1044: 10 Trends for Week 9

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacheratha j J zacher reefon what's up everyone. It's JJ zachar esin in this episode ten forty four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by DraftKings. Thanks for tuning in. There's no better way to get closer to the action than with DraftKings Daily Fantasy, the ultimate destination for football fans. New customers can play free for their share of millions and prizes with their first to positive five dollars or more. Download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app and enter promo code Late Round to play free for your share of millions. The crown is yours. Gambling problem called one hundred Gambler New York call eight seven to seven eight Hope NY. In Connecticut call eighty eight seventy eight nine seven seven seven seven eighteen plus and most states. Eligibilit yustritionans apply ends December thirty first see terms at DraftKings dot com Slash Promotions. It's a ten Trends episode, Let's get to it. I was pretty close to making Kai Shan Boody a sell candidate on this week's fifteen Transaction Show. He's ranked as a wide receiver four twenty four to twelve. Over the last three weeks, he scored twenty six, fourteen, and seventeen PPR points. That's after having four straight games with fewer than nine PPR points. According to PFF's expected Fantasy points formula based on Booty's usage and where he's seeing his targets, no player in Fantasy football has outpaced his expected points per game more than Booty over the last three weeks. He's averaging eighteen point eight points per game when he was expected to score seven point five. I just couldn't make him a sell because who's actually buying and Drake may is playing out of his mind even though Booty's connecting on some of those big plays. He's doing so with arguably the league's MVP. Booty also hit a season high ninety one percent rout participation rate in Week eight. If you can actually sell high, I mean go for it. Otherwise I think you just enjoy the ride. Because my guess is that no one's willing to pay wide receiver three plus prices for Kaishan Boudi right now. Despite his recent performance. The Buccaneers are clearly banged up a wide receiver, and that's part of the reason that Baker Mayfield has really struggled in fantasy football. Over the last two weeks, Mayfield has scored eleven point one to four point one standard fantasy points. In Week eight, Mayfield failed to throw or rush for a touchdown for the first time since the final week of the twenty twenty three season. Mayfield has one touchdown over his last two games, but he's also not running as much. After averaging three point seven rush attempts per game over his first six and two point eight scrambles per game during that stretch, he has zero rush attempts and zero scrambles since then. Now I don't know the exact reason for this, but Mayfield has on the injury report this past week with neon oblique injuries. He's been beat up this year, so that could be playing a role, but it's definitely something to monitor with him. Jake Ferguson has seen sub ten percent target shares in two of his last three games. Across his first five games of this season, he never fell below an eighteen percent target share. His per game rate was nearly twenty five percent. This clearly is going to have something to do with Cede Lamb returning over the last two weeks. Even if one of those games saw Ferguson with a healthy target share, when there's an elite player added to an offense, the previous players will likely see a dip in target share. I really wish that I could say this is opponent based. The Cowboys face the Panthers, Commanders, and Broncos in those three recent games, and only the Broncos are a bottom ten team in the league, and adjusted tight end target share allowed among those three, and unfortunately not that tight end schedule is everything, but Dallas does have a bottom ten tight end schedule according to my rest of season numbers. I don't think it means Ferguson's cell because this offensive environment is just great, but I do think we're past the days of him being a top three lock at the position. I talked about Kayleb Williams on the fifteen Transaction Show yesterday, and something I didn't get to is the Bears pass rate tendencies. Chicago's played three games since they're by In those games, they've had a fifty four percent pass rate on dropbacks, and their dropbacks over expected rate, according to Fantasy Life data, is minus six percent. They've been a pretty run heavy team of late. That pass rate it's twenty seventh in the NFL during that timeframe. Their dropbacks over expected rank is twenty sixth pre by week so before Week five, Chicago's drop back over expected was plus one percent. That was top ten in the league. Their pass rate was sixty three percent, ranking twelve. So the Bears have indeed become a more run heavy team over the last few weeks, and that's another reason we haven't seen as much consistency from the passing attack. Aaron Rodgers has started to push the ball down the field. From weeks one through four, Rogers had an average up of target of five point one among qualified quarterbacks that ranked dead last. But out of their week five by Rogers is an eight out of eight point one. That's still around twenty fifth in the NFL, but it's a pretty big improvement. Part of this is him just pushing it down the field more. According to PFF, fifteen percent of his passes have traveled twenty or more air yards post by. That was nine point three percent before the buye. The Steelers also weren't dumping it off to their running backs as much. They had a twenty eight percent running back target share per game rate over their first four that's fallen about twenty one percent over their last three. They still have one of the higher running back target shares in a league, but it has fallen now. I don't think this dramatically changes our evaluations, largely because this was bound to happen eventually. They weren't gonna be able to maintain their insane way of running their passing attack. I think what we've seen over the last few weeks is more or less what to expect moving forward. Jacorey Krossky Marriot's been struggling in fantasy football. You're gonna see a lot of posts, a lot of discussions saying to just move on from him, that the hype wasn't warranted. That's the way the fantasy football world works. After his huge twenty seven point performance against the Chargers in Week five, Bill has scored five point eight, four point two and two point five PPR points over his last three. The crazy thing, though, is that you could argue his peripherals have actually gotten better. Krosskey Merrit has seen running back rush shyeres of seventy percent, ninety percent, seventy two eighty two percent over his last four Now, his target share per game rate is still low. The Commanders use Jeremy McNichols in that pass catching role. That's been the downside for Bill all year long. He's got a five point seven percent target share per game rate over this timeframe. It's five point three percent on the season. That side of his game is not improving on the volume front. Now, if we know the receiving probably won't be there. That we know Krosskey Merrit's upside, it's pretty much capped in that RB two range, which is fine. I think we've had that expectation for most of the season, but that means that he's really got to get it done on the ground for him to pay off in fantasy football, and that hasn't been happening. That's largely because just one of his thirty nine runs over the last three weeks has gone ten or more yards. That's a rate of two point six percent. From weeks one to five, he had nine of those runs on forty three carries. That's a rate of almost twenty one percent. Guys, that's it. Literally, that's the difference between people really liking Crosskey Marriott versus people really not liking Krosskey marrit And of course to me, I sit here and I say the volume is still good and the real result is likely in the middle, as in, we shouldn't anticipate a twenty one percent rate of gaining ten or more yards, but two point six percent is also very very bad. Literally, no running back with one hundred and more carries since twenty eleven has finished the season with that low over rate of gaining ten or more yards. For a player who's already shown that explosion, we can't assume that's gonna keep up either, Krossky Merriat's just to hold We don't need to have super strong takes based on a set of games. We need to just look at things objectively. Big plays were happening and now they're not happening. But look, jayde Daniels is gonna be back soon. That should open up some holes. And their rest of season's schedule it's eighth best according to my numbers for running backs, and in the Fantasy playoffs they get the Giants, Eagles and Cowboys. At the very least, those are two great matchups for Krossky Merit. So just hold tight. I do think just a couple of big runs, this narrative shifts completely. They'll all continue to be concerned about his true upside because the lack of receiving. The Atlanta Falcons are currently dead last in the league in passing touchdown rate. And I don't mean passing touchdowns divided by pass attempts. I mean the majority of their touchdowns are coming via the ground, not the air. They've only scored twelve times this year on offense, but forty one point seven percent of their touchdowns have come via the pass. That's the lowest in the league. Indianapolis is barely ahead of them at forty one point nine percent based on Atlanta's pass rate, though they should have a passing touchdown rate closer to sixty two percent. That's just based on a regression formula. Since twenty eleven, only four teams have finished with a passing touchdown rate below forty two percent. So even though personnel kind of dictates this happening, I'd expect some regression for the Atlanta passing attack, especially if Michael Pennix is healthy. Now, speaking of the Falcons, that defense was a massive disappointment Fantasy football. This pass week. Really the entire Falcons team was, but their pass defense has been pretty crazy in terms of the raw totals they're allowing. On the season, they've given up just one hundred and forty nine passing yards per game. That's thirteen yards better than any other team. Now, last week to a tongue of Ioloa had four touchdowns against them. People might look at that game and think that he just went off, but he actually only had two hundred and five passing yards. That was the first time that the Atlanta Falcons allowed a two hundred yard passer this season. Now, they haven't faced the toughest schedule in the world, but they have gone up against Baker Mayfield and Josh Allen. It hasn't only been easy. It's just something to think about when you start your quarterback against the Falcons. You probably shouldn't overrate two his Week eight performance because it was so driven by touchdowns and that was likely unsustainable. Look, I also want what he marks to get a little bit more work, but it's hard to really complain about how the Texans are dividing up that backfield right now. When I prospected Marx, I thought he was a good pass catcher who could maybe steal some work on the ground. I wrote about that in the Prospect Guide. He didn't profile to me as a bell cow back who could do a lot between the tackles. But of course it's running back, so if a coaching staff wants to use a back a certain way, they will. But that's why, even though I've been bullish on Marx, I'm not totally surprised that Nick Chubb is still seeing work in that backfield. And on the year, it's very easy to argue that Chubb has actually been the better runner. He doesn't have the same big playability, the same explosiveness, and he's definitely not as good through the air, and in fantasy football that matters so so much, and it's why Marx is the more valuable fantasy asset. There's more big playability to go along with that receiving. I still really like Woody Marx in fantasy, but among forty one qualified running backs the corner next Gen stats, Marx is actually dead last right now with a twenty six percent success rate. Nick Chubb is at thirty five percent. They're pretty similar in rushing yards over expected per rush, and Chubb has a better rushing yards after contact per attempt rate. Marx is something that you can throw into your flex, that you can throw into your RB two spot if you're weaker at the position, especially in PPR formats. But there's really no reason for the Texans to really flip this at the moment and make this backfield fully his. The last trend this week is about Quentin Johnston because he has not been very usable. Over the last three games. He scored six point nine eleven and zero PPR points. That's after averaging almost twenty PPR points per game over his first four. His usage is nose dived. He had a target share per game RANN of almost twenty six percent during his first four games. Over his last three, he's been at eight percent post injury. Over his last two, he's seen target shaars of eleven percent and zero percent. Let's just look at those two games since those have come post injury. According to Fantasy Points data, there's one glaring difference in his route tree from pre to post injury. He's back to just running a lot of go routes. They've charged him at about a thirty six percent rate of running go routes over the last two games. Prior to this stretch. Across his first five games of the season, that number was thirteen percent. There was more variety with how the Chargers were using him. Now, I wouldn't doubt that Aronde Gatston He's playing a role here and I'm not sure if this really changes or not given what we saw in Week eight from that offense. To me, right now, QJ is starting to look more like we thought he was going to look entering the season, more of a boom or bust option. His deployment needs to change for us to really think differently. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you had subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly Sleeper Show.