306: 10 Trends for Week 9

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha J J. Zacher reson What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachareson, the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com in this episode three hundred and six of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. We all know that Thursday night football games can be tricky, but Fandle has the perfect treat for you this Halloween. Fandal's one million dollar NFL Thursday Million Nightmare is here, with one million dollars in prizes up for grabs in week nine, build your lineup of forty nine Ers and Cardinals, turn on the game, and take your shot at the two hundred thousand dollars first place prize, all for just nine dollars. It's that easy. For more details, visit fandle dot com or download the fandel app Today, eligibility restrictions apply. So Trend one of today's ten Trend Show is sort of tied to what I talked about on yesterday's fifteen Transaction Show, but it's that zach Ertz has finished ranked tight ends sixteen or worse in each of his last three games. Meanwhile, he finished tight end sixteen or worse just three times last year when excluding the Fantasy Irrelevant Week seventeen. Now, I've said my piece on Dallas Goddard enough on this show over the last month, but there's no doubt that his performance is hurting zach Ertz. But Ertz in his defense, he's still seen a strong target share throughout the season. He should honestly be doing a little bit better than he is right now. But I still wouldn't go out trying to buy him only because Dallas Goddard has become a thing. Mark Walton handled about seventy nine percent of Miami's running back rushes and he saw a near nineteen percent target shair on Monday Night against Pittsburgh. That's the good news. That's actually great news. Walton should be rostered everywhere only because those market share numbers are great, even though the situation sucks. And the situation does suck. As a team, Miami ranks thirtieth and running back fantasy points scored, ahead of only the Jets and the Bengals. Let's not pretend this is a desirable situation, but Walton could end up being a weekly flex play given this usage without Kenyan Drake. Speaking of Kenyan Drake, his new team has Larry Fitzgerald, and Larry Fitzgerald has seen just fourteen percent and twelve percent of Arizona's targets over the last two weeks, respectively. Things haven't been great for Fits. He's sort of hit a wall at least over the last two weeks, where he's combined for three receptions. It's hard to just plug and play him moving forward until we see more production, especially with Arizona facing San Francisco twice over the next three weeks. New England has run just four point one percent of their offensive plays this year while trailing. The team who's in second place or the team with the second lowest rate is unsurprisingly, San Francisco. They're undefeated, so they're leading in a lot of games, but they've run twenty one point eight percent of their plays while trailing. In other words, New England's just constantly been in neutral or positive game scripts this year. This is a big reason James White was a by candidate for me this week. It's highly unlikely New England's gonna maintain this type of rate of plays run while trailing especially with their upcoming schedule, So if they're trailing, we could easily see more of their pass catching back James White. And it's not like he's been some awful fantasy option to begin with. Damarius Thomas has seen at least sixteen percent of the Jets targets in each of his last four games that he's played, including two games with a target share at or above twenty nine percent, but it really hasn't mattered that much. He's ranked as the wide receiver forty thirty two, fifty seven, and thirty six with an average of fifty three and a half yards per game. Maybe he'll be able to produce with the Jets easy upcoming schedule, but Jamison Crowder and Robbie Anderson are playing as the top receivers on this team snapwise, so I wouldn't be banking on Damarius Thomas being super fantasy relevant. Carson wentz through at fifteen or more air yards on just two point seven percent of his throws on Sunday. Josh Allen in that same game threw it deep on fifteen percent of his which is about six percent lower than his season average. Now, I wanted to bring this up on today's show because it does help us understand how wind can impact fantasy performance. A high average depth of target is a very good thing, but if there are high wins, we know that teams won't throw the ball down the field as much. So it's just something to keep in mind. The rams still rank lowest in the league and running back target share at ten point six percent. Todd Gurley has seen less than eight percent of LA's targets this year, and he's had back to back weeks of a sub four percent target share. It's really gotten to the point where it's hard to be excited about him and the offense moving forward, at least from a fantasy perspective. And that does not include Cooper Cup who is absolutely balling out this year. Trendate is one that I talked about a little bit yesterday, but I wanted to expand on it. But it's that Mike Williams hasn't scored a touchdown on his fifty targets this year, but he had ten touchdowns last year on sixty six targets. Now, I sent this as a tweet out on Monday, and I got responses from people that had to do with regression, saying that this was regression. This isn't really regression, though, and I think that this is a good time to explain that Mike Williams overperformed in the touchdown column last year a lot. But when a player regresses, he doesn't regress past his average, he regresses to the mean. Mike Williams is mean. Is not zero touchdowns on fifty targets. He should have, like I said yesterday, about two and a half touchdowns this year based on his yardage totals. So remember that regression isn't a correction. A player overperforming doesn't mean that player then underperforms. He just performs. The last time Derrick Henry saw more than three targets in a single regular season game came back in October of twenty sixteen. This is just to say that he's still not being targeted a whole lot. He's had just a six percent target share on the season, and he's hit a double digit target chair in just one of those contests. The final trend is that in a negative game script on Sunday or a fairly negative gamescript, we saw Devin Singletary get twenty percent of Buffalo's targets. More importantly, He played sixty eight percent of Buffalo's offensive snaps, which was his highest snap rate since week one. He's trending up and he could be someone who really makes a difference down the stretch. That's gonna do it for today's show, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you got to subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. If you could do me a favor, hit up Apple Podcasts and leave a review of this show, I'd be greatly greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone, I'll be back in your ears tomorrow with the weekly Matchup show.