541: 10 Trends for Week 1

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha Jay Jake zacher reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachareson, the editor in chief at Fandle and at number fire dot com in this episode five hundred and forty one of the Late Round podcast so many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in if you're new to the show. Here's what you can expect from this ten Trends show. Each week trends. You can expect trends seriously, though, I look at ten things in a data driven way that are happening across the fantasy football world, and I give a take or two on those things. This episode is unsurprisingly powered by data. I look at the numbers that I deal with on a weekly basis, and if something stands out when I'm analyzing things, I shout them out on this show. This is the shortest episode that you're gonna get from me each week, but I think the episode does have some power. It should be helpful. Since the season hasn't started yet. The trends for this week are from things that have happened in other seasons naturally, but in the future expect the trends to be focused on the current season. Before get into this week's trends, I want to let you know about the Fandels Sunday Million. The prize pool is a whopping three point five million dollars, with first place taking home one million dollars. All you have to do is head over to fandel today and click on the NFL Sunday Million Contest. Draft your lineup of players, sit back, and enjoy Sunday NFL football. Go to fandle dot com today to participate in the NFL Sunday Million. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the fandle app for more details. Trend one this week is about Joe Mixon. Mixon has played four games without Giovanni Bernard in his career. During those four games, he averaged nineteen PPR points per game. Most importantly, since we know that Bernard's a pass catcher when Bernard hasn't been around, mixing average a target share per game of fourteen points percent. He didn't fall below a twelve and a half percent target share in any of those contests. Yes, I understand it's a small sample, but without Bernard. This season we could finally see Joe Mixon put it all together in fantasy football. I talked about Tyson Williams on yesterday's fifteen Transaction Show, and I've got a couple of Ravens running back trends that helped drive home some of the points that I made on that episode. The first one is that over the last two years, no Ravens running back is hit a seventy percent snapshare in a single game. Every other team has had at least one of those games. The league average over this time is ten. So what this means is the average NFL team has had their top running back hit a seventy percent snapshare ten times over the last two seasons. Baltimore is at zero. This plays into the idea that a player like Williams could have a bigger role than some expect. Now here's the downside, and this plays into why I'm not that into Gustards as others might be, because his cost climbed after that JK Dobbins injury. But the last time a Raven's running back saw five or more targets in a single game was Week thirteen of twenty eighteen. Over the last two years, a Raven's running back hasn't seen more than four targets in a game, and there have only been five instances where a running back has hit four targets. It's just not a good offense for pass catching running backs, and that inherently limits fantasy upside, especially in PPR formats. Last season, the New England Patriots ran nine hundred and seventy nine offensive plays. During the nine years prior AKA years with Tom Brady, that number never dip below oney fifty. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I think a lot of times when we look back at a season and look at how much volume a player had, we're often not looking at these types of raw totals. Instead, we say this team was run heavy, so they didn't see that much passing volume. In reality, sometimes teams just don't see that much volume in general because they're either really slow paced or they're really ineffective. They're not running many plays. So this is the kind of thing that I'm gonna look at each week on this show. Trend five is also related to the Patriots and volume, and it's that James White has seen fifty or more targets in every single season since twenty fourteen. I think a lot of people look at what he did last year and they say White only had sixty two targets when that number was ninety five and one hundred and twenty three over the two years prior. But the truth is, once again, New England didn't run many plays and they were run heavy. The combination of those two meant less overall volume through the air. This is why we look at shares, this is why we look at target share. Last season, White had a fourteen point eight percent target share in fourteen games. His sixteen game Pro rated target shair was sixteen point nine percent. That sixteen point nine percent number is actually the third high highest of his career. Don't sleep on James White as a high floor PPR option. This year, no team targeted their running backs at a lower rate than the Pittsburgh Steelers did. Last year, Steelers running backs had a twelve point four percent target chair That was the eleventh lowest that we've seen since twenty eleven. I'm simply bringing this up because we should expect things to change with Nase Harris in that backfield, and it's going to be interesting to see how it impacts the target chair numbers of the tight ends and wide receivers on that team. Another running back target chair number that I want to focus on today is Carolina's People keep citing the fact that Christian McCaffrey's back, and with him back, it's tough to see someone like Terrace Marshall emerging as a reliable option on that team. And I get the idea. In theory, more target shair to the running back position means less for the wide receivers, and I think it's not wrong. I doubt Carolina wide receivers have the same target chair that they had last year, but don't lose sight of the fact that we should be looking at the difference between what they did last year versus what they're gonna do this year. It's not like they didn't target their running backs last season. In fact, last year, Panthers running backs saw twenty one point seven percent target share. That was four percentage points lower than the year before that. That's not insignificant, so don't get me wrong, but it's not like everything flips upside down with Christian McCaffrey back. Adam Thielan scored thirteen red zone touchdowns last year. That ranks tied for the second most sins twenty eleven, with Devonte Adams last year leading that category with fourteen. But here's the thing. Felan saw twenty red zone targets. Among the five hundred and thirty four wide receiver seasons that we've seen over the last ten years where a wide out saw ten or more red zone targets, Felan's conversion rate in the red zone ranked third best. In other words, regression is coming. Last season, Raiders wide receivers had a forty five point seven percent target share that was the lowest in the NFL. They also had almost a thirty three percent tight end target share that was the most in the NFL. Now, usually i'd expect something like this to change year over year, but I'm not sure that's gonna happen. In twenty nineteen, Vegas actually had a higher tight end target share than what they had in twenty twenty. Darren Waller's a beast, and they don't have obvious alternatives in that offense, even though I really like Brian Edwards. Once again, it's gonna be Darren Waller season. The last trend this week is about Ezekiel Elliott. Someone I bought into a good bit in my redraft leagues this year. Not that you guys really care, but this is one of the reasons why. Ezekiel Elliott had twenty six goal line rushes last year. That was the most of his career. He converted just five of them into touchdowns. Though, since twenty eleven, we've seen twenty three running back seasons where the running back's all twenty or more goal line rushes. Remember, Ezekiel Elliott had twenty six. The only running back among those twenty three to score five fewer touchdowns was Ezekiel Elliott. Things should bounce in the right direction for Zeke this year. I'm obviously bullish on the Cowboys offense because it's hard not to be, but I think Zeke is in store for a strong season. That's gonna do it. For today's show, though, 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, you know, for to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. We've got the weekly sleeper show tomorrow, so I'll talk to you then.