548: 15 Transactions for Week 3

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Speaker 1: This is the Label podcast with your host JJ Zachersa jj zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at FANDL and at number fire dot com in this episode five and forty eight of the Late Round podcast the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Before get into the transactions this week, remember that the FanDuel NFL High Low is a free to play fantasy football contest that you can play over on FANDEL. All you have to do is build your scorecard with the teams you think will score highest or lowest in four stack categories. The closer you are to being spot on, the more points you'll get. Players with the most points each week will split the prize pool in a perfect scorecard will win the jackpot. Head over to fandle dot com today and play the FANDEL High Low for free. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandle app for more details. Sell Tom Brady at the start of the season, I told you guys that I don't hold back on this show. I tell you, or I try to tell you exactly how I'm feeling about players. And while my heart says tom Brady's gonna throw four touchdowns per game for the rest of the year, my brain says, don't be emotional about this. JJ. Now, let's be honest. Anyone who listens to this show, they shouldn't be that surprised by Tom Brady's start, because on an episode of the Late Round podcast from early August, I called out the Buccaneers passing attack as having one of the best early season schedules. And that's not a victory lap by any means. It didn't take a lot of effort for me to share that. According to Pro Football Focuses secondary rankings entering the year, the Buccaneers were facing the bottom two secondaries in football in weeks one and two, and the greatest quarterback of all time tore them apart. Brady now has nine touchdowns in two games, and the only quarterbacks with more Fantasy points right now are Kyler Murray and Patrick Mahomes. Both of those quarterbacks have done some work on the ground, though Tom Brady hasn't. And that's the problem. That's why I'm trying to think with my head here for quarterback to really thrive in today's fantasy football game, one of two things needs to happen. And I talk about this all the time. He either needs good rushing production or he needs to be an outlier from a passing perspective. We know Tom Brady is not going to be running the football a whole lot. You and I can probably run just as fast as Tom Brady. That's not true, but let's just pretend it's true. That means that in order for Brady to be a true difference maker, he needs to post crazy, crazy numbers. So you might be sitting there listening to me right now and saying, JJ, isn't he already showing us that he can post these crazy numbers? Well, yes, and no. The fact that Tom Brady is not even close to the clearcut QB one in fantasy football after throwing nine touchdowns in two games, that's telling. The fact that he's only scored six more fantasy points than Daniel Jones and Jalen Hurts despite having four more passing touchdowns than those two quarterbacks can bind, that's telling. Tom Brady threw forty touchdowns last year, and he was the QB ten in points per game. He was the QB eleven if you include Dak Prescott because he doesn't run the ball. Now, look, Tom Brady has great, great weapons, the best weapons in the league. He's bound to have better than average efficiency numbers. But what he's doing right now is still not sustainable. Through two weeks, Brady's throwing a touchdown pass on ten and a half percent of his attempts. His career average touchdown rate is five point five percent. It was six point six percent last year. The NFL record for touchdown rate in a single season is nine point nine percent. So through two weeks, Tom Brady is far out pacing anything that he's done throughout his career, and he's also pacing to break the league's touchdown rate record. And look, maybe that can happen, but you guys know how I think in fantasy football. I don't bank on something like that. And here's the other thing that no one's really talking about. The Buccaneers have scored nine offensive touchdowns across these two games. That's tied for the most in football. Guess how many rushing touchdowns they have. Zero To assume that all of Tampa Bay's touchdowns are gonna end up as passing touchdowns by the end of the season. That's not very wise. That doesn't make that much sense. From twenty eleven to twenty twenty, the average pass to rush touchdown ratio across the league has been one point nine. Even if we bump that up to like three and a half or something like that for the Bucks, a ratio that's been hit by only thirteen percent of teams over this timeframe, then you're immediately looking at two fewer passing touchdowns this year for Tom Brady. If they had a three point five pass to rush touchdown ratio, that might not seem very significant, but would place Tom Brady immediately in the QB eight QB nine range. No one should be expecting tom Brady to disappear. We just shouldn't lose sight of the fact that they faced two really bad secondaries to start the season. We shouldn't lose sight of the fact that this is unsustainable, and we also shouldn't lose sight of what matters for quarterbacks and fantasy football. So, if there's someone in your league who's valuing Tom Brady as a top three quarterback in fantasy football right now, if you're in a standard scoring league, I think you can sell him add Rondale Moore the target leader for the Arizona Cardinals through two games, not DeAndre Hopkins. It's Rondale Moore. Moore has thirteen targets, eleven catches, one hundred and eighty two yards in a touchdown. And while we absolutely should expect DeAndre Hopkins to see more work in this offense, you have to love how Arizona is using Rondeal Moore. It's exactly how he should be used. According to Next Gen Stats, among the sixty plus wide receivers with ten or more targets this year, More is third to last an average air yards per target. They're keeping him close to the line of scrimmage and they're letting him make plays with his athleticism. That's exactly how he was used to Purdue. That's exactly how you should be using Rondel Moore. He's still out there in two thirds of Yahoo leagues. Go ahead and get him by AJ Brown. So Tennessee got a really big win on Sunday. Aj Brown, though was not very good. He ended up catching three of his nine targets and he only had forty three yards, and according to Next Gen Stats, his expected catch rate was almost twenty percentage points higher than his actual catch rate, but there's still reason for optimism. Brown's seen target shairs of about twenty three percent in each of the Titans' first two games, and those target shairs are now within an offense that should throw the ball more because of game script. Because Tennessee's defense has not been playing very well and probably won't be very good this year. The Titans have a passed to rush attempt ratio of one point two to one to start the year. They haven't had a season like that since twenty fifteen. More passing touchdowns are going to come too. So far, only one of Tennessee's five touchdowns have come through the air that gives them a point twenty five pass to rush touchdown ratio. Since Ryan Tannehill took over that offense, the Titans have averaged a one point three to three pass to rush touchdown ratio. That point twenty five number is bound to regress favorably for this passing attack. Way better days are ahead for aj Brown. Add Emmanuel Sanders. Now, look, I know I've talked about Emmanuel Sanders on this show in the past already this season, but I think he's still a very good ad. He's now seen eighteen percent of Buffalo's targets this season. To go along with according to Pro Football Focus and average up the target of nineteen point seven. The Bills are using him as a deep threat. He's currently a fringe top ten player in air yards. Those deep balls just have not connected. Josh Allen has now thrown at fifteen or more air yards seventeen times this year. He's connected on just four of those. That's a twenty three and a half percent completion rate, and that's worse than the league. Among players with ten or more of those passes. Last year, Josh Allen connected on forty eight and a half percent of those. That's significantly more. So we should expect Alan to get better in that department. And if he gets better, who's he gonna target? The guy who's getting downfield? Emmanuel Sanders add Cordero Patterson. I guess Cordero Patterson is a thing. In Week one, Patterson was out snapped by Mike Davis seventy five percent to thirty three percent. Davis saw roughly double the number of carries and three times the number of targets. This past week, though, things were a little bit different Patterson saw slightly more favorable snap share split, but the way Atlanta divvied up their backfield touches was way better for Patterson. Davis saw nine carries, Patterson saw seven. Davis had seven targets, Patterson had six. The Falcons showed a little bit more life offensively in Week two, and their next three games are against the Giants, the football Team, and the Jets. They could face more neutral and positive game scripts, which will help that backfield by Austin Eckler. So on last week's ten trend show, I sort of gave you guys an extra by transaction when talking about Austin Eckler. In that game against Washington and Week one, Eckler wasn't targeted at all, but he did see the team's goal line work. The biggest knock on Austin Eckler since he's become a thing has been the lack of touches near the goal line. In Week two, we had more of a vintage Austin Eckler performance. He had a twenty two and a half percent target share and he had about sixty four percent of the Chargers running back rushes. This is sort of a by high moment for Austin Eckler. In my opinion, he scored twenty two and a half PPR points in Week two. It's not like the manager who has Eckler sitting there saying I gotta get rid of him right now, But I honestly don't think that we've seen Austin Eckler ceiling. The Chargers didn't have any official goal line plays in Week two, but they did have a two point try and on that two point try, guess who ran it in Austin Eckler. That now gives us a sample size of three goal line rushes in two games for this offense, and all of those rushes have gone to Austin Eckler. If that continues, all while seeing one of the best target chairs in the league at the running back position, Austin Eckler could have an insane season. Add Henry Ruggs. So look, Henry Ruggs's peripheral numbers have not been amazing to start the year. In Week one, his target share was nine point six percent, in Week two eighteen point nine percent. But sometimes big games can lead to bigger and better things. On Sunday, Ruggs took that nineteen percent target share. He turned it into five catches for one hundred and thirteen yards in a touchdown. On the season, he ranks in the top forty in air yards across the league, and Derek Carr is playing really, really well, so he's worth a flyer off the waiver wire. Hold James Robinson. So, James Robinson's now scored fewer than ten PPR points in back to back weeks. He didn't have a single performance last year with fewer than ten points. So the question is should we be panicking right now? And I think the answer to that is yes, we should be panicking. If you drafted James Robinson, you shouldn't feel very good right now. But the reason he's a hold is because it seems like expectations for Robinson have shifted and has everything to do with how Jacksonville split up that backfield with Carlos Hide. But here's the thing. In Week two, things looked much much better for James Robinson. His running back rush share went from thirty one percent in week one to almost seventy percent in week two. His target share was still nine point one percent in week two as well. He's now seen nine of the fourteen running back targets in this offense through two weeks. So if you've got Robinson in a PPR format, I think he's gonna be fine enough moving forward. I don't think he's gonna come close to the ceiling that he showed last year, though if it's a standard league, I'd be a little bit more concerned. I really wanted to shout him out on today's show though, because number one, I've gotten a lot of questions about him, but number two, I wanted to point out that things did get better for James Robinson in week two, and that's a good thing by Kenny Galladay. So if you guys recall back in week one in my fifteen Transactions article that I write on number fire dot com each week, I wrote the following Galladay could get off to a slow start, there's a chance that will shift to buying him right after week two is over, but for now, he's not someone i'd want to rely on to kick off my fantasy football season. So here we are, it's after week two, and I'm saying by Kenny Galladay, and here's the reason why his peripherals through two games, they're not that bad. Sterling Shepherd's gotten the highest target share in that offense at about a twenty eight percent target share, but Galladay's seen a twenty percent share and he ranks in the top twenty in air yards. That's across the league. The reason that Galladay was a sell in the first place was twofold, they faced Denver and Washington. I didn't like those matchups for the Giants in particular, But then on top of that, he was coming off an injury. He hadn't gotten a lot of reps with Daniel Jones. But now with semi decent peripherals, I think that you can send a low ball offer. I'm not saying break the bank for Kenny Galladay. I'm saying, take some bench assets and try to upgrade them to Kenny Galladay because he's a talented wide receiver and he gets it New Orleans in Dallas over the next three weeks, sell Devin Singletary. So in Week one against the Steelers, Zack Moss was not active for Buffalo. Devin Singletary was then the obvious lead back. He carried over seventy three percent of the Bills running back rushes and he had a ten point two percent target share in that game. This past week, Zack Moss was active. Singletary saw his running back rushhair go down by about twelve percentage points and his snapshare dropped by about nine percentage points. His target share, though, was almost identical from week one to week two. The difference in production between those two games for Singletary was a forty six yard touchdown in week two. He was a top fifteen back in PPR formats this past weekend, but he scored sixty two percent of his points on that one play. And here's the bottom line for Singletary. It's gonna be tough for him to score touchdowns. We know Josh Allen takes away some looks from his running backs near the goal line, but we also saw Zack mosk Get utilizes the goal line back and we two Buffalo had one goal line rush this past weekend. Zack Moss saw it. They had three rushes from within the ten, and Zack Moss saw two of them. It's just tough to see a real path for consistent upside for Devin Singletary. Add Van Jefferson, so we haven't seen this really really big game from Van Jefferson yet and we might never see it. This is more of a stash The fact is his peripheral numbers don't look that bad. He only has a ten point nine percent target shair, but he's clearly been the number three wide receiver in this Rams offense. Cooper Cup has played one hundred and six offensive snaps, Robert Woods has been in ninety six, and Van Jefferson at eighty nine. Jefferson's actually run six more routes according to Pro Football Focus than Robert Woods has, So if you can stash him, I don't think it's a bad idea. He's only rostered in seven percent of Yahoo leagues, and not only could he eventually be flex viable, but he'd see a boost if we see an injury to Cooper Cupp or Robert Woods. By Devonte Smith. Only nine wide receivers have seen target shairs of twenty five percent are better in each of the first two weeks of the season. One of those nine, Davonte Smith. Smith had a down game in Week two. He only caught two of his seven targets for sixteen yards. But this is why he's a bye. It's a by low moment. As I talked about on the first fifteen Transactions episode of the season, Philadelphia's passing game schedule is awesome through the first half of the season. Now that San franciscoes out of the way, Philly gets a lot of games in a row where they're either going up against a beatable secondary or a game that could just shoot out or have a pass heavy script for this Philadelphia offense. Next week for the Eagles, they get the Cowboys. Then it's the Chiefs, Panthers, Buccaneers, Raiders, and Lions. With Theavonte Smith having a twenty seven percent target chair through two weeks, I want that add Daniel Jones. Daniel Jones is a top five fantasy quarterback and he's done this with just two passing touchdowns. This just shows the importance once again of quarterback rushing. Only Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts through two weeks have more rushing yards than Daniel Jones, and Daniel Jones is tied for the league lead and quarterback rushing touchdowns. Now, it's unlikely he's gonna keep that up, but the passing matchups are gonna get a little bit better for Jones. I alluded to that earlier with Kenny Galladay, and that starts this week against Atlanta. Atlanta entered the season as one of the weakest secondaries in the league, and they've done nothing to change our minds. They gave up two top five performances, one to Jalen Hurts and one to Tom Brady. So Daniel Jones, at the very least is a pretty good streamer. This week, add Justin Fields. Now, look, if I didn't include Justin Fields on this week's podcast, people would yell at me. So I'm including him even though he's roster in about half of Yahoo leagues. But Andy Dalton's banged up. Justin Fields needs to be on your fantasy team. I podcasted this past offseason about the importance of quarterback rushing. Fields is the quintessential example of a quarterback who may struggle in real life, but he will be good in fantasy football, or he more than likely will. I don't want to guarantee it, but guys on Sunday, Fields through the ball thirteen times in relief for Randy Dalton, he ran it ten times. He didn't even play close to a full game, but he now has one of five quarterback performances in the NFL this year with double digit rush attempts. And you may think that he can't get by with his rushing. I would disagree. Just look at Jalen Hurts last year. Hurtz was one of the worst clean pocket quarterbacks in the NFL last season, and yet during his four starts, he was an easy QB one in fantasy football. Why because of his rushing. It matters that much. It can catapult an average to below average quarterback and make them very relevant in fantasy football. Now. It may be tough this week if Justin Fields does get the start against the but you want Justin Field's long term add the Las Vegas Raiders defense. There really aren't many obvious streaming options at defense this week, but I do think the Raiders kind of work. According to Fandals Sportsbook, Vegas is a home four and a half point favorite and they're facing Miami. There's a forty five and a half point over under. As we know, Tua is banged up. That could help this Vegas defense. And by the way, the Vegas defense has actually been okay for the first two weeks of the season. They've had five sacks, an interception in a couple of fumble recoveries. So I don't mind Vegas as a deeper streamer. The sixteenth transaction this week that you can't get my fifteen transactions column over on number fire dot com is the buy DK Metcalf. Look, you guys know that I'm happy my guy, Tyler Lockett is bawling out right now. He's one of the best Fantasy football wide receivers. Through two weeks. He's seen thirty point eight percent of Seattle's targets. He's seeing a high average up of target. He's also converting his deep balls at an absolutely insane rate. We're working with a small sample size right now, obviously, but Lockett's caught four of his six targets that have traveled fifteen or more air yards and he's converted those into two hundred and six yards and three touchdowns. Meanwhile, Dk Metcalf, his teammate, He's converted one of his four targets on those types of throws for thirty yards. And I'm not saying that this is all gonna flip and he's gonna be Tyler Lockett, or that Lockett is a cell or anything like that. I'm saying that Lockett is not going to maintain this like to this degree, and that Metcalf all the while has the exact same target share through two weeks. His production just hasn't come close to matching Tyler Lockett's. That's going to naturally normalize. So if you can buy metcalf low as he sits in the shadows of Tyler Lockett, I would do it better. Days are ahead for metcalf That's gonna do over today's show though. Thanks to all all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, you know, if you can follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, talk to you tomorrow.