299: Week 7 Matchups

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha J J. Zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharieson, the editor in chief at Fandel and at Number five dot com. And this is episode two hundred and ninety nine of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. Just like two weeks ago with Will Fuller, I'm very glad that this past week featured Stephan Diggs. I mean it when I say that anytime a fringe player or a player that you might consider benching, or a player who's disappointed, but anytime one of those players goes off like that, I really hope that I talked about that player on this show, and fortunately I did last week with Stephan Diggs. Last week in general is pretty strong, so I'm hoping that things can continue into week seven before looking at some players that I'm into more and less than the consensus. This week, though, I want to let you guys know about Fandel's Thursday Million contests that's happening tonighty night. It's nine dollars to enter and it features players who are playing in Thursday Night's game between the Chiefs and the Broncos and the winner of the contest gets two hundred thousand dollars. So head to fandel dot com and start building your lineup. After looking at rankings this week on Fantasy Pros, I couldn't find a whole lot of quarterbacks and I'm drastically different on versus the consensus ranks. So I figured I just highlight some quarterbacks today who you may feel questionable about in order to give you some context. So let's start with Jared Goff. Like I mentioned on this week's fifteen Transaction show, you should feel fine with GoF over the next couple of weeks, so that includes this week's game against Atlanta. FanDuel sportsbook has that game with a fifty four and a half point over under. It's being played in a dome, and over the last three weeks, the banged up Falcons secondary has allowed eleven touchdown passes to the combination of Marcus Mariota, Deshaun Watson, and Kyler Murray. The worry with Gough is always what happens if the opposing defense generates a lot of pressure, but Atlanta has a bottom half pressure rate in the league. To go along with the worst sack rate in football. Goff has proven to have a decent enough ceiling this year. It's just that he has these really awful games that can absolutely sink you. But I would be shocked if he has one of those games this week. I like Daniel Jones this week as well, not as much as Jared Goff, but Jones is the best streaming option available now. Patrick Peterson is returning for Arizona's There's some concern there, but the Cardinals have allowed a top ten quarterback performance every single week this year, aside from when they faced Russell Wilson somehow, and this game between the Giants and Cardinals is a forty nine and a half point total. That's one of the higher ones that you're gonna find this week. The Giants actually have the fourth highest implied team total among all teams this weekend. So I think Danny Dimes is gonna be just fine, and Gardner Minshew should be as well. I know he had a down game last week. But Cincinnati, who's already been a bottom ten team against the pass this year, they're gonna be without their starting perimeter cornerbacks. It's definitely a game where Leonard Fournette can and should go absolutely ham, but Minshew's a pretty safe option as well, given the injuries and how how bad that Bengals defense has been. And remember last week was the first time that Gardner Minshew failed to hit sixteen Fantasy points. Now, on the flip side, I think there are enough reasons to not be in love with Tom Brady this week, or to think that he's more of a QB two than a QB one. There are injuries to New England's wide receivers, and the Jets defense is a top half one in yards per attempt allowed, and they get to allow a quarterback to rank higher than QB twelve, which is where Tom Brady finished back in Week three. But they faced Josh Allen, Baker, Mayfield, Tom Brady, like I just said, Carson Wentz, and Dak Prescott, and you might think that it's because those quarterbacks didn't have to be all that aggressive because of who they were facing. Because we know the Jets offense didn't really look the same without Sam Darnold, but those quarterbacks that they faced averaged almost thirty seven pass attempts per game. Brady didn't look amazing last week and I'm a little bit worried about this divisional matchup. And then there's Philip Rivers. Rivers is sort of doing his typical thing where he just consistently ranks as a high end QB two and then he'll magically end up as a QB one at the end of the year because he didn't get hurt. But he's had multiple games already this year without a touchdown pass, which is somewhat worrisome. And Tennessee's yet to allow a top twelve QB one performance this year, and they've gone up against pretty decent competition. They faced Baker Mayfield, Jacoby Brissett, Gardner, Minshew Matt Ryan, and Josh Allen. I won't mention Joe Flacco. It's just not the easiest matchup in the world for Philip Rivers, so you might be able to bench Philip Rivers for a better option. Tevin Coleman has seen about half of the forty nine ers running back carries over the last two weeks, which are the two weeks that he's been back from injury, and it was good to see him use as a receiver this past week against the Rams, where he saw a near ten percent target share. Now, the forty nine Ers have been the most run heavy team in the NFL to start the year, and while that's gonna regress a bit given the fact that they're a little bit more pass heavy when the game script is neutral, it may not this week because they're facing Washington and their ten point favorites. So Coleman's relatively high rushing share will be of a bigger pie this week because San Francisco is likely to run a lot. And he's a good bet to see goal line work too, because last week alone he had four rushes from within the Rams five yard line. I'm really hoping this is Royce Freeman's week. He's one of the bigger positive touchdown regression candidates right now. Given his yardage total, he should have about two point seven touchdowns, but he hasn't scored yet. His usage really isn't that bad. Yes, Philip Lindsay is the running back that you want on the Denver Broncos, but Freeman has seen forty four percent of Denver's running back carries in a really solid thirteen point eight percent target share this year. He's low key providing a nice floor each and every week. He just hasn't found the end zone. So the ceiling's been lacking, but maybe a matchup against Kansas City's defense will help. The Chiefs have a lot of fifty four percent success rader, the percentage of positive expected points runs made by a running back according to number fires Expected Points model, and that fifty four percent mark is by far the highest in the league. It's easily the worst in football. There's no better matchup for a running back on the ground than are running back facing the Kansas City Chiefs, So I think that Royce Freeman is a decent play. As a result, someone who's kind of a deeper play is Devin Singletary. It sounds like he's going to be back this week, and he gets a matchup against Miami, a team that's allowing the most fantasy points to running backs this season. Singletary and one of his two games played this year, saw seventy percent of Buffalo's offensive snaps, and while he might not be given a full workload right away, he should see enough touches to Warren a flex play this week. Now, two running backs I'm lower on this week, I'm lower on for similar reasons. They've both gotten underwhelming and unpredictable usage, and I hate that when plugging guys into my fantasy lineup. The first one's Damian Williams. I talked about this on my fifteen Transaction show this week, but I don't know how you confidently play Williams when he saw ninety percent of the team's rushes two weeks ago and it followed that up with barely any work last week. If the Chiefs decide to feature Damien Williams, then yeah, he's gonna be in RB two this week. That's how things work. But we don't know how that workload is exactly going to be split up. That's what makes it so difficult to play someone like Damian Williams right now. And then I want to take a second and talk about Joe Mixon. His production has been really bad this year, and what's most irritating is that he only has an eight percent target share. I don't mind the match up against Jacksonville, but I think just given his workload and how he's performed, he's more of a low end RB two rather than a mid range one. And keep in mind he's ranked higher than RB twenty eight just once this season. Every Rams wide receiver is in play this week, but I wanted to specifically highlight Brandon Cooks because he really hasn't brought the goods this season. He has just three double digit PPR performances, but to be fair, he was concussed in one game in last week the Rams only had like twelve passing yards. But I love this matchup against Atlanta for reasons that I talked about earlier with Jared Goff. Goff should have enough time in the pocket, which means potential throws down the field for Brandon Cooks, because Cooks has by far the highest average that the target this year among the big three wide receivers. For la Iland has also allowed eighteen deep ball completions this season are completions on throws that travel fifteen or more air yards. That's just four off the league lead. So Brandon Cooks is a great play. And if you've got Michael Gallup, you have to play Michael Gallup this week. He's honestly probably a wide receiver one if Amari Cooper doesn't play. The Eagles have been horrendous against opposing wide receivers and specifically perimeter wide receivers on the year. They've actually seen the lowest rate of targets go to the slot. Because teams are using their outside receivers so much against them, they're exploiting a matchup. So if a Marii Cooper can't go, I actually prefer Devin Smith to Randall Cobb this week. But Michael Gallup should be able to go absolutely nuts against a team that's allowing the most fantasy points to opposing wide receivers. Now, even though the Cardinals are getting Patrick Peterson back, he's likely not going to shadow Golden Tate into the slot, and that's where Golden Tate's played ninety percent of his snaps this season, so that gives him a really advantageous matchup against a team that's given up six slot touchdowns and seven hundred and sixty two yards to slot receivers this year. Those are some of the highest marks in the league, and almost forty percent of the targets against Arizona are going to that area of the field, So Golden Tate without a ton of options in that offense, he's a pretty strong play along with Evan Ingram, but everyone knows to play Evan Ingram. And then in that same game, if Christian Kirk ends up playing and it sounded like he was close to playing last week, then I think that you can play him. The Giants are giving up the third most points to opposing wideouts this year that they've been okay against slot guys, But with Christian Kirk when he's been healthy this year, he's seen over twenty two percent of Arizona's targets. He's gonna be involved in that passing attack, and you should always buy volume, especially in a game with a decent over under. Now on the flip side, I'm a little bit nervous about Alan Robbinson this week. He'll likely be shadowed by Marshawn Lattimore, and over the last three weeks, Amari Cooper, Mike Evans, and DJ Shark were all held in check. Against Latimore was wide receiver thirty four, Evans didn't even catch a pass, and Chark was wide receiver forty five this past week. It's a brutal matchup for Robinson coming out of the buy, and it's tough to love Terry McLaurin this week as well. San Francisco has been a top ten team at preventing points to wide receivers. Washington has the second lowest implied team total on this week slate, and McLaurin has touchdown regression heading his way. We can't expect him to keep up the pace of scoring a touchdown for every eighty two receiving yards. That's about double the efficiency of what we've seen over the last five years from an average wide receiver. And it's not like Washington has some good offensive situation. So I worry about Terry McLaurin in this matchup now. Gerald Everett disappointed last week, but I'm trying to get Rams offensive players into my lineups when I can, and I think that you can feel good about Everett as a tight end one this week. Literally everyone in the Rams offense was bad in Week six. But the good news is that Everett had another game with a twenty percent target share, so that gives him four games with a digit target share this year. Half of those games have been over seventeen percent. That's not bad at all for a tight end in a high scoring game. I think he's a good play and I also kind of like Dallas Goddard. I talked about him on yesterday's ten Trend show, but his snap rate's been increasing now that he's been healthy. And he's seen ten percent or more of Philly's targets in each of the last three games. So if you're in a pinch, I think that he's a fine option, and I like adding him over other streamers because he has way more upside than other guys off the waiver wire given what could happen to his workload if zach Ertz were to get hurt. Now, I'll be honest with you, guys, defense is an S show this week. I think the Packers are in play at home as favorites against the Raiders. I don't mind Tennessee at home against the Chargers, And if you're really in a tough spot, you could go with this week's fifteen transactions recommendation and go with the Chiefs against Denver. They're on the road and it's on Thursday night, which kind of sucks, but the Broncos are in the bottom half of the league in pretty much every total offensive category. My main fear with Kansas City is that I do think that Denver is going to be able to run on them. That means fewer opportunities for sacks and turnovers. But they're probably the most traditional streaming option in a tough Week seven. That's going to do it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to The Late Round podcasts, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and search for me on Twitter as well. I'm at Late Round QB. Give me a follow there. Thanks everyone. Tomorrow's the Mailbag Show, so I'll talk to you then.