588: 10 Trends for Week 13

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J. Zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandle and at Number five dot com in this episode five hundred and eighty eight of the Late Round Podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. What better way to gear up for the weekend than to spice up your thirsty Thursday Night Football with Fandel and Captain Morgan introducing Captain Morgan's Thursday Night Pick Them, a completely free to play contest series that gives you four chances to win a share of ten thousand dollars. Here's how it works. FanDuel fans will have the chance to answer ten questions centered around both Captain Morgan and that Thursday's NFL matchup. Fans who answer the most questions correctly will be eligible to earn their share of the week's ten thousand dollars cash prize. Thursday Night Football will kick off before you know it, So heat tofandle dot com, slash Captain Morgan, NFL and spice up your game day Today. Must be twenty one years or older to participate. For more details as at fandle dot com or download the FanDuel Fantasy app. Eligibility restrictions apply, and don't forget to spice up your game day with Captain Morgan. It's a ten trends day. Let's get to it. It's been rough for DK Metcalf. Across his first eight games, which included some with Geno Smith, Metcalf average over eighteen PPR points per game. Over his last three, all with Russell Wilson, he's averaged five five points per game. I know a lot of you are panicking, and that's a normal reaction. I think the good news is that Monday Night's game against Washington did seem a little fluky. Metcalf only saw thirteen percent of Seattle's targets. His target shairs in the two previous games were twenty one percent and thirty two percent. Russell Wilson doesn't look right though, that's the issue. Fortunately, they've got some beatable matchups upcoming three of their next five games or plus matchups for wide receivers according to adjusted Fantasy points allowed. I think all you can do right now is hold tight, and I do think things will get better. For dk Metcalf, maybe not eighteen or nineteen points per game, but he'll be far better than he is now just based on his peripherals and the matchups. The Jets have been so bad against team running backs this year, and adjusted fantasy points allowed through twelve weeks, my numbers show that the Jets are the worst team against the position. But beyond that, they're allowing ten points six more points to be scored on them than what a team typically scores. To put that another way, if a team entered a game against the Jets where the running backs for that team were averaging twenty points per game, we'd expect them to score over thirty against the Jets. And that's team running backs, not just one running back. That differential is the highest by far across all positions in Fantasy football. Among the thirty seven quarterbacks this year, with one hundred and more pass attempts, Justin Herbert ranks thirty second in deep ball rate, and I'm defining that as throws a traveled fifteen or more yards through the air. That seems low given his arm talent and some of the weapons that they have on that team. Even worse when you look at how well he's doing on those throws. Among that same group of thirty seven, Herbert only trails Kyler Murray in completion percentage on those throws. Unfortunately, until we see it change in these tendencies, it's tough to buy into a Mike Williams bounce back because Williams can stretch the field. The fact that they have Austin Neckler and Keenan Allen that's definitely playing a role here, but the Chargers should consider throwing it deep more often. Trend four this week is about Elijah Mitchell, one of the players I've talked most about on this show this season. There's been on and off worry about how he'd be deployed as a pass catcher, but Jamichael Hasty's banged up and Mitchell's just a very good player. As a result, on Sunday, he saw a twenty three percent target chair. That's by far his highest target share of the season. In two of his last three games, he's now hit a double digit percentage target chair. That's the type of usage that we need him to see for him to be an RB one in fantasy. And as long as Hasty, who they've utilized as a pass catcher. As long as he's sidelined, Mitchell should be a top ten back, and that's especially true with the injuries at the position across the league. It feels like Deontay Johnson is still underrated in fantasy football, but he's a target monster because it's an incredibly talented wide receiver. In Week twelve, Johnson had a target share of thirty five point nine percent. That was another great outing. He' shit the thirty percent target share mark in six games this year. The only other wide receivers to do that have been Devonte Adams, Cooper Cup and DJ Moore. That's it. Keep buying Deontay Johnson. The six trend is more of a transaction than a trend, but let's do it anyway. Don't sleep on Clyde Edwards, a layer in fantasy football. In his return in Week eleven, he saw seventy one percent of Kansas City's running back rushes, which was right in line with what he'd been seeing from weeks one through three. He had a six percent target share two and obviously that short yardage rushing touchdown. If he maintains that sort of backfield share, he should be very usable. We'd like to see a higher target share. But we also know the Chiefs are capable of having a very good offense that raises Cech's floor and ceiling. And if you look at their remaining schedule, it's really good. They've got a top five schedule for running backs from here on out, including a top five schedule in the playoffs. So I think Cech is a by candidate right now. I could have talked about him on the fifteen Transaction Show, and I still might next week depending on how this week goes. So there's a little spoiler alert. A lot has been said about Courtland Sutton's splits with and without Jerry Judy this season, and games without Judy Sutton's averages target share per game of twenty five point seven percent, He's almost scored seventeen PPR points per game. With Judy this year, that target share per game drops to eleven percent, and he's averaging just four point two PPR points per game as of right now, you cannot put Courtland Sutton in your lineups. But let's not lose sight to the fact that Judy himself hasn't been anything special this year either. He's averaged ten PPR points per game and He's coming off a week twelve contests where he saw just thirteen percent of the team's targets and four point five points. Now, I feel a lot better about Judy than Sutton the rest of season, But this team has such a good running back schedule that I'm a little concerned about the volume for both wide receivers from here on out, not just Courtland Sutton. I've talked about this plenty of times in the past, but an easy way to spot regression is by looking at how many yards a player has versus how many touchdowns he scored. Yards correlate to touchdowns. It's a very quick and easy way to spot regression. You don't need a complex formula when you look at things at a high level, when you look at how wide receivers have scored touchdowns over the last decade and use that number to calculate touchdown expectation for this season. The wide out who's underperformed most so far this year in the touchdown column is Keenan Allen. He only has two touchdowns when his yardage total it says he should have closer to five and a half. That's just something to think about if you've got him on your roster. I'm still nervous about what might happen to Antonio Gibson in a negative game script, but if JD. McKissick misses time, Gibson should be in store for more looks through the air. But even before Mackissick's injury on Monday night, Gibson was seeing more targets in that Washington offense, and he finished the day with a twenty point six percent target chair. That's his highest target chair by far since Week one. It was the first time and he hit a double digit percentage since that point. There's a much higher ceiling for Antonio Gibson if he's able to capture looks through the air like that. For the last trend this week, let's talk a little bit about Tom Brady and the Buccaneers. I won't hide from the fact that after Week two on the fifteen Transaction Show, I said that Tom Brady was a cell candidate, that I didn't view him as a top three or so quarterback, but a lot of others did. And I'm not bringing up this trend to do any victory lapping. Since that point in time, he's been the QB five in points per game. But I'll talk more about Brady after the season when I talk about the things that I got right and the things that I got wrong, because overall, I was too low on Brady this year. And for the record, for those of you who are new, I do a podcasting through both my hits and misses each season. But at the time after Week two they had nine passing touchdowns and zero rushing touchdowns. I recognize that the Bucks would probably be on the higher end in that statistic from then on out because look at the team, look at their personnel, but that wasn't gonna keep up. It never keeps up to that pace. Regression always ends up winning. And since that point in time, the Buccaneers have thrown for twenty one touchdowns and they've rushed for twelve. They went from a pass to rush touchdown ratio of nine to one. That's under two. Now across the season. They don't even have the highest ratio in the league. The Buccaneers' offense is just really good at scoring touchdowns because it's good, so everyone in that offense wins. And I actually think that they're set to flip that ratio a little bit more. I think we're gonna see a better Tom Brady and fantasy football very soon. I'm just pointing this out because I don't talk about the things that I talk about on this show for laughs. They're really really simple tricks to spot regression and to see what's sustainable and what's not past a rush touchdown ratio is so simple, but it can be really really helpful. That's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and no friend to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll talk to you tomorrow at the Weekly Sleeper Show