911: 10 Trends for Week 3

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacheratha j J Zachers, what's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode nine and eleven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. Before get into this week's ten trends, I want to remind you to check out Underdog Fantasy. Underdog is the best and easiest place to play fantasy sports and right now. If you sign up with promo code Late Round, you get three things. You get a deposit bonus, which is always a plus. You get a free pick, and you get a copy of my rest of season rankings. Those rankings and tiers they're email to you after you sign up and they're updated every Tuesday. You get those updates every single week. With that link. All you have to do is head to Underdog Fantasy dot com and use promo code late Round when you sign up. Once you make a deposit, you'll get the offers. Again. That's promo code Late Round. Now let's get to these trends. I almost had Chris Godwin as a cell candidate in the fifty Transaction show this week, but I'm glad that I didn't because it looks like that I'm higher on him than other analysts right now. But if someone's valuing him like a top ten wide receiver rest of season something along those lines, I do think there's reason to treat him like I said to treat JK. Dobbins this week, to aim high with a trade offer. Godwin has about a thirty three percent target chair. He scored over twenty PPR points in each of his first two games. He did that once last year. Now, I've talked about how he'd play more in the slot in twenty twenty four. That was widely reported, and this is an offense that can help that slot role. He's run fifty eight percent of his routes from the slot this year. That rate was seventy eight percent in Week two. Now, with all that being said, weaking recognize he's gonna outpace his ADP while also recognizing that what he's currently doing is unsustainable. He's been above a two yards per route run rate once in his entire career. Right now, his yards per route run three point nine to two, and we have to recognize in these small sample sizes. I'm going to talk about this more on the show, but in these small two game samples, we have to look at opponent two. He faced Washington in Week one. Washington is arguably the worst secondary in football. He faced Detroit in week two. Detroit's been really bad against slot guys so far this year. Detroit is another secondary that you can beat. According to PFF's expected Fantasy points formula, Godwin has scored nine point four PPR points per game above expectation thus far, so expect some regression, but I do think he's looking like a top twenty wide receiver from here on out. Let's just hope that he can stay healthy. Mike is SICKI got a lot of work in week two. He had a twenty six and a half percent target Cherry scored sixteen PPR points. The problem though, is that his route participation was pretty low. It was just fifty one percent. He ranks outside the top thirty league wide and tight end route participation right now and then all the while, rookie tight end Eric all He started to get more run. He had a twelve percent target share in week two. He saw his route participation go from nine percent in week one to thirty seven percent in week two. So keep an eye on Eric All in deeper formats. James Cook had a blow up game on Thursday Night Football, and there's some really intriguing peripherals to go along with it. He scored a pair of rushing touchdowns. He's now matched his rushing touchdown total from last year. And last year he only had five goal line rushes all season. The other backs in that offense were preferred in that area of the field. This season, he's seen two goal line rushes and he's accounted for all of the running back rushes at the goal line. If that continues, even with Josh Allen stealing work at the goal line, it could be a really favorable year for James Cook. We've got the switch happening in Carolina with Andy Dalton starting. That could be big for Chewba Hubbard in particular. Obviously, the pass catchers get a bump, but don't forget about Hubbard at least until Jonathan Brooks gets healthy. In Week one, Hubbard had a forty percent running back rush share and a zero percent target share. In week two, his running back rush share increased by nineteen percentage points. His target share went from zero percent to nineteen percent. Now that target share is a little bit inflated because his role participation only increased by six percentage points a week over week. But Hubbard once again has been better than Miles Sanders and basically every rushing metric thus far. Don't sleep on him with this quarterback switch. We just need Andy Dalton to be competent. Sam Laporta failed to see a double digit percentage target share in week two in all of twenty twenty three, that happened just once, and people are definitely panicking. I'm just not sure it's totally warranted. Now. Laporta was a regression candidate here in twenty twenty four, and I do think with Jamison Williams seeing an uptick in work, we could see a slight downward trend in Laporta's target chair. But he's run a route on eighty one percent of Detroit's dropback so far. That's actually two percentage points higher than last year's rate. The Lions have also scored four offensive touchdowns. Three of those touchdowns have come on the ground. That's going to regress to a more normal number moving forward. They're going to start throwing for more of their touchdowns. I think right now we're just looking at some variants alongside the emergence of Jamison Williams's role in this offense. Laporter should still be a top three tight end rest of season. So far the season the team that ranks dead last and running back target chair and I could have brought this up on the fifteen Transaction Show yesterday, but it's the Los Angeles Chargers. Eleven point six percent of their targets have gone to running backs. Now, I find this kind of interesting because Greg Roman's offenses in the past have not used running backs as pass catchers. Yeah, he's had some mobile quarterbacks that might play some role there, but only two of his ten NFL offenses have resulted in a running back target share rank above twentieth. The average rank and running back target share with his offenses has been about twenty fifth. This is just another thing to pile on the JK. Dobbins stuff that I talked about yesterday. It's a small sample, but it's an interesting trend. Nonetheless, something that's really helped DeVante Adams and Brock Bauers to kick off the season is that the Raiders are a lot more pass heavy than I think a lot of us expected them to be. They currently ranked second and pass rate over expected according to NFELO, and when looking at plays run in the first through third quarters when games have been within six points, neutral script pass rate, Vegas ranked seventh. If this maintains, it's gonna be big for both Adams and Bowers. One very obvious trend this past week was that Jalen Warren was used more in the Pittsburgh offense. He was injured right before the season, and in Week one he saw just an eight percent running back rush share. That turned into thirty two percent in week two. His route participation that rose by a percentage points as well. That resulted in a nine percent target share in week one to an eleven percent one in week two. Now, the Steelers have been pretty bad offensively to start the season, and Jalen Warren getting more touches just makes that backfield even more difficult to predict. Will Levis has been bad Will Lewis to start the season for the most part, but I think too many people are ignoring the matchups that he's faced. He got the Bears in Chicago in Week one and Chicago's defense just forced a fourteen point performance to see j Stroud. That's fantasy points, and then it was the Jets in Week two. This is something I talked about on the early season Schedule Analysis episode before the season, Tennessee had a really tough schedule to start. In turn, Levis has been by far the most pressured quarterback in the league according to Next Gen Stats. This week, instead of facing a top five team in pressure rate, they're getting a middle of the road one in Green Bay, so we'll see if that helps things. The last trend this week is as a Jackson Smith and Jigma update, because thankfully Seattle changed up his usage in Week two. JSN has now seen about a ninety percent route participation Through two weeks, He's run eighty four percent of his routes out of the slot and the running fifteen sixteen percent out wide, so it's similar deployment as last year. But his average depth of target is now nine point eight according to PFF because in Week two he got down the field a lot more, and him getting down the field meant more targets. He saw a career high thirty seven percent target share. The Seahawks are now fourth in the NFL and pass rate over expected, and Gino Smith has been really good through the first two weeks. He's ninth in the NFL and EPA per dropback. So let's hope this kind of usage continues because it could be the start to the JSN breakout that we've all been waiting for. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by starting for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and make sure you subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel. That's YouTube dot com slash at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll be back in your ears tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show