962: 10 Trends for Week 16

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Round Podcast with your host JJ zacherathas J. J. Zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode nine hundred and sixty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in Before getting the trends this week, I want to make sure you're checking out Underdog. If your fantasy football season is over, or if you're wanting to get some more action, head to Underdog. You can draft teams for playoff contest right now, and you don't need a huge bankroll to play. There's the Mitten for instance. You can join that right now for just five dollars per entry. If you haven't played yet at Underdog, make sure to use promo code late Round when you sign up, then I'll get you a nice deposit offer once you get going. That's Underdog Fantasy dot Com promo code Late Round. The first trend this week has to do with a transaction that I almost made for the fifteen Transactions show, but zach Ertz left Washington's Week fifteen game early with a concussion. Rookie Ben Sinnett was the one who stepped in and ran the most routes for Washington, he had twenty five routes run versus John Baits ten Baits being the other tight end in an offense. Sinn has been really inefficient this year. In limited action. He has a point two eight yards per route run rate. And I did not misspeak there, that's real. He's got twenty eight yards on one hundred routes run according to PFF. But he could get more run if zach Ertz is out, so he's summoned to watch. Anthony Richardson has been horrible for the players and the Colts offense this year. He's now thrown nineteen or more times in nine games this season. He's finished with better than a fifty percent completion rate in just one of those games. Now, that obviously hurts the pass catchers, but as I've said before, it's also really hurting Jonathan Taylor. Taylor had his lowest route share of the season in Week fifteen. He's now gone four straight games without a double digit percentage to target share. Jonathan Taylor one of the most dynamic players in football, ignoring the drop ball at the goal line stuff. But Jonathan Taylor has a combined five targets over his last four games. Those are all four games with Anthony Richardson. It's really tough to trust the culture right now. James could cut a nice Week fifteen against the Lions. He scored a pair of touchdowns and he ran for over one hundred yards. His usage, though, just continues to be kind of wild. He's now gone four straight games with a sub fifty percent snaphare. From Week one through Week ten, he was below the fifty percent snap share mark just once. Now it hasn't totally impacted his bottom line, but his usage actually has changed. Over his last four games. He's averaging ten point eight rush attempts and two and a half targets per game. From weeks one to ten, that rush attemps number was almost four attempts higher. He was getting more raw targets too. Now he can finish the season strong given how well this Bill's offense is playing right now, but there's definitely some volatility there now. Speaking of the Bills, part of the reason that you can't trust their pass catchers is simple predictability. Amari Cooper in Week fourteen, so two games ago, he had a sixty three percent rale participation, not super high, but it was at least usable. He ended the day with a thirty eight percent target share. In Week fifteen, Cooper's rap participation was just forty two percent. He didn't see a single target. Cooper's now seen just a fifty three percent route share. Since he was traded to Buffalo, his target share per game rate is fourteen percent. There's literally no difference between Marie Cooper and a lot of waiver wire wide receivers. The only pass catcher that I would trust in this offense is Khalil Shakir Naji. Harris is coming off a game against the Eagles where he saw just a thirty four percent snap share, the lowest of the season. His fifty percent running back rush share was also a season low, and because the Steelers ran so few plays, had just six rush attempts. I'm definitely nervous about Harris in the fantasy playoffs over the next two weeks. But I've been nervous about Harris in the fantasy playoffs. He was a fifteen transaction cell for multiple weeks over the last couple of months. Now he gets Baltimore and Kansas City to close out the fantasy season. I can't say that brings me a whole lot of confidence. He's probably gonna be just a touchdown dependent player, which is largely what he's been this year anyway. DeVante Adams is absolutely destroying fantasy football right now. He's scored twenty six and forty three PPR points over his last two games, but his usage has been really good ever since he got to New York, even if the results haven't always been there. According to PFF's expected Fantasy points formula, since Week seven, which was Adam's first game as a Jet, only Jamar Chase Pukinakua and Cedee Lamb have a higher expected fantasy points per game average than Adams does. Now, a lot of teams probably had a hard time making the playoffs with DeVante Adams, but if you've got him, you've got to play him at this point. Malik Neighbors has been in a horrendous situation all year, but he's been able to be a very usable piece in fantasy football for two reasons. One talent, the dude is good, but there's also the volume piece. Neighbors had a forty one percent target chair in Week fifteen. That's obviously a high number. That's the fourth time and he's hit at least a forty percent target chair in a game this season. No other wide receiver in the league has done that more than twice. So as bad as the situation's been for Neighbors, at least he's been fed, and in PPR formats that's made him a nice value overall this year. So in my prospect model, the ZA model, Marvin Harrison Junior was ranked almost identically to Mileak Neighbors. He was actually ranked below, but it wasn't by much at all, and Harrison Junior has kind of struggled this year at least versus expectation. He now has scored single digit PPR points in eight of his four fourteen games this year. His one point six to two yards per route run rate, it's good, but it's not an elite for a rookie wide receiver. Harrison Junior's averaged eleven point one PPR points per game. Some will say that that's just what we should expect from rookies. I don't really agree with that though. When looking at the ZAP model, which dates back to twenty eleven, there have been seventeen wide receivers with a ZAT model score at ninety seven or above who played eight or more games as a rookie. Harrison Junior's PPR points per game mark is sixth worst among that group if he were to finish with an eleven point one average. Now, fortunately, of the wide receivers who finished with a score below twelve a PPR points per game average south of twelve, we do have Jackson Smith and Jigba and Devonte Smith. Those are two guys who now look the part. Not all hope is lost, but Marvin Harrison's year two score in the year two model, it won't look amazing. It's not gonna look as good as someone like Malikue neighbors. So, as you guys know, I had just targe share allowed by strength of opponent, and probably the biggest number that I see within that metric is with the New York Giants and how they've defended tight ends this year. Their opponents have targeted tight ends at a target share that's six percentage points lower than their season long average. That's the biggest number for running back, wide receiver and tight end in either direction. They've been the second best team against the position and adjusted points allowed, So we know that it's not an easy matchup. It's just crazy how well they defended the position this year for fantasy purposes. Now, because this is the last Ten Trends episode of the year, I feel like I've got to close this out by talking about past to rush touchdown ratio. It's one of my favorite ways to look at team level regression. Now. I've mentioned in the past how the Eagles are throwing for very few touchdowns this year versus how many they're running for. But based on their overall pass rate, it's not that surprising, like they should have more passing touchdowns. But they are really run heavy team. You see teams that run the ball more will generally have more rushing touchdowns. But we can do a little regression analysis to see what a team's expected pass to rush touchdown rate should be based on how frequently they're throwing the ball. The team that's been the biggest outlier, it's actually two teams. The two teams that have been the biggest outliers within that department. It's not the Eagles, who have eighteen passing touchdowns and twenty six rushing touchdowns. It's not the Commanders either, who have four more rushing touchdowns than passing touchdowns. It's two other teams you probably wouldn't expect. It's the Giants and the Seahawks. Based on how frequently those teams have thrown the ball, their past to rush touchdown rate, how they score their touchdowns should skew a whole lot more towards the pass than it currently is. The Giants have just nine passing touchdowns and twelve rushing touchdowns. The Seahawks have fourteen passing touchdowns and seventeen rushing touchdowns. Both of those numbers are obviously well below fifty percent. Their pass or rush touchdown rate is below fifty percent, but based on how they're passing how frequently they're throwing the ball, those numbers should be closer to like sixty six percent. So even though the quarterback situations right now at the time of this recording are kind of up in the air for both of those teams, I would still expect some regression to hit, even if it might not because there aren't that many games left. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet 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 for to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. It's the same handle on Blue Sky as well. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly Sleeper Show.