1056: 10 Trends for Week 12

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha, Jay Jake Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode ten fifty six of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the trends this week, I just want to remind you once again to check out the Late Round newsletter. In that newsletter, you get my written content, you get the fifteen transactions list to your email inbox. Every week, you get the data dump, and then at the end of every week, David Kitchen, my COO, sends a recap of everything Late Round Fantasy Football did that week. And then during the offseason there's tons of research articles that I send you guys via that newsletter. It takes two seconds to sign up. Just head the Lateround dot com and click newsletter that's Lateround dot com. Now let's get to this week's trends. Let's gick off today's episode by looking at Trayvon Henderson and Ramandre Stevenson, because let's be honest, this is probably the biggest storyline in fantasy football entering Week twelve. Assuming Stevenson is able to play No. One outside the Patriots knows exactly how they're gonna divvy up this backfield. Running back can be frustrating because we can do all of this analysis, we can really like a player, but if a coaching staff wants to do things a certain way, that analysis doesn't matter. I mean, just look at how long it took the Buccaneers to give Sean Tucker more work. What I can tell you is that Trayvon Henderson has better metrics than Ramandre Stevenson across the board, and in my opinion, he passes the eye test two. But Trayvon Henderson is a rushing yards over expected per rush this year according to next Gen Stats of plus point six. Stevenson is plus point two. Henderson is an EPA per rush of plus point zero two. Thanks to fumbles, Stevenson is minus point three to five. Henderson has gained ten or more yards on nine percent of his rush attempts. Stevenson has done it at a seven percent rate. And you might sit there and you're thinking Henderson's just putting up better per rush numbers because of some big plays, some chunk plays. But check out success rate. Success rate is a binary yes or no. It doesn't care how successful that run was just if it was successful, and on the season, Henderson has a forty percent success rate, Stevenson is at thirty two and a half percent. Just based on the eye test, the way things are trending and these numbers, I think we've got a one A one B situation where Henderson is the one A. And I said this before and I'll say it again. New England is a great running back schedule. Rest of season, both running backs can be fine. I'm actually well ahead of the market with Ramandre Stevenson because of that fact. But I do think Henderson deserves that one A job at this point, just based on the numbers and based on recent trend Literally last week on this show, I talked about Carolina's drop back over expected rate and I mentioned now Tedoha McMillan would be smashing this year if not for such a run heavy philosophy. According to Fantasy Lights dropbacks over expected formula, the Panthers entering Week eleven had just one game this year with a dropbacks over expected rate above zero percent, meaning in just one game they were more pass heavy than expected. And it happened all the way back in Week two and from Week four through Week ten, their dropbacks over expected rate was minus twelve percent. That was by far the lowest in football. In Week eleven, though, the Panthers had a dropbacks over expected rate of plus eight percent that was by far their highest to the season. And not only did their offense get a score on half of their drives, but Tetero McMillan's peripherals finally gave us that ceiling game that we've been hoping for. You always need to give an offense context, but when you see things like target share and how a team is deploying a player, when that offense's context changes, this is a really good example of how it can impact that individual player. Let's just hope that this becomes a legitimate trend. Ricky Pearsall was back for the forty nine Ers in Week eleven. Now we have to take all this with a grain of salt, because Pearsall was coming off of an injury. The forty nine Ers probably didn't want him super involved to begin with, let alone in a blowout. But Pearsaw ran around on eighty two percent of San Francisco's dropbacks, not bad at all, but he also only had an eleven and a half percent target chair and he scored one PPR point. Now, I dug into this with Fantasy Points data because I was curious if the team was trying to get him the ball or not. Turns out, Pearsaw had a zero percent first read target share against Arizona. George Kittle and Juwan Jennings were at thirty one percent. Now, I'm not saying this is a sign of things to come. I'm just saying it's probably not a bad idea to check in on this after another game or two to see if Pearsall clearly isn't a top option for them, or maybe this was them just trying to get him up to speed after missing some time. It's a different team than it was earlier this season when Pearsaul was seeing twenty nine percent target chairs. So this is a story that we have to follow. I feel like people don't realize how good Nico Collins has been. It's definitely been an up and down year for him. But there's probably a little bit of anchoring going on with Nico Collins, assuming he's just not lived up to expectation whatsoever, but he kind of has kind of. Since Week one, Collins is averaging sixteen point six PPR points per game. He's seen target totals of ten, eleven, fifteen, to ten over his last four Now, like I said with Jayden Higgins on yesterday's fifteen Transactions episode, the upcoming schedule for the Texans, it's not anything special, but props to Nico for actually being a decent fantasy asset when everyone seemed to bury him at the start of the season. This next trend kind of a weird one. Breesehall played with Braylan Allen from weeks one through four. In those games, he never dip below a fourteen percent target share, not in a single game, but his running back rush share was seventy percent per game. From week five through now, Hall's running back rush share has jumped from seventy percent to eighty six percent. No surprise there because Braylan Allen is no longer in the lineup, but his target share has gone from never dipping below that fourteen percent mark and hovering the eighteen percent mark to now rarely getting over the ten percent mark. He's seen a target share per game rate of just eight percent since Braylan Allen's injury. Now, you're probably thinking that Hall is running fewer routes, right, well, that hasn't been the case. He had a forty three percent route here during the first four weeks, it's forty two percent since then. One thing that is kind of interesting, though, is the Jets general intent to get him the ball through the air. He had a ten point nine percent first red target share over those first four games, that's according to Fantasy Points data. Since then, it's gone from ten point nine percent to four point nine percent. So the Jets just seemed less interested in getting Breeze haul the rock through the air, and that's giving him worse fantasy production overall. Maybe that changes, though with a shift at quarterback. Keon Coleman was a scratch for the Bills on Sunday. Apparently there was some off the field stuff going on, But the Bills also had Josh Palmer back he hadn't played since Week six, and Buffalo's wide receiver room it was a mess in Week eleven from a fantasy perspective. Khalil Shakir was the only Bills wide receiver with a route share above fifty percent against the Buccaneers, and he was at sixty eight percent according to PFF data. Meanwhile, Tyrrel Shavers, Curtis Samuel, Josh Palmer, and Gabe Davis. They each ran either fifteen or sixteen routes. No more, no less. Yes, you just can't trust anyone in that wide receiver room, maybe outside of Khalil Shakir. And it's so crazy that that's the case, given who's throwing them the ball. Cam Skanabou is hurt in Week eight, so we have three games without him. Now, Devin Singletary has thirty two rush attempts and six targets in those games. Tyrone Tracy has thirty eight rush attempts and ten targets in those games. But Devin Singletary has scored thirty five point one PPR points Tyrone Tracy thirty two point seven. And a key reason for that discrepancy, despite Tracy seeing more work, is how they've deployed these backs in the green zone. Devin Singletary is playing all of their snaps within the opponent's ten yard line, and during this timeframe he's seen ten rush attempts from that area of the field. Tyrone Tracy has zero attempts. If that wasn't the case, we'd feel a lot better about Tyrone Tracy rest of season. With Walker's been seeing just a little bit more work of late. The Seahawks had a week eight. By before that by Walker was averaging a running back rush heare per game rate of about fifty two percent. His target share per game was five percent. Since then, the running back rush share, it hasn't shifted much. Actually it's dropped by four percentage points. It's at forty eight percent. But the target share has gone up to eight percent. And the snap share Walker just being on the field, that's gotten better. It's gotten from forty four percent to forty eight percent. Walker was out snapped by Zach Sharboney and five of their first six games together, but Walker's seen more snaps than sharps in each of their last three. Now I mentioned all this because Mike McDonald said this week that quote, I think he as in Walker deserves and earning more opportunities to get the ball, and he should. This is like Trayvon Henderson versus Ramandre Stevenson. At least analytically, Walker has a rushing yards over expected per attempt of plus point one Sharboney minus point three. Walker hasn't e per rush of minus point one Sharboney minus point one eight. Walker has a success rate of forty one percent, Sharbonay thirty six percent. So there's been a small uptick, a really small uptick in Walker's usage recently, but there's a chance we see an even bigger one soon. Ceedee Lamb has now been back from his injury for four games. In those four games, George Pickens is a target share per game rate of twenty six percent. He's averaging seventeen point six PPR points per game after his twenty nine point outing on Monday Night. Now during the same timeframe, Lamb has a twenty seven point six percent target share per game rate, and because of Pickens Week eleven, Lamb is actually averaging point two points per game less than Pickens during this stretch. Now, this is not a dig at Lamb at all. He's a stud rest of season. It's just to show that George Pickens can definitely still eat while Ceedee Lamb is in that lineup, and it's great to see. I thought Monday Night was the best game of George Pickens's career. The last trend this week is about the Los Angeles Rams. They're using heavier personnel than usual. I'm sure you've heard about that all across social media. Over the last few weeks, they're using more thirteen personnel. Some of that definitely can be game script related, but regardless, we've been seeing roughly ten dropbacks per game from the Rams. With these three tight end sets and Puka Nakua's peripherals, they've shifted as a result. For instance, from weeks one through five, Nikua had a routchair of eighty five percent and a target share of thirty five percent. Since then, his routchair has been sixty four percent, his target share twenty one percent. DeVante Adams hasn't seen that big of a discrepancy. Now, I don't think this is completely personnel driven. We know Nikua was hurt earlier this year and it was right within that split, so that's undoubtedly gonna play a role here. More importantly, the Rams played their first truly competitive game in weeks and week eleven before that, they blew out the forty nine ers, they blew out the Saints, they blew out the Jags, and they beat the Ravens. That was the game that Nakua was heard in, And what's encouraging is that in their game against Seattle this past Sunday, Nikua did see a thirty percent target share, his best since week four. He also saw a seventy five percent route share that was his best since week five. I don't think that's just a coincidence. Game script can definitely impact this too, but I do think we should all be aware that when you hear about LA's heavier personnel usage, it does hurt a player like pukin Akua and fantasy. I just think it's very easy to over exaggerate that impact and put way too much emphasis on just that one single thing. As usual, there's a lot of things at play. That's it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you had subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by shirting for a pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll be back in your ears tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.