449: Week 11 Matchups

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha, JJ Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at Fandle and at Number five dot com in this episode four hundred and forty nine of the Late Round podcast with many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Fantasy Football is very weird and low scoring last week, but there were still some good hits on this matchup show. There were some bad ones though too. I pretty much missed on every quarterback pick, partially because games didn't go as I thought, but also because of really obnoxious touchdown variants like with Jared Goff. But I was right to be high on Ronald Jones. Caylin Bilage kept seeing a lot of volume that was good to see. Josh Reynolds said the best game of his season. There was still some good to this show. I did miss on DJ Moore, but I'm not really that annoyed at that one. I think the process was right overall. But we're on to week eleven and hopefully it's a week that's a a little bit less tilting from a fantasy perspective. Now, before looking at some players, and I'm higher and lower on this week versus the consensus. I want to let you know that UFC two fifty five is set to take place this weekend, and the people at Fandel's Sportsbook are offering betters some protection on their bets with their UFC decision insurance. Right now, if you place a pre fight money line wager on UFC two fifty five, you'll be eligible to get up to one thousand dollars back if your fighter loses by split decision or majority decision. That's right. Simply place a money line bet before the fight begins and you're in line to receive a refund if your fighter loses by decision. I know absolutely nothing about UFC, but this sounds like a good deal. The weekend will be here before you know it, so download the Fandal Sportsbook mobile app in place your UFC two to fifty five bets today. Must be twenty one years or older. In President of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, and Iowa. Refund issued does non withdrawable site credit max refund one thousand dollars terms apply. Gambling problem called one hundred gam in West Virginia visit one eight hundred gambler dot net, and Indiana call one hundred nine with it. In Colorado call one hundred five to two two forty seven hundred, and in Iowa call one in hundred bets off Jamis Winston. Jamis Winston is a streamer this week. With Drew Brees sidelined, I fully expect Winston to see the majority of the snaps for New Orleans at quarterback with Taysom Hill kind of sprinkled in, and considering this game is one of the higher over runders on the slate, that's a good thing. Atlanta is the perfect matchup for Winston to get off on the right foot. They've performed seven points per game below expectation when looking at opponent adjusted fantasy points per game. To put that another way, if Winston averaged thirteen points per game typically, let's say we'd expect him to be closer to twenty points against Atlanta because this matchup is so favorable. So I think he's the top streamer this week, even though he does come with plenty of risk. If you'd rather play someone who's a little bit safer but may not give you the same type of ceiling. You could go with Kirk Cousins. Cousins has given us fourteen or more or fantasy points in all but two games this year, and he gets a beatable Dallas d that's been a top half matchup and adjusted points a lot to quarterbacks. I do think that there is some fear that the Vikings are just gonna end up being super run heavy in a positive game script in this matchup, but that's sort of what we've seen from them throughout the season. They've been run heavy, and on the season, Cousins has played just slightly below expectation when you look at his points per game scored and adjust that for strength of opponent, since Dallas has been pretty bad against quarterbacks, if Cousins is just slightly below that average, it's easy to see a path to seventeen or so points. It's not thrilling, but that's sort of what we're working with in Week eleven. I mean, honestly, with Cousins. You can look at the Vikings team total and see that it's pretty high at twenty seven and a half points. That's according to Fandals Sportsbook. If they put up that kind of total, you just have to hope that the way that they score touchdowns is through the air and not on the ground. An even deeper play this week that you could go with is Philip Rivers. Now hear me out. The Colts team total is almost as high as Minnesota's this week. It's almost twenty seven points. They get the Packers in the game that could have a lot more back and forth action than what Kirk Cousins is gonna see with Minnesota versus Dallas. It's just that the matchup isn't as strong because the Packers have been a top five team and adjusted points allowed to quarterbacks. But Rivers has also not been all that bad of late. Over his last four games, he's averaged seventeen points six Fantasy points per game, and then includes a contest against Baltimore where he only scored seven. The other thing to note about this game is that when I look at the pressure chart that I generate every week, it favors Indianapolis's offense more than any other offense in Week eleven. That's because the Packers have one of the worst pressure rates in football in Indianapolis has been very good at protecting Philip Rivers. I don't think he's like a must play. I can understand if you would rather go with Cousins. It's probably the safer bet. I'm mostly just noting that I think that Rivers is way undervalued this week, and then one quarterback on the the other side of things, I don't love Ryan Tannehill this week against Baltimore. The Ravens are a below average matchup from a fantasy points allowed perspective, and they've given up just two top ten performances this year. One of those was the Patrick Mahomes. The Titans have just a twenty one point teen total in this game, and Tannehill himself has started to regress. This was something that I was afraid of and I talked about on this show on the Late Round podcast when I had Tannehill as a cell. But over his last four games, he's ranked no better than QB fourteen and weekly scoring while averaging just fifteen points per game. Across his first five matchups, he was averaging over twenty three points per game. Now. As I said on the ten Trends episode yesterday, Duke Johnson was one of two running backs in Week ten with a one hundred percent running back rush share. The problem was that the Houston game was played in horrific weather, so neither offense could really do anything. That should be hopefully a little bit different for Houston in Week eleven. The matchup isn't the best in the world against New England, but that the game is a reasonably high forty nine point over under, at least for this slate, and the Patriots haven't been great against opposing running backs this year, though, the eleventh best matchup in adjusted fantasy points allowed, so don't get frustrated with last week's performance from Duke Johnson. The game environment should be better in this one. Now, let's take a second once again to talk about Ronald Jones versus Leonard Fournette seeing rankings this week, it's just a reflection of what happened the previous week, when Fournette was better than Jones for consecutive weeks he was ranked ahead. Now that Jones had a good game, he's ahead, and I'm seeing talk about how their performances have just been so unpredictable over the last few weeks. But to reiterate what I said last week, I don't think that's totally the case. Jones fumbled a few weeks ago, so Fournette took over. The next week, there was a super negative game script, so Fournette took over again because he's the pass catching back. Against Carolina this past week, though, it was a nice positive game script, and Jones ended the day with seventy four percent of the team's running back rushes. Thankfully, Arians didn't just go to Fournette after Jones fumbled the ball early in the game. But here's the thing. This is why I reference market share so often on this podcast. In Week nine against New Orleans, Rojo saw seventy five percent of the team's running back rushes. It was on a super small sample, but when you translate that type of market share then to a game with a good matchup and a positive script, you get what happened in week ten. What I'm getting at is this is a game script dependent backfield. I'm going to favor Fournette when games could go south, and then I'll favor Ronald Jones in very obvious positive game scripts. I think the ranking between the two should almost be back to back this week as a result, because they're facing a good Rams team and they're only three and a half point favorites. I just wanted to bring up that situation on today's show, because to me, it's simpler than most people are making it out to be. I mentioned Devontae Booker as the sixteenth transaction this week on the fifteen two transactions episode, and I actually think that he's in play as a deep play at running back. He's now seen thirty nine percent of the Raiders running back rushes over the last two weeks. But I should note that in last week specifically, the Raiders saw a nice positive game script. Now they get Kansas City, even though they beat the Chiefs earlier this season, we know it's possible the Raiders fall into a negative script pretty easily. But here's the thing. The Raiders have lost two games this year where they saw a clear, clear negative script, one against the Patriots one against the Buccaneers Weeks three and seven. In those games, Josh Jacobs saw two of his three lowest snap shares of the season. The other low snapshare that he saw came last week when they got really far ahead. The other point to make here is that Booker has had a higher proportion of touches come via the air than on the ground versus Jacobs. We've seen some funky stuff happen in the past for Josh Jacobs usage wise when the Raiders have trailed, and that could happen in this game with the Raiders' seven point underdogs. If that's the case, we may see a little bit more Booker and that could lead to some fantasy points. Because Kansas City has seen twenty one and a half percent of their receiving yards allowed go to running backs this year, that's the second highest mark in the league. And then if you want a super super super deep play where you just completely bet on game script, you could look at Alexander Madison. Minnesota's a seven point favorite against Dallas, and Madison's highest running back rush share game this year came in a game where the Vikings won convincingly at least highest running back rush share with Dalvin Cook healthy. That was in Week nine against Detroit, where Madison had twelve carries. If you look at the season, Minnesota has only gotten four wins and they haven't been convincing like that one. If they get one of those super positive script convincing wins this week, it's easy to see a path for double digit touches for Alexander Madison. But this is nothing more than a desperation play. Over the last three weeks, Jonathan Taylor has averaged a running back rush share per game under thirty percent. His target share per game has been six and a half percent. Those are really really bad numbers. So even if this matchup against Green Bay is good, and even if it's easy to see the upside this matchup could bring, I would much rather Taylor be on my bench than in my starting lineup. If he hits, then great, But recent history does not tell us that he's going to be in line for this monster workload. So he's the one player who I thought was riskiest when looking at the top thirty five or forty running backs this week. It's easy to fall in love with the matchup. I get it. We know that Jonathan Taylor at least has a ceiling. He has a lot of potential, but that potential is meaningless right now because it's not even remotely predictable. Christian Kirk ranks the wide receiver fifty five last week in a decent spot, but he had an eighteen point eight percent target share in that Arizona offense. He's now got a fifteen point seven percent share in the season, and over the last three games. He's averaging almost a twenty three percent target share per game. That should absolutely come in handy against the Seahawks. Seattle has been the absolute worst team by far and adjusted points allowed to wide outs, and that game is the highest over under on the week. I know some of you will listen to this after that game is concluded, so hopefully I look kind of smart, but I do think that Kirk is slightly undervalued in Week eleven. Given the game environment, most of you are probably gonna start Christian Kirk this week. So I figured that I'd do what I usually do on this show and give you some deep options at wide receiver, guys who might even be on your waiver wire. Now. I mentioned Josh Reynolds on this week's fifteen Transaction show, and now he's been out targeting Robert Woods since week four. It's why I can't really comprehend how Woods is a top twenty wide receiver by the consensus this week, while Reynolds is wide receiver fifty three. They continue to run the same amount of routes too. It's not like Reynolds is just seeing an unsustainable utilization rate. I don't think he's like a slam dunk play. I'm just noting that if you're high on Woods, you should be high on Reynolds, or logic at least tells us that. I do think it's more of a Cooper Cup week, though. Keelan Cole has had random spikes and fantasy production this season, and he had a good hout last week against Green Bay. He saw twenty point six percent of the team's targets. He got five of seven targets for forty seven yards in a touchdown. It was a good outing that was without Lavisko Shanault in the lineup, so we saw Cole with an eighty one percent snap share, his highest of the season. Now here's the thing, though, Cole will still play a good number of snaps even if Chanault goes and I like the slot matchup that he's gonna see against Pittsburgh this week. The Jags will likely see a negative game script that means more throws, and according to Pro Football Focus, Keeland Cole has played over two thirds of his snaps this year from the slot. He had a sixty two percent slot snap rate last week. Pittsburgh continues to be bad against slot guys, at least compared to how they typically defend players. They've allowed the second highest target rate to the slot this year. This is why I mentioned Tyler Boyd on the show last week, and the Bengals had fifteen slot targets against Pittsburgh for one hundred and thirty nine yards and ten receptions. I said that backwards, but you get the picture. Boyd was fine enough, but t Higgins was the one who really took advance on his fifteen slot snaps in that game, going for seventy nine yards from that area of the field on three catches. So maybe Keelan Cole takes advantage this week. You could also look at Rashard Higgins to reiterate what I've been saying on the show all week. We can't really assume the Browns offense is as bad as they've been the last two games. They've played in really bad weather. Last week, Higgins saw twenty one percent of Cleveland's targets. He's now gone over the twenty percent target chair mark in two of three games without Odell Beckham. That's as long as you include the game where Beckham got hurt. Now he's got a match up against an Eagle, seem has just been completely average. Against wide receivers. Even if Higgins sees some Darius Slay, I think volume alone should give him a better ranking than where he's being ranked right now, which is wide receiver fifty nine. Now, the Bucks running back situation is hard to decipher. I already talked about that, but so is the wide receiver one. You've got Antonio Brown versus Chris Godwin versus Mike Evans, and it's tough to know which direction to go in each week. I can at least say that I don't like Mike Evans this week because he's probably gonna see a lot of Jalen Ramsey. But the Rams secondary has been really, really good. They're the absolute best and adjusted points allowed to wide receivers and they've only allowed two top twenty performances this year. One of those performances was in Week one to Amari Cooper and the other came against Deebo Samuel in Week six, where his average depth of target was minus five yards, so he really wasn't even playing traditional wide receiver. Downgrade the Bucks wide receivers this week and the passing attack in general. I talked about Logan Thomas on the fifteen Transaction Show this week, so I won't get into that much detail, but I don't mind him this week at all. He's seen a decent target share this year at about sixteen percent. He's in a more efficient offense. It seems like with Alex Smith and the Bengals are one of the best matchups for a tight end this year, So you can easily play Thomas as a streamer this week. There's also my guy, Moli Cox. Jack Doyle's still in concussion protocol while I'm recording this, and last week Moli Cox ran more and saw more targets than Trey Burton. If Doyle is out, I like Moley Cox as a streamer in a game that should force the Colts to throw the ball a little bit more than they might want to. Lastly, and I can't believe that I'm saying this, but if you play on ESPN or another platform that allows for Taysom Hill to be thrown in at tight end, I'm not against it. He could hypothetically see more snaps with Drew Brees out, but that's just narrative driven. At the very least, even if we remove that narrative, He's seen almost seven carries per game over his last three contests. It's not like he's been totally worthless of putting up fantasy points. So in that high overender game against Atlanta, I kind of like Hill as a streamer. If you can use him at tight end, I wouldn't use him at quarterback though. The Cleveland Browns were the fifteen transactions defense this week, and I still believe in them as a streamer. The Eagles are the six best matchup and adjusted fantasy points allowed, they have the highest sack rate allowed in football, and the Browns have been above average at getting to opposing quarterbacks. So I'm in on the Cleveland Browns and I think New England is a little bit undervalued this week. People might be scared off of them because of Deshaun Watson, and I get it, but Hugheston has been well below average and pressure rate allowed and sacks allowed this year. New England is third in the NFL and pressure rate. It'd be nice as stuff on Gilmore played, but I still think the Patriots work. That's gonna do it for today's show. 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 podcasts can be found, and of course don't forget to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks everyone. Will be back in your ears tomorrow with the Weekly Mailbag Show.