810: 15 Transactions for Week 5

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Speaker 1: This is the lad podcast with your host JJ zacheras j Jake Zachers. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode eight and ten of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the transactions this week, we're gonna check out the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. With the Patreon, you can get things like weekly rankings and tiers, rest of season rankings and tiers, a great discord community, live human as, and more. Check it out and learn more over on lateround dot com. Now let's get to these transactions. Add Jamison Williams. So, the NFL changed their gambling policy first time offenders who bet on non NFL games in a workplace environment they get suspended for two games now instead of six, which means Jamison Williams is back. Well, look, here's the thing. We don't know if Jamison Williams is going to be good or not. He didn't get a lot of playing time last year because he tore his ACL at the end of his final collegiate season. But when he was on the field last year, it's not like he was overly efficient. He had a one point one to one yards per route run rate. But that was on just thirty seven routes run. We can't just extrapolate that and say this is what Williams is going to be. That's not fair at all. So let's just speculate a little bit hypothetically. Jamison Williams is a good player. He ranked above the ninety fifth percent tile on my prospect model. That gave him good odds to at least be usable in fantasy football across his first three years in the league. And obviously the Lions offensive situation that's pretty favorable too, and they need a vertical threat. Josh Reynolds has been pretty solid to start the year, but Reynolds is not Jamison Williams talent wise, and Reynolds so far has commanded a fifteen percent target chair in that offense. So I think that tells us that Williams could at least get there. And all this may not happen. Williams might not actually be a thing in the NFL. We have to be open minded to that. But at this moment, right now, you're not spending like a fifth round pick to draft Jamison Williams. He's sitting on waivers in almost seventy percent of Yahoo leagues right now. So I think of all the players I'm talking about today, he's probably the number one waiver wire option hold David Montgomery. So within that same Lions offense, you have David Montgomery. He had that monster Week four performance. He carried the ball thirty two times for one hundred and twenty one yards in the ground and three scores. The reason I want to bring him up on today's show is because usually a player like this off that performance would be a sell. You guys know that I like pass catching running backs because receiving matters so much of the position. So far this season, Montgomery's averaged a three point four percent target share per game rate. That's not very good at all. He's just very clearly the team's positive game script running back when the Lions are leading, when they have that positive game flow, it's going to be David Montgomery and not rookie Jumior Gibbs. I wrote about this in the Late Round Fantasy Football newsletter this past week. You can subscribe to that for free over on lateround dot com, and you can check the newsletter archive if you want to see what I wrote. Now here's the thing. The Lions are gonna see that type of game script week in and week out. What they saw against Green Bay. They were up by three touchdowns in the second quarter. But in Week five, Detroit gets Carolina, that's a very beatable matchup for them. Then it's Tampa Bay, Baltimore and Vegas. That's not the most difficult immediate schedule in the world. And one of the things I do want to throw out there. From a game theory perspective, we always think about the RB two in in offense and what happens if the RB one gets hurt. But when you have these tandem backfields, one of the reasons why they're so awesome in fantasy football is because they can be usable without an injury. Right David Montgomery and Jamier Gibbs, they can coexist. But with the player like Gibbs. We always think about the upside if David Montgomery goes down, But what would happen if Jamiir Gibbs goes down all of a sudden that questionable receiving work, It would get a lot better. The upside does not only exist with Jamiir Gibbs, it exists with David Montgomery as well. So I think overall, given the upcoming schedule, given the way they're using him, I think David Montgomery as a hold by Patrick Mahomes. So through four weeks, Patrick Mahomes the Patrick Mahomes is the QB eight and fantasy points per game. He's averaging fewer than twenty standard fantasy points per contest. He's been above that mark every year. Is starter in the NFL. Now that alone tells you that he's probably not going to keep this up. He's likely going to get better. And then you look at the schedule. Upcoming for the Chiefs are games against the Vikings, Broncos, Chargers, and Broncos. According to my adjusted Fantasy points allowed metric, which is a metric that adjusts fantasy points for strength of opponent, that's the best schedule in football for a quarterback over the next month, and from now through the end of the fantasy season, the Chiefs had the third best quarterback schedule. It's gonna get a lot better for Patrick Mahomes. Now is the ideal time to buy low, sell Justin Herbert. So Mahomes hasn't been that great in fantasy football to start the year. Justin Herbert has Herbert's now the QB one in all fantasy football. Now, if you were around here prior to week one, if you were listening to this show, this shouldn't be that much of a surprise. Because of the Chargers' schedule entering the season. That entire passing attack was one of the fifteen transactions prior to Week one. I even said that I wouldn't be surprised if Justin Herbert after Week four was part of the MVP conversation. Week four has now concluded. He doesn't have the best MVP odds, but he's been very, very good in fantasy football, and now might be the time to get out. Now. There was an injury that he suffered in Week four, but it doesn't sound that serious. Let's just throw that out. Let's just take that out of the equation. Moving forward, things won't be as clean for this Chargers passing attack. They get a buy in Week five, which could be a reason to sell right now, and then it's games against the Cowboys, Chiefs, Bears, and Jets. Dallas, Kansas City and New York are all bottom ten matchups or quarterbacks and a justin fantasy points allowed. I don't think Herbert's gonna just disappear, of course not. He's a very good quarterback. I'm just calling this out this week because he's been great, but his opponents have also been pretty bad. Don't ignore the strength of schedule side of things. Hold Justin Fields, So let's just get these big quarterback transactions out of the way. I talked about Justin Fields on last week's Mailbag show, and I talked about how he wasn't quite droppable just yet. Maybe in shallower leagues, maybe in leagues where like a guy like brock Party was on your waivers, but overall, well, he was more of a hold last week. Part of the problem that I had with dropping him was what we saw last season. From weeks one through four. Last year, Fields was averaging nine point four fantasy points per game. From Week five through the end of the year, it was twenty three and a half. I almost feel like I'm having deja vu. In Week four, Fields had almost twenty eight standard Fantasy points. But he was also playing the Denver Broncos. Denver's now about a top fifteen quarterback performance every single week this season, and they've gon up against Jimmy Garoppolo and Sam Howe, They've probably been the worst defense in football, with Chicago being a close second. Now, the other piece of this is that Fields did not do what he did in Week four with his legs. I think that's more of a problem rather than a good thing, because we can't expect Justin Fields to be this fantasy relevant with his arm. This was the first game of his entire career where he had five or fewer rush attempts and he scored more than fifteen fantasy points. So the question might be why aren't we selling then? Right, he faced an easy defense and he did all of his work with his arm. That's not very sustainable when it comes to Justin Fields. But to me, it's hard to ignore their upcoming schedule. Chicago has one unfavorable bottom half matchup by Justin fantasy points allowed over their next four games, and it's coming up this week against Washington. After that, it's the Vikings, Raiders and Chargers. Now, if you can somehow use Fields and maybe a bench player to get Patrick Mahomes, that's one thing I would absolutely be down for something like that. I think in scenarios where your league mats are valuing Justin Fields pretty high, you can probably sell him. I just don't think that's the case. I don't think people are looking at Justin Fields as the guy that you can just plug into your lineup and not have to worry about quarterback. Not yet. So if your league still is not biting, if your league still doesn't think that Justin Field is going to be this awesome fantasy quarterback, I think you just got to ride this out because the schedule, the market likely understands that Field's just faced a very very easy matchup. Add Jalil McLoughlin. So Gavante Williams has a hip flexor injury. It doesn't sound that serious, which is great, But Jalil McLoughlin should still be on your radar this week against Chicago in Week four, the undrafted rookie, he played just six fewer snaps in samajp Ryan. He had one more attempt and one more target. Now Denver gets the Jets this week, and that's an okay enough matchup from a gamescript perspective. So if Williams does miss a week or two at the time of this recording, I have no idea how long he's going to be out. McLoughlin should have some flex appeal by Zay Flowers. Zay Flowers had a monster Week one target share of almost forty eight percent. Since then, his target share per game rate twenty three point six percent. That target share still isn't that bad, but Flowers has not been very productive in fantasy football. His target chair is high. That's good for PPR formats, but he ranks close to one hundredth and wide receiver air yards. That's a problem. If he's not going to see any targets down the field, he's not going to score many fantasy points. But I do think there's some hope. Obviously, Flowers, who's a rookie, can naturally get better as the season goes on. We've seen that historically with rookie wide receivers. But according to a justin Fantasy Points Allowed, Ravens wide receivers have the second best schedule over the next four weeks, and they also have the second best schedule from here on out. So I think better days are ahead because Zay Flowers is an incredibly talented wide receiver. Ad Tyler Boyd. After four games, no team in the NFL has scored fewer offensive touchdowns than the Cincinnati Bengals, which is absolutely crazy to think about. And now they have T Higgins, who fractured his ribs in Week four. According to injury analysts Jeff Mueller, this could be a two to four week injury. I've seen other injury analysts say one to two weeks, but regardless, it sounds like T. Higgins is going to miss some time and Tyler Boyd could see a bump with this news. According to my friend Jacob Gibs of CBS Fantasy, when T Higgins has been off the field since it started twenty twenty two, Boyd has seen his targets per route run rate go from fourteen percent to twenty point seven percent, so he should see more targets go his way with this injury. The Bengals offense, though, has been horrible. We can't ignore that, but I should say that Cincinnati has a top five schedule and adjusted fantasy points allowed over the next four weeks for wide receivers, and when looking at rest of season, they actually have the best one. Maybe this is a time to buy low for Jamar Chase if you really need some help, if you really need a change in your lineup, But at the very least I think it's okay to add Tyler Boyd buy Zach Moss. So there's a chance that we see Jonathan Taylor back with the Colts this week. It sounds like he's going to be practicing with the team on Wednesday. But there's also a chance that he holds out longer than anticipated, or that the Colts eventually do get a deal done, that something changes with Jonathan Taylor. We should never assume a certain outcome, even if that outcome is the most likely outcome. We should never look at an outcome with one hundred percent certainty. If Taylor's not on the field for the Colts, Zach Moss is the player who benefits the most. He's coming off a bad outing in Week four, where he scored just nine PPR points, but he saw eighty six percent of Indianapolis's running back rushes for a second straight game. Now, the Colts do have one of the tougher schedules for running backs moving forward. But embrace chaos a little bit. If someone in your league thinks that Zach Moss is totally worthless now because Jonathan Taylor's coming back, even though that's a very real possibility, embrace the chaos. Embrace the contrarian viewpoint, because you could be getting Zach Moss at an ultimate by low moment. We're not saying this is what's likely to happen. We're saying that it can happen. And at the very least, Zack Moss is a handcuff to Jonathan Taylor. Moving forward, add Michael Wilson. So at first I was going to talk about Trey Palmer with this transaction, but Mike Evans hamstring injury doesn't sound that serious. But that's an extra transaction for you. But instead, let's shift our focus to another rookie wide receiver in Michael Wilson. Wilson's been getting some run in this Cardinals offense this year. Only Marky's Brown and Zach Ertz have run more routes, and Wilson has been the most efficient player per route run. He has a two point five zero yards per route run rate. Marky's Brown, for context, is at one point nine to four. Wilson had a season in career high seventeen point one percent target chair In Week four, he had a top ten performance because he found the end zone twice. Considering his efficiency and his little NFL experience, the fact that he's doing what he's doing with very little experience. There's a chance we only see that number grow, that target share only get better when a rookie shows us something promising. We want to go after that rookie ad Josh Dobbs. Guys, we need to talk about Josh Dobbs and what he's doing. He's having a season, at least compared to expectations. Dobbs has now given us performances of twenty five, seventeen, and twenty three Fantasy points over his last three games, and in two of those games he faced Dallas and San Francisco, and he's doing what we want him to do in fantasy football. Just from a usage standpoint, he's running the football. Over his last three games, he's seen three, six and twelve rush attempts. He's averaged forty eight rushing yards per game. That's an extra touchdown plus and scoring each week. Arizona's schedule over the next month it's pretty average, and their opponents do get tougher as the season unfolds. But we can't deny what Josh Dobbs is doing right now, and we shouldn't ignore the rushing upside that he's been bringing to the table, sell Rashad White. So look, I was in the Rashad White entering the season. He's been mostly fine. He has not been a league winner, and he's probably not going to be a league winning player. He's been a low end RB two and PPR points per game. Now, White's coming off a game where he hit double digit PPR points and his peripherals once again were pretty decent. He saw sixty three percent of Tampa Bay's running back rushes and he had a ten percent target chair. He's hit a double digit percentage target chair in each of his last three games. The problem is scheduled. We're now getting more and more data to look at these opponents and look at how good these opponents are to make better decisions in fantasy football, and Tampa Bay has a very tough road ahead. Over their next six games, they get the Lions, who are the thirty second best matchup for running backs and justin fantasy points allowed, the Falcons who are twenty ninth, the Bills who are twenty third, the Texans who are fifth, the Titans who are twenty fourth, and the forty nine Ers who are seventeenth. The Buccaneers also have a week five by your team might be in a spot where you need production right now, So dealing Rashad White away this week, it's reasonable add Keaton Mitchell. So there's been some buzz around Keaton Mitchell over the last week or so. If you're not sure who he is. He's a running back who went undrafted to the Ravens this offseason and he's been on IR throughout the season. But he's finally eligible to come off of IR, and with so many replacement level running backs in the Ravens roster, there is some intrigue there. But according to my model, Mitchell wasn't that great of a prospect. He weighed in under one hundred and eighty pounds of the combine, his production profile is pretty ordinary. His biggest trait, his best trait is that he's fast. He ran a four to three seven forty. Now, if you're in a deeper league and you want someone to stash, you could do worse. I'm not optimistic though, that he ends up carrying a big workload. But this offense in Baltimore's new and we could see him as a nice speedy compliment to Gus Edwards. Think about it this way. They've been using Justice Hill, who is on the smaller side. He's hypothetically the lightning to Gus Edwards being the thunder. So there's a chance that Keaton Mitchell would end up being a better version of Justice Hill. I don't think it's probable, but you can at least stash it by cam Akers. Sometimes you just need to change things up with your fantasy roster. If things aren't going well at the running back position, you gotta take some swings. Cam Akers suited up for the Vikings for the first time in Week five. He ended up carrying the ball five times for forty yards. Each one of his rushes was deemed successful. Now Alexander Madison was still the lead back for this Vikings team, but he saw his lowest snap rate of the season at sixty six percent. He ran nine routes to Acres four, but Akers saw a pair of targets and Madison had just one at the end of the day. Alexander Madison is probably not a special running back. He's more replaceable. Acres is the one with the profile, He's the one with that backbone. He was the better prospect entering the NFL and Minnesota From now through the end of the year. They have the third best running back schedule from the justin fantasy points allowed standpoint. So, like I said, if your team needs a change, why not trade a bench player to get cam Akers. Why not see if there's a shakeup in that backfield. Add the Detroit Lions defense. The Lions get the Panthers this week. According to Fandels Sportsbook, they're eight and a half point favorites. Caroline has now allowed two top ten performances to opposing defenses this year, and they've given up three and a half sacks per game on the season. Defensively, the Lions are eleventh in pressure rate. The Panthers have been eleventh in pressure rate allowed. So over it's a good spot for Detroit. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football 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. Thanks for listening to everyone. I'll talk to you tomorrow.