912: Week 3 Sleepers

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J. Zacher Reson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Eeson in this episode nine and twelve of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. I want to be better than I was last week on The Sleeper Show because I had some bad picks. Justin Field still hasn't given us that elite fantasy performance this year. Brandon Cooks was overshadowed by Jalen Tolbert eighty Mitchell was overshadowed by Alec Pearce. The Miami backfield was a mess. Outside of Devon h Chan, Samir White ended up getting more receiving work, hurting Alexander Madison, Jayleen McMillan, Tyler Johnson. They didn't do much. It was not a great week, but not everything was terrible. I talked about Quentin Johnston, he had a multi touchdown day, Wandel Robinson found the end zone two, Daniel Jones was usable, Andrea Yosi Vash scored twice, and yeah, I know I'm talking about bottom of the barrel players, but I want a better hit rate than that. With more data and with more information, I'm expecting that hit rate to be better moving forward. Now, before I get into the sleepers this week, I want to remind you to check out Underdog Fantasy. Underdog is the best and easiest place to play fantasy sports and right now, like I told you yesterday, if you sign up with promo code Late Round, you get three things. You get a deposit bonus, you get a free pick, and you get a copy of my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are emailed to you after you sign up and they're updated every Tuesday. All you have to do is head to Underdog Fantasy dot com and use promo code Late Round when you sign up. Once you make a deposit, you'll get those offers again promo code Late Round. We'll kick things off as we usually do with players rostered in ten to fifty percent of Yahoo leagues, and we'll start with quarterbacks. I'll be honest, I don't love the quarterbacks this week, but we're gonna begin with Geno Smith. I do think there's some concern here to the Seahawks just don't have to keep pace with a to a tongue of ioloa list Miami Dolphins offense that was pretty hard to say, but I got on my first try. But at the end of the day, we know that Seattle's at least projected to score points, and if they're projected to score points, the quarterback will usually have something to do with that. Seattle is the twelfth best implied team total in this week's slate, and while Miami might look okay in fantasy points against, they've been fourth worst than EPA per drop back allowed to start the season. Gino Smith has been a top ten passer according to that metric, and the nice part about Seattle is that thus far they've been one of the past friendlier teams in the league. They have the fourth highest pass rate over expected so far this season, and they're ninth in neutral script rate. I'm not sure Smith's ceiling is absurd in this game, Like if Derek Carr is out there, I'd much rather play Derek Carr, But I think you could do worse with a quarterback streamer. But maybe you'd rather go with someone like Sam Darnold as long as Justin Jefferson is active. Donald and the Vikings rank third and pass right over expected to start the season, and they get a Houston defense it's been the third best one for quarterbacks thus far, and adjusted points allowed, it's still really earliest. That number has a ton of volatility. But Houston got Anthony Richardson in Week one and he was much better against them than he was against the Packers, and then technically Caleb Williams was a little bit better against them than he was against the Titans. But that Houston Minnesota game has a healthy forty six point total, and there's a chance that we see Minnesota needing to keep pace with Houston. I don't think it's some like ideal matchup. Houston's seen pretty average numbers in terms of neutral script pass rate against, and this game projects to be pretty average from a pace perspective. But there's not a lot going on at quarterback right now. Now, moving on to running back, Cuba Hubbard is still under that fifty percent mark he works. Now that Carolina made that switch to Andy Dalton, we may see a bad offense for Carolina still, but they're facing a Vegas rush defense that's allowed two hundred and sixty seven rushing yards to running backs in two games. Hubbard saw his running back rush are increased by nineteen percentage points from week one to Week two, and his target share last week was nineteen. If that usage continues, he should be fine as a flex player and RB three play this week. The Buccaneers are one of the biggest favorites on this week slate because they get the Broncos. A potential positive game script means more potential runs and that's pretty important for a team like Tampa Bay because they've been the sixth most pass heavy team over expected this year. Rashad White is the team's RB one, but like I said earlier this week, he's been pretty rough on the ground and while he's back at practice, he is dealing with a groin issue, So that makes Bucky Irving a sleeper. He saw forty one percent of the team's running back rushes last week, so if this ends up being a favorable game script for the Buccaneers, he could hit double digit touches. Now, people are gonna roll their eyes at this next one, but it's Jalil McLoughlin. It's been a weird season for the Broncos running backs. I thought their target share was going to be higher than where it's at right now. Right now, there's just a little bit above average and in week one, we saw Jalil McLoughlin kind of be the starter or be the main guy in that back, and then we two Javonte Williams was a workhorse. So it's been a weird season so far for this offense and how they're deploying their backs. The thing is, though they might go with a run heavy approach against Tampa Bay, the Bucks are dealing with defensive line issues and they've been a bottom half team to start the year and yards over expected allowed on the ground along with EPA per rush allout, there aren't many waiver wire players getting volume, so McLaughlin might be able to work as a desperation flex. And then the last running back in this tier, I'm gonna go over to Justice Hill. The Ravens get the Cowboys this week, and when you've got a good opponent like that, there's always the chance for a negative game script. At the very least, it's a game with a high total. Hill unsurprisingly saw his target share drop from twenty percent in week one to six and a half percent in week two, but his route participation was still forty six percent. That was a drop by about eight percentage points, not as drastic and so far this year, the Cowboys have been ninth and adjusted target shair allowed to running backs. So Hill kind of works this week, but only in PPA formats. He's kind of in that RB four range. Now, a wide receiver, DeMarcus Robinson is just barely under that fifty percent mark, so I'll give him a shout. I've got another Rams wide receiver to talk about later, but Robinson is the safest of the bunch, that bunch being without Cooper Cup and Pukinakua. Robinson is the only Rams wide receiver this year to hit an eighty percent role participation rate in each of their first two games. He's turned that into eleven targets in a fifteen percent target shair. Now, I don't think he's an absolute smash. The forty nine ers have struggled against wide receivers in the early parts of the season when adjusting for strength of opponent, But you have to have some concern that the forty nine ers are going to be able to pressure this Rams offense and how depleted they are. Robinson is more of a he should be the stable piece in this offense kind of play, but he does have some volatility. He just deserves a shout, and as I said, I have another Rams wide receiver that I'm going to get to later who I think actually has the better matchup in this game. Next is a pair of wide receivers, and that's Greg Dortch and Michael Wilson. But I will say I think I'm leaning Greg Dortch this week. I like his matchup better against the Lions because the Lions have struggled a lot against slot receivers to start the year. They face the Rams and the Buccaneers and they've seen the fifth highest percentage of wide receiver targets against them go to the slot, and according to PFF data, they've allowed the second most receptions and the most total targets to slot receivers. That's Greg Dortschland. He didn't get a lot done in Week two, but the Cardinals didn't have a back and forth game script. He's an the eleven personnel guy. And you could go Michael Wilson as well. Because this Cardinals Lions game it projects to be a shootout, or at least a high scoring one with Deebo, Samuel Out, Brandon and I Youk and George Kittle might end up seeing half of San Francisco's targets. But Jawan Jennings is now going to be a full time player. I'm interested to see how they deploy him because there's some other guys in this offense like Jacob Cowing who belonged in the slot, and that's where Jennings usually plays. But there's no doubt that his role participation is gonna rise without Deebo Samuel in that lineup and in an offense that we know can put up points and put up lots of yards. That's intriguing. Now, the last wide out in this tier that I'm gonna shout out, it's Johan Dotson. Now, hear me out, clearly. I don't feel great about this given how Johan Dotson performed a Monday night football. AJ Brown was out and he still saw just a single target. But the good news is that he ran a route on over eighty five percent of Phillies dropbacks and their game against New Orleans this weekend has a nice forty nine point over under. This is really about getting a player who's part of a high scoring game who should be running a lot of routes. Those routes might just turn into Cardio who knows, But it's the right environment to get a piece of I don't think he's a top fifty wide receiver, but I do think he is technically a sleeper. The obvious tight end this tier is Hunter Henry. He's coming off a game where he saw a fifty percent target share. That's absurd. He now ranks seventh in round participation across the league a tight end. Now, the matchup this week is not great. The Jets so far this season are second best against tight ends and adjusted fantasy points allowed. With that being said, they rank pretty average and adjusted target share alloted to the position. There's not a lot out there at tight end, so the fact that Hunter Henry's getting a lot of run that's huge. Mikasiki saw twenty six and a half percent target share last week. He was productive, but as I talked about on the ten Trend Show, his RALE participation is still pretty mid. He ranks outside the top thirty at the position in RALE participation. With that being said, the Bengals may just want to use him more. Maybe that happens this week, but regardless, Cincinnati has a juicy matchup against Washington. This could be the game we see the Bengals finally break out and post a lot of points. So that's why I'm calling out Kasiki. We'll not look at players roster in fewer than ten percent of Yahoo leagues who you may be able to start this week. Gardner Minshew's the quarterback that I like most from this group. I mentioned on The ten Trend's episode how the Raiders are shockingly in the top five and pass rate over expected to start the season, and Minshew is coming off an honestly impressive performance against the Ravens despite what the fantasy total might say. The Raiders get the Panthers this week. In Carolina ranks in the bottom five and quarterback pressure rate and EPA per drop back allowed, Minshew's in a really good spot. And guess what. We actually have some running backs in this group this week. One of them is Deonta Foreman. The Browns are facing a pretty mediocre Giants team and they're currently six and a half point favorites. Foreman's not that much of a pass catcher, we saw that last week with his eighteen percent route participation, but he's a bruiser. He led all Browns running backs last week with fourteen rush attempts. Accounting for sixty four percent of their running back rushes. So far this season, the Giants have been third worst in football and rushing yards over expected allowed per attempt. So if this game script goes well for Cleveland, Foreman could benefit. Now, Joe Mixon is trending in the wrong direction this weekend, and at the time of this recording, Damian Pierce still hasn't practiced this week because he has a hamstring injury that he's dealing with. If both of those guys are out, then Cam Akers is the Texans lead back this weekend. But it's a situation to monitor because Houston is one of the best offenses in football and they're sitting with a top ten implied team total on the slate. If both Pearson Acres are healthy, it's tough to really go all in, admittedly, especially with Dara A. Gumbawalle likely taking pass catching work, but Acres could be in store for a good game. Looking at wide receivers, I know that andre Yosibosh scored twice on Sunday, but he's still rostered in fewer than ten percent of Yahoo leagues. He only has a sixteen percent target share in the season. Despite te Higgins being sidelined, but again, Cincinnati gets Washington this weekend. That's the top secondary to target for your wide receivers, and it's basically been that way since last year. Even if T Higgins plays, Yosi Bosh is going to be the team's primary slot guy, so he works this week and monitor Jermaine Burton. I said all summer that I think he's the more talented player between himself and Andre Josivash. He just needs to get it together between his ears. But his rale participation did get up to twenty percent last week. Baby steps, Baby steps. I told you I had another Rams wide receiver to talk about, and that guy is Jordan Whittington. I see Whittington as a more direct replacement to Cooper cup I talked about that earlier this week on the fifteen Transaction Show. He should play the slot role in that offense, and if in when he does, he's got a great match up against the forty nine ers. So far this year, the Niners have allowed the six highest percentage of wide receiver targets to go to the slot, and they've allowed the most yards there. In my opinion, Whittington was just way too cheap off of waivers this week. I think he's like a wide receiver four wide receiver five play this week with upside. Jalen Tolbert is still rostered in just two percent of Yahoo leagues despite an eighty nine percent rat participation and twenty two percent target share last week. The Cowboys get Baltimore. It's a game that projects to be relatively high scoring. Talked about that earlier with Justice Hill, but also both the Cowboys and Ravens so far this year, they've run at a pretty fast pace. They're both top seven right now in seconds per play. Tolbert could be a cheap way to get a piece of that interesting game. Now. Jordan Addison is still day to day with his ankle injury. If he's out again this week, then don't forget to look at Jalen Naylor. Naylor ran around on every single Minnesota drop back in Week two, and he had a seventeen percent target share. He's primarily played a perimeter role and that's where the majority of wide receiver targets have gone against Houston this year. They rank first and percentage of targets to the outside, so Naylor could be in store for some production this week. Especially if the Vikings hit a negative game script. I don't have any deep tight end plays at the moment, so let's move on to some streaming defenses. Tampa Bay has their injuries, but they should still be finding against Denver as a high floor option. Denver's allowed a top ten pressure rate. They've gotten implied team total just over sixteen points, so the Bucks make sense. You could also look at Indianapolis at home again in Chicago, given the way the Bears offensive started the season. Vegas gets Andy Dalton, which, yeah, Andy Dalton's an upgrade, but it's still a questionable starter. And then Seattle. They're rostering in thirty eight percent of Yahoo leagues, and they get Miami without Tua, so they're a good streamer too. Now, like I've been doing each week, I'm gonna use the picks from today's show to put together a quick entry over on Underdog. Last week was rough, but like I said on the show, I wasn't a huge fan of the options for the players that I talked about at the time of the recording. This week, I feel a little bit better. I'm rolling with Gardner Minshew higher than two hundred and eighteen and a half passing yards I've gotten projected closer to two hundred and thirty. We'll also stay in that game and go choop a Hubbard higher than forty seven and a half rushing yards. My projection has him at fifty four, and then the last one. We're gonna boost this entry with a Jordan Whittington touchdown. You guys can feel free to play though at Underdog Fantasy dot com. Make sure you use promo code Lateround when you sign up. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found. Follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. Thanks for listening everyone. As usual, tomorrow we have the weekly Mailbag episode, and then later in the day you get another episode of Late Round Perspectives. I'll talk to you then