy points in two of his three games played this year. He looks amazing. He's a lot of fun to watch too, and those fantasy totals might look pretty good moving forward because the Chargers get the Saints, Jets, Dolphins, Jags, Raiders, and Broncos over their next six games. So far this year, four of those teams have been plus matchups when looking at adjusted fantasy points allowed to the quarterback position, and the other two, the Jets and the Raiders, aren't very scary on paper, so Herbert should at least be a good streamer this week against the Saints, where according to Fanduels Sportsbook, that game has a fifty two point over under. Add the Texans defense. The Texans are winless. Their defense sucks, but they're six and a half point favorites this week against the Jags, and that Jaguars offense is allowed back to back top ten defensive performances in fantasy football. The Jags rank eighth worst and sack rate allowed this year, and Gardner Minshew has thrown at least one pick in each of his last three games. Houston has issues. Houston's defense sucks, but they should be a decent enough streamer here in Week five. The sixteenth transaction this week that you can't get in my fifteen transactions column over on number fire dot com is to add Darnell Mooney. So the rookie Darnell Mooney has been playing ahead of Anthony Miller throughout this twenty twenty season, and not a lot of people are talking about it because the Bears offense just generally sucks. Miller out snapped Mooney in Week one, but Mooney's played more snaps than Miller since, and then finally in Week four, we finally saw this big target share bump for Mooney. He saw about twenty two percent of Nick Foles targets and Anthony Miller was under ten percent. Now, the reason this could be semi notable is that this is the first game that Nick Foles started. If he continues as starter, Mooney could end up being a usable wide receiver in deeper leagues. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got 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. It'll be back tomorrow with the weekly ten Trend Show.