717: 10 Trends for Week 13

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zachersa j J zacher reson. What's up everyone? It's jj zacher Esen in this episode seven hundred and seventeen of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning. In the Week thirteen, NFL Sunday Million is officially live on Fandel. Showcase your NFL knowledge and construct your best nine player roster while staying under the salary cap. Then follow along using FanDuel's live scoring feature to compete for your share of one point two five million dollars in cash prizes, including a cool two hundred fifty thousand dollars first place prize, all for just five dollars. Sunday's quickly approaching, so head to fandel and submit your lineups today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandel dot com or download the Fandel app for more details. One player who almost made the fifteen transactions list this week is David Bell. With Deshaun Watson coming back, the Browns passing attack is getting a hypothetical boost no shade to Jacoby Perct and Bell has seen an increase in usage over his last couple of games. He's seen snapsheres of sixty three percent and sixty four percent over those two games. That number had typically been in the forty to fifty percent range throughout the season, and that's translated into better target shares. He's now hit a double digit percentage target share in each of his last four games. He hadn't done that once across his first seven. He had a season high sixteen point seven percent target share in Week twelve. His target totals have been five, five, and six over his last three. Watch out for David Bell. The New England Patriots have been really good against running backs and fantasy football this year. If you look at fantasy points allowed, you'll find them ranked as the toughest match up against running backs. In PPR formats. They're allowing fifteen points six PPR points per game to opposing running backs, so team running backs against New England have scored fifteen point six PPR points per game. The thing is those running backs this season that they faced, they're averaging over twenty three points per game. The Patriots have actually faced an above average running back schedule, and yet they still rank as the best team in points allowed to the position. So when you adjust for strength of opponent, New England is by far the best team against running backs. The next closest team according to my numbers is Washington, and they're roughly three points per game lower and adjusted fantasy points allowed. Washington, by the way, is twenty ninth and raw fantasy points allowed. The Patriots are crushing running backs right now. Trey McBride has not been it. In two games without zach Ertz, McBride has scored six and a half PPR points while seeing a target share a little above ten percent per game. More importantly, he's only had fifteen receiving yards. He's had fifteen receiving yards despite running the seventh most routes at tight end over the last two weeks across the league. He's got a yards per route run rate over these two games of point twenty five. We know it's tough to be a productive rookie tight end, but it has not been a good start for Trey McBride. Speaking of Cardinals, pass catcher's Hollywood Brown returned from injury this past week and he just played his normal role. He ran three more routes than any other player for Arizona and he led the team with a thirty percent target share. His performance wasn't fantastic, but those peripherals, they should give you a lot of optimism moving forward. Jujus Smith Schuster was coming off a concussion this past week and he didn't do a whole lot. He got three balls for thirty eight yards. He had an eight percent target share for Kansas City. He also didn't play his typical role. Travis Kelce, Marquez, Valdis Scantling, and Justin Watson all ran significantly more routes than Juju on Sunday. That explains his lack of production. He should have better games upcoming, but do be aware that, according to Justin Fantasy Points Allowed, the Chiefs have the toughest wide receiver schedule through the end of the year. Fortunately, this week could at least be a higher score game. Tyler Boyd's production this year has been really, really weird and really really mediocre. Most would think that Boyd would have gotten a boost with Jamar Chase out, but that has not been the case with Chase this year. He scored thirteen point six PPR points per game in a fourteen percent target chair per game. Without Chase. That target share per game did rise to sixteen percent. It bumped up about two percentage points, but his points per game total without Jamar Chase has been eight eight PPR points per game. Now, he's capable of having spiked weeks because of the offense that he's in. But Tyler Boyd's not really even a handcuffed type wide receiver at this point. Let's talk Elijah Moore because he's coming off his best outing of the season with two catches sixty four yards in a touchdown. I'm not totally buying into this despite the quarterback change for one obvious reason, the Jets aren't using more any differently, he was still fifth on the team and routes run this past week, and he played half the number of snaps as teammate Corey Davis. Davis is someone that I would rather add off the waiver wire this week than Elijah Moore, even though Davis had the worst performance. We have to keep hoping the Jets raise Elijah Moore's snapcount. It seems pretty clear who the top two wide receivers on that team are. Jamal Williams has seen more than a fifty percent snapshare in just one of Detroit's games this year. It's pretty wild with that type of snap rate, He's still found the end zone thirteen times. Now, let me give you some perspective. I think Jamal williams season probably comps best to Lagarrett Blunt back in twenty sixteen. But that year, Blunn had eighteen rushing touchdowns in sixteen games. He also averaged eighteen point seven rush attempts per game. Right now, Jamal Williams is at sixteen point one. Lagarrett Blunt also had a snapshare of forty seven percent that year. He played more than half of New England's snaps in seven of sixteen games. Jamal Williams has played more than half of Detroit snaps, like I said, in one of eleven games, and on the season, his snapshare is about five percentage points lower than Lagarrett Blunts. Fortunately for anyone with Williams and I talked about this last week on the show, but the Lions have a pretty nice running back schedule from here on out. I still have him ranked as an RB two, but this season has been absolutely wild for him. Ezekiel Elliott saw just one target to Tony Pollard's two on Thanksgiving. Elliott's now averaged just one point one targets per game this year, but oddly on Thanksgiving. During that game, Zeke actually ran more routes than Pollard. He ran three more routes in Week eleven, the game prior, Pollard ran thirteen more routes. This is something to monitor for Week thirteen because if this continues, it would definitely hurt Tony Pollard's rest of season fantasy production. The last trend this week is about Kenneth Walker. Walker's a really, really fun running back who can hit a home run on any play, but there's at least a little concern right now with his overall production profile. Number one, he saw twenty four per target shair when we saw the Seahawks against the Bucks back in Week ten, then out of their by he had a three percent target share. He saw just one target this past week. It's probably okay, though, because his route's run number wasn't horrible. He ran fourteen more routes than Travis Homer according to PFF. Number two is a little bit more interesting. Kenneth Walker has only a thirty three percent success rate this year. That's not a good number, and it may not be that surprising when you consider how he's done the last couple of games, he has fewer than two yards per carry over his last two, and he hasn't hit three yards per carry in three of his last four. This is not to say that he's bad, Please don't take it the wrong way. It's just that I think his fantasy totals, which have been fantastic, they're likely a little bit more volatile than they appear. The ceiling is absolutely there each week, but the floor is probably scarier than most realize. He was fortunate to see a tonne of looks through the air back in week ten that boosted his PPR tow, and in this past week he found the end zone twice that gave him a high end RB two week. It's just concerning to think about a game where the receiving work isn't there and then he fails to find the end zone. It may not happen this year, but it's definitely a possibility. We've seen those things happen separately in separate games. We've seen him not see a lot of work through the air, and then we've also seen him not find the end zone. He's still a very strong fantasy asset, but it's at least something to know. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere. Podcasts can be found in Jeffert to follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. Remember to check out lateround dot com. Join the Patreon to get access to rest of season rankings, weekly rankings and tiers, data dumps, and an awesome discord community, and subscribe to the free newsletter as well. Thanks for listening, everyone really appreciate it. I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly Sleeper Show