314: 10 Trends for Week 11

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha Jay Jake zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com, and this is episode three hundred and fourteen of the Late Round podcast on the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. As usual, we're just gonna get right to it with this week's ten trends. But first I want to remind you guys to enter FanDuel's Marquee Sunday Million Contest this week. One of the most popular daily fantasy contests in the industry, has already paid out over twenty six million dollars this season and we're only ten weeks in. The contest fills up fast, so submit your lineups and compete for your share for the one point eight million dollar prize pool, including three hundred thousand dollars for the first place prize, and it's all for just nine dollars. For more details, visit FanDuel dot com or download the FanDuel app today. Eligibility restrictions. Trend one is that since the Steelers traded for Minka Fitzpatrick, They've allowed just ten point three fantasy points per game to opposing quarterbacks. They haven't faced the best quarterbacks in the world over this time, but those quarterbacks that they faced average about seventeen fantasy points per game, So Pittsburgh's played roughly seven fantasy points above expectation. With Minka Fitzpatrick. That puts them on par with teams like New England and San Francisco. They're now a matchup that you absolutely want to avoid. Now, speaking of the Steelers, I tweeted out a chart showing how frequently teams had targeted each position from week one to week five, and then I compared that to how they've targeted players from week six through week ten. So I'm referencing the Steelers here because from weeks one through week five, they targeted wide receivers on about sixty five percent of their targets. I remember Big Ben played some of those games. Over the last five weeks, that target share has dropped by thirteen and a half percent. That's the largest dip for any team's positional group. This is a big reason we haven't seen great numbers from Juju Smith Schuster. Not only are the Steelers relatively run heavy, but Juju has now seen a sub twenty percent target shair actually a sub seventeen percent target share in each of his last two games. Using that same chart to spot trends this week, the positional group that's seen the largest increase in target share over the last five weeks versus the first five is, unsurprisingly the Chargers tight Ends. That's because Hunter Henry returned to action, but just behind the Chargers of the Vikings tight Ends. Minnesota tight Ends have seen their target share increase by seventeen and a half percent over the last five weeks compared to the first five. Kyle Rudolph has low key not been a bad fantasy asset over the last month. He's had two top four performances over his last four games and then another one where he ranked as a tight end eleven. This may be the result of Adam Thielen being banged up, but is definitely something to monitor. And Jared Cook's first game with Drew Brees since basically week one on on Sunday, he saw over twenty three percent of New Orleans targets. This is just a quick trend this week, but it's something to note moving forward, especially In this really crappy tight end landscape, four teams have rushed for as many touchdowns as they've thrown for this season. The Rams, the Bills, the Browns, and the Panthers. No huge surprises there. The only team under one from a ratio standpoint, though, is Carolina, meaning they've run for more touchdowns than they've thrown for this year. Their pass to rush touchdown ratio is point seven to one. The only two teams since twenty eleven with a passing to rushing touchdown ratio that low was the Jeff Fisher Rams in twenty fifteen and the Rex Ryan Bills in twenty sixteen. Now, I think that you could argue that the Panthers will lean a little bit more pass touchdown heavy from here on out versus how they performed thus far. But to be fair and to be clear, the Panthers are likely to finish the season with the lowest ratio in the entire league. Trend six is that mark Ingram hasn't seen more than sixty percent of Baltimore's running back rushes in a single game since Week five. That's significant because from Week one through Week five, he hit that mark in three of five games. During the first five games of the year, Ingram was averaging seventeen point eight PPR points per game. Over his last four, that's dropped to eleven point four. I know I've had Ingram as a cell candidate throughout this year on my fifteen Transaction show, mostly because he's over performing a bit in a touchdown column, but he's now not seeing the workload he was seeing earlier this year. I was gonna mention him again this week on the show, but instead I decided to make Ingram one of the ten trends. Basically, things aren't looking as strong for him as they were earlier this year. With Will Fuller practicing again, I wanted to make one of the trends this week about DeAndre Hopkins. Even though Hopkins has been really strong since Week five, He's ranked wide receivers seventeen or better in every week since then, we have to remember that he's been without will Fuller in the lineup over the last three games against Indy, Oakland and Jacksonville. Over this three game stretch, Hopkins has at averaged a thirty six point six percent target share per game. In the weeks prior that was twenty eight percent. Hopkins is still a very easy wide receiver one through the rest of the season, but there's at least some concern about will Fuller's impact on DeAndre Hopkins. Russell Wilson has been amazing this year, and he's been one of the best fantasy quarterbacks as well. But even though he's a high end QB one, his consistency has been really odd. He's ranked outside QB one territory and weekly scoring five separate times, but then he's ranked as a top five quarterback five different times. So with Wilson, you've either gotten an ordinary performance or he's gone absolutely ballistic. When you look at the other top five quarterbacks in points per game, so we're looking at Deshaun Watson, Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, and Dak Prescott, that really hasn't been the case. Watson has finished outside of QB one territory in thirty three percent of his games, and remember Wilson's at fifty percent. Lamar Jackson has just won performance outside the top ten, Dak Prescott has failed to finish as a ca Q one and twenty two percent of his games, and Patrick Mahomes in just twelve percent. And that was the game where he got hurt against Denver. Now I'm not saying Russell Wilson isn't helping your fantasy team. He's helping your fantasy team, but the way he's compiled fantasy points this year is a lot different than the other top quarterbacks in fantasy, and I thought that it was interesting. Trend nine this week is that Todd Gurley hasn't had a double digit percentage target share in three straight games. Going back to the beginning of the season when I initially called this trend out, Rams running backs still have the lowest target share in the NFL this season, and this is played directly into the fact that Gurley's become a touchdown dependent fantasy asset. He has just one top ten performance this year in eight games. Last year, in fourteen games, he had eleven of them. The final trend this week is that Keenan Allen has seen at least twenty nine percent of the Chargers targets in three of his last four games. I know a lot of you guys have tilted your faces off after Keenan Allen's awesome start to the year and how he's performed of late, but it's not really a volume problem. It's really just an efficiency and scoring problem. He hasn't found the end zone since his two touchdown game all the way back in Week three. We could consider Allen a by candidate. As a result. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've 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. And if you're listening to the show on Apple podcast or if you could just go to Apple Podcasts and leave the show a rating and review, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks everyone, Talk to you tomorrow with the matchup show.