456: Week 13 Matchups

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyes and the editor in chief at fandle and at Number five dot com in this episode four five six of the Late Round podcast. So the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Derek Carr was a massive, massive bust last week. I know I wasn't the only analyst on him as a streamer, but he sucked and he completely destroyed one of my fantasy teams. I got that totally wrong on last week's matchup show. Quarterback in general was kind of bad versus how things have gone over the last month or so, but I was right to be high on Wayne Gallman and Duke Johnson At running back. Giovanni Bernard was completely average, which I thought was gonna happen, and I nailed the Cole Beasley versus Gabriel Davis dynamic. I didn't now Antonio Brown being a viable option at all, though, and both tight end streamers that I'm mentioned didn't do all that much. The chaotic Week twelve is over now, though, and I'm thankful for it. I'm not thankful for Derek Carr, but I'm thankful that we can move past all the craziness that happened on and off the field over the last week. Hopefully Week thirteen brings us the goods now before getting into players, and I'm higher and lower on versus the consensus. This week, I want to let you know that we've got another FanDuel Podcast Network Listener League here in Week thirteen. Enter the Rake Free Weekly NFL contest made exclusively for you the Listener for just five dollars and compete for your share for the fifteen hundred dollars prize pool, including a one hundred and fifty dollars first place prize. To enter, visit fandle dot Com Slash League Slash Listener League. Eligibility restrictions apply. So I don't have many disagreements on the negative end at quarterback this week, but I'll give you four sort of QB twos that I think I have a shot to post decent numbers here in Week thirteen. We'll start with Kirk Cousins. I talked up Kirk Cousins on the fifteen Transactions episode earlier this week, and the points that I made then still stand now he's a good play. You know, since Week six, Cousins has averaged zero point six fewer points per game than Russell Wilson. That's an arbitrary cutoff, sure, but it at least shows you that it's not like you're streaming someone who's terrible. You do run the risk with Cousins that the Vikings see a super positive game script and that forces them to run the ball even more than usual. But this is a process oriented play that makes sense. There's a high over under in this game of fifty one and a half according to Fandals Sportsbook, and the Vikings, as big favorites against the Jags, have an implied team total above thirty points. If the Vikings get to that total, Cousins, just from a probability standpoint, is likely going to have something to do with it. And it doesn't hurt that Jacksonville has been one of the worst teams this year in terms of adjusted Fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks. Ryan Fitzpatrick was also featured in the fifteen Transactions episode, and at the time of this recording, I don't know if he's going to start this week, so be prepared for that. But If he does go, he's a really good play. The Dolphins are facing the Bengals and have an implied total of almost twenty seven points. Fitzpatrick's been sort of awesome from a fantasy perspective this year, when he started averaging twenty two point three points per game in games started since his bad Week one outing against New England. The Bengals are a top ten favorable opponent for fantasy quarterbacks as well, So I like Ryan Fitzpatrick as a streamer. I keep going back to Philip Rivers on this show. I can't stop talking about Philip Rivers. But he's been flying under the radar in fantasy. He's averaging over eighteen fantasy points per game over his last six and like I said last week, that includes a seven point outing against Baltimore. Now he gets the Texans secondary that no longer has Bradley Roby because Bradley Roby tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. And even with Roby for a lot of the season, the Texans have been a top half defense to target for fantasy quarterbacks. I forget Roby missed a game against Jake Luton and the Jags back in Week nine. In that game, Luton, who is getting his first career start, threw for over three hundred passing yards over his next two starts against Green Bay and Pittsburgh, which I get are tougher opponents, but over those two games he combined for three hundred and twenty yards. So Rivers is in a really good spot. Now, if you want to get a little weird with it, you could go with Mitch Trubisky. Now, hear me out. Hear me out. First off, For what it's worth, Drubisky has kind of owned the Lions, at least in fantasy. I'm not an analyst who often looks at trends against individual teams in years past because teams changed so much. But it's still fun with Trubisky and the Lions because over his last four against Detroit he's thrown three touchdowns in every single contest. But even if you just look at this year, which by the way, he did that back in Week one, he threw three touchdowns against the Lions. But this season, in his completed games, Drubisky's averaging almost nineteen Fantasy points per game. He has multiple top ten performances. The way he compiles his numbers is just kind of ugly. Detroit this season has been awful against the run, which is why David Montgomery is a great play this week. But they've been pretty bad against the past too. They rank eleventh worst and adjusted fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks, and their secondary is sixth worst according to Number five's expected points model. Kenyan Drake has seen really good usage over the last two weeks. He's averaged a running back rush share per game of eighty two percent and his target share per game average has been over twelve percent. That's better than what he's done throughout the rest of the season. Now, his snap shares haven't taken a leap, that's somewhat of a concern, but his usage as a receiver has been good to see. Now he gets the rams. That's not the best matchup on paper, and I'm not trying to sell it that way. It's just that we've got to be aware that Drake's seeing this uptick and receiving volume, and he's acting as the team's goal lineback. So because of those two things, I think he should be started as an RB two this week. And I think he's ranked too low, like i'd be playing him over Wayne Gallman for example, and Gallman currently is ranked ahead Frank Gore was featured in the fifteen Transactions episode this week, and I do think that he works against the Raiders. Like I said on that show, Week twelve was the first time we saw Gore without Lemichael p. Ryan and Le'Veon Bell this year, and he had eighty six percent of Newark's running back rushes and an eleven percent target chair. If he maintains that against the Raiders, a team that ranks in the bottom five and adjusted points allowed to running backs, then he should be able to finish as a lower end RB two. I'm going to go back to Alexander Madison as a deeper play this week, just in case the Vikings game does get out of hand. I mentioned him as a deep play against Dallas a few weeks back, but that game script didn't go as planned. That's why the pick was wrong. But this one could given Minnesota is one of the biggest favorites on the slate and Dalvin Cook has been a little bit banged up too, so there's always a chances they use Madison a little bit more. There's really not that much to quantify this aside from game script. Could really be in their favor, and I hope that no one actually has to start Alexander Madison. I do think the gap between Alvin Kamara and Latavius Murray and rank too large this week. Murray has outscored Kamara over the last two games with Taysom Hill as quarterback, and he's also seen a higher percentage of the team's running back rushes. And since, like I said on yesterday's ten Trend Show, since Kamara in that backfield have essentially seen their target share cut in half with Taysom Hill, It's not like Kamara is getting this big advantage over Murray as a receiver. But Kamara is currently the RB seven on Fantasy pros, Latavius Murray is the RB twenty eight. That gap should be shrunk a whole lot in my opinion, meaning if we're high on the Saints' backfield, we should be lower on Kamara and higher on Murray. Once again this week, Todd Gurley is someone who's going to be tough to trust here in Week thirteen, he returned to practice on Wednesday. That's great. He sat out Week twelve with a knee injury, but now he gets the Saints. New Orleans has been by far the best team and adjusted fantasy points allowed to running backs this year. They haven't given up a single RB one performance here in twenty twenty. Gurley's touchdown dependent for the most part to begin with, but in a tough matchup with a bad knee, I'm staying away this week. Michael Pittman Junior had a tough game against the Titans in Week twelve. He caught two balls for twenty eight yards. Not great. The good news he saw nine targets in the twenty one percent target share. The peripherals were still fine, and now he gets that Roby list Texans secondary this week. Not only has Houston been a top ten matchup with Roby for most of the season, but the other piece of this is that Houston's actually been pretty good against the slot, not necessarily because they're good at defending it, but because you can beat them on the outside. And Pittman has only played twenty nine percent of his snaps this year from the slot, so he gets a favorable outside matchup. I like him a lot this week, and I like Corey Davis as well. Of course, AJ Brown is the go to win this offense, but Davis is putting together a really solid season. He's averaged a twenty two percent target chair per game this year, and you might be thinking, well, that's skewed a little bit because AJ Brown wasn't healthy to start the year. That's not totally true, though. Davis has almost a twenty four percent target share per game over his last six He's been heavily involved, and now he gets a Browns defense in the game with a pretty high fifty four point over under that's been eleventh worst against wideouts this year when looking at adjusted points allowed. Now digging a little bit deeper, this could finally be Denzel Mims's week. Even with Sam Darnold back. This past week, Mims saw almost thirty percent of the Jets targets. He's now seen about a twenty seven percent target share per game rate since he started playing, and that includes a game where his target share is below eleven percent and the Raiders aren't tough defensively, they're completely average and adjusted points allowed. So if the target share keeps up for Mims, he could have a strong Week thirteen. Now looking down the wide receiver consensus rankings this week, Josh Reynolds I think is still just too low. Like I don't have this out of this world expectation for Josh Reynolds. But he's tied for fortieth this season in wide receiver targets and he's seen a fifteen and a half percent target share. That target share is over twenty percent over his last five games. And now the Rams get Arizona in a game that's pretty intriguing given both of these teams run at a fairly fast pace, especially Arizona. Again, you're not playing him over a lot of typical starters, but he's seen at least six targets in each of his last five games. For him to be ranked as a wide receiver sixty two, that seems just a little bit too low. Tyler Boyd is the one player, a wide receiver who really stuck out to me as someone that's overvalued. This week, he had a twenty two percent target chair Last week. That's totally fine, but the Bengals offense was not effective without Joe Burrow and Boyd ended up with four point five PPR points. This week, Cincinnati's facing Miami. There's nothing special about this matchup for me to say that Boyd deserves wide receiver three consideration. I just want to see the Bengals offense move well before I'm confident enough to play guys there, maybe t Higgins aside, there's no Will Fuller in Houston anymore. And the player who will probably benefit most will be Key Key Qt because he's gonna see more consistent snaps. But don't sleep on the Texans tight ends getting more work too. Jordan Akins ran fourteen more routes last week than any other tight end for Houston. And if you were to choose one tight end who's been the most reliable on the team this year, it's probably Aikins. He's got three top fifteen performances on the season, so I think he's in play as a streamer this week, and maybe we'll get lucky and he'll be more involved than anticipated, making him a decent starter down the stretch. Now, if you want the deepest of deep streamers at tight end this week, you could look to Cole Kamet. Jimmy Graham's been fine this year in fantasy, but over the bears last two games, Comet's overtaken him as the primary tight end receiver. He's run more routes in both games, according to Pro Football Focus. Now the Bears get this strong matchup against a bad Lions defense. Sometimes, with streamers and really players in general, you've got to just bank on the peripherals like routes run and hope that they convert before other people are on them. And Commets currently the tight end thirty seven on Fantasy pros, so no one seems to be on them, but the shift from Graham to Comet seems to be happening. The Las Vegas Raiders aren't good defensively. They've got just two top ten performances on the season in Fantasy, but the Jets are basically the Raiders on offense. Opposing defenses this year against the Jets have ranked in the top eight in all but three games, and like I said in the fifteen Transactions episode, no team has ranked worse than sixteenth and weekly scoring against the Jets. The Raiders should hypothetically have a high enough floor this week to serve as a streamer, but I do understand there's plenty of risk because they've been so mediocre. Now, another one of those super low roster defenses that might work this week is Detroit. I know I talked about Mitch Trubisky earlier on the show, but I also can't deny that Trubisky is a fantasy football dream for opposing defenses. He's been sacked two and a half times per game and it starts this season, and he's tossing more than one interception per game. So Detroit works as well. But again, I'm not super super into these defenses. I just think they're serviceable. If you've got Seattle based off of last week's recommendation, or if you can get Minnesota or something, go in that direction. If you can't, the Raiders and the Lions should be able to give you something based on their matchup. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone. One more show this week, the Mailbag episode, and that drops tomorrow