463: 10 Trends for Week 15

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Speaker 1: This is the last with your host JJ zacher Retha jj zacher reson What's up Everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandle in at number fire dot com in this episode four hundred and sixty three of the Late Round podcast. So the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network, thanks for tuning in. Every football fan dreams of meeting the greatest NFL players of all time, and Fandel and Goat Fuel have teamed up to make those dreams a reality and Fandal's goat Gauntlet series powered by goat Fuel, fans will put their fantasy knowledge to the test by competing for a chance to take on the NFL's greatest of all time. Here's how it works. Over the course of the next three weeks, there will be three qualifier contests highlighting a specific position. Those who win the qualifier contest or roster the highest scoring player for that week's highlighted position, they'll be automatically entered into the finals, where they'll have their chance to play against three NFL goats Jerry Rice, Emmett Smith, and Warren Moon, and they'll compete to win their share of ten thousand dollars in cash prizes, goat Fuel products, and exclusive virtual meet and greet with the NFL Hall of Famers. For more details was at fandle dot com, slash goat Fuel or download the fandle app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Remember when Tasom Hill was ruining Alvin Kamara and fantasy football? Well that got back on track in Week fourteen against the Eagles. Kamara saw a twenty seven percent target share, a number that was greater than his three previous games combined. And since Tasom Hill threw the ball thirty eight times, that big target chair from Kamara resulted in ten targets and it just so happened, all coming to a negative gamescript. You were never benching Alvin Kamara, but this should give you a little bit more confidence if Tasom Hill continues to be under center for the Saints. T Y Hilton has been bawling out. He finishes a top fifteen wide receiver in each of his last three games and a top ten wide out in each of his last two. Prior to this stretch, Hilton's highest wide receiver finish on the season was wide receiver twenty eight, and this is absolutely correlated with more volume. Over his last two In particular, Hilton's averaged almost a twenty nine percent target share per game. He had more than a twenty percent share in just one single game from weeks one through twelve. I would be confidently playing him this week against the Texans. We'll see how that goes before we declare I'm a safe play against Pittsburgh the next week. I bring up Sterling Shepard a lot on this show because I think he's just consistently underrated by the fantasy community, and he's consistently consistent too. He's now played seven games since returning from injury. In those games, his lowest target share has been twenty point eight percent. He's averaging a target share per game of about twenty four percent. Now. He has been totally lighting it up. Don't get me wrong. That's especially true over the last two weeks, where he's ranked outside the top sixty wide receivers and Fantasy scoring. He's only posted a total of twelve Fantasy points, but his previous five sawm averaging fourteen PPR points per game and an average of eight targets per game. It's not always easy to get such reliable volume from someone who's so irrelevant and fantasy football to many. Let's just hope that Daniel Jones can look better and finish the season strong. I whiffed big time on Miles Sanders this past week rookie quarterback elite rush defense. I didn't like Sanders at all in that matchup. I recognized the ambiguity and the potential for upside, but he still far exceeded even those upside expectations. Now, with that being said, what we saw in Week fourteen is why I was high on him entering the season. Against New Orleans, Sanders handled eighty two point four percent of the Eagles running back rushes and he had a target share of nineteen point two percent. That was his highest single game target share of the season, and that was with Jalen Hurts. I've seen a lot of talk burying Miles Sanders, a lot of victory laps, saying that his usage sucks and that that was predictable under Doug Peterson. But his usage really has not been bad at all. On the season. He's seen about seventy seven percent of his team's running back rushes when he's been healthy. His target share per game has been twelve point six percent. That's certainly not bad. It's just that the Eagles have been an absolute disaster offensively with Carson Wentz this year, and that has an effect on every skill player on that team, especially the running backs. Trend five is just your reminder that Cole Comett has taken over the number one tight end job in Chicago. I know Jimmy Graham found the end zone in Week fourteen, but Comett was able to compile his second straight performance with a twenty one percent target chair And that's important because Chicago has been one of the more past friendly teams in football this year. So in back to back weeks, Comet has seven and seven targets. That's not easy volume defined at the tight end position. The Buccaneers barely threw the ball against Minnesota, so the main wide receivers on the team didn't do a whole lot. But it wouldn't be a ten trend show if I didn't send some sort of update on what this pass catching group for Tampa Bay is doing with Antonio Brown, and in Week fourteen, Brown bounced back, even if he wasn't very fantasy relevant, he saw twenty three percent target shair. Mike Evans was also at twenty three percent, but Chris Godwin's at fourteen percent. It looks like their previous game was indeed just a weird one from a usage standpoint. For Antonio Brown, that happens. Variance is a thing in football. We all know that, and I continue to expect Brown to hurt the upside for both Evans and Godwin on a weekly basis, or I should say I expect Brown to give each guy a lower floor. Either one of them can go off in a given game. It just may not be all that predictable. But fortunately they've got a nice schedule here in weeks fifteen and sixteen where they face Atlanta and then Detroit. It's gonna be tough to bench Evans or Godwin. Cam Akers is a workhorse. It's happening. We saw some signs that this was coming over the last month or so, which is why he was featured in the fifteen Transactions episode a couple of times. But Week fourteen was it. He became a workhorse against the Patriots. Acres saw ninety three point six percent of LA's running back rushes, and he had a twelve and a half percent target share. I mentioned how important that target share. Piece was last week that he needed that to become a more reliable RB one and he got it. To give you some context with these numbers though, in relation to how the Rams have used their running backs this season, no Rams running back had hit a ninety percent running back rush share this year until Cam Akers did it in Week fourteen, and Darryl Henderson, who is the Rams top back for a lot of the season, he had over a fifty percent running back rush air just three times this year. To me, this isn't a situation where the Rams have done this before this year and as a result they're just going to keep rotating their lead backs. I don't see that being the case because Henderson never came close to what Acres did in Week fourteen. Maybe we don't see Acres with the same backfield share moving forward. That's definitely in his range of outcomes. But my bet is that he's their workhorse now after an awesome performance. This wasn't like other Rams running back performances this season. TJ. Hockinson has been low key really good this season. I think people aren't fully recognizing it because he doesn't have these monster spiked weeks. But did you know that Hawkinson has finished as a top eight weekly tight end in eight of his thirteen games played. That's just as many as Darren Waller. Meanwhile, only Kelsey Waller and George Kittle have a higher PPR points per game average. It hasn't been pretty, but Hockinson has gotten it done this year. James Connor hasn't given US an RB one performance since Week six. He's averaging just six point four points per game over his last four games. So what the hell is going on here? Well, during this four game stretch where he's been bad for fantasy purposes, he's averaged a running back rush share of sixty four percent. Prior that number was closer to seventy five percent. Now, I'm less concerned about that, and I'm more concerned with two other things that are going on here. One is his target share that's dropped more significantly. Across Connor's first seven games, he averaged a target share per game of nine point three percent. Over his bad four game stretch, that's been three point eight percent. And then another thing that's been an issue is that the Steelers offense isn't nearly as strong. Connor's not seeing scoring opportunities after having that weird Week one game where he got hurt. Connor scored a touchdown in five of his next six games. He hasn't scored once since, so a lot of things are sort of being pushed against James Connor right now. Fortunately, he does have a get right game this weekend against Cincinnati, so he'll probably be a decent enough play. The last trend this week surrounds something that we saw on Monday Night's Crazy Crazy Game. That game was awesome, but mark Ingram only played one snap in that game against Cleveland, and that allowed JK. Dobbins to see a sixty one point nine percent running back rush year. That's the second highest of the season, and his snapshare with sixty two percent, right in line with the highest of a season. Dobbins has now finishes the RB five twenty and eighteen over the last three weeks. We're seeing these rookie running backs emerge late, and it's a good reminder to not give up on good talent because they start their rookie seasons off slow, especially during a pandemic season. That's gonna do it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round podcast. Make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and as always, don't forget to follow me on Twitter for some dad jokes at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly matchup show