565: 10 Trends for Week 7

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha J J. Zacher reson What's up everyone, It's JJ Zachareson, the editor in chief at Fandel and at Number five dot com in this episode five hundred and sixty five of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Fandel is giving you the opportunity to bet on Week seven of the NFL season. All you have to do is go to sportsbook dot Fandel dot com or download the Fandel Sportsbook App, place a three or more leg same game parlay wager with cash on any Week seven NFL game, and if your bet loses, you'll get a refund in site credit. Max refund is ten dollars. Bet on Week seven of the NFL season with FanDuel by heading over to the Fandel Sportsbook today and placing a risk free NFL same game parlay. Must be twenty one years older and president in Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia. Refund issue does how much rawllball site credit that expires in seven days max refund ten dollars. Restrictions apply see terms at sportsbook dot Fandle dot com. Same game parlay available for multiple sports in all states on mobile slash web gambling problem called one hundred gambler. Visit fandle dot com slash RG in Colorado, Iowa, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia one hundred nine with in Indiana one hundred two seven zero seven one one seven for confidential heled Michigan, Tennessee redline one hundred and eight nine nine seven and eighty nine. Visit one hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia are called one hundred next step or texts next step to five through three four two. In Arizona, Robert Woods found the end zone on Sunday, but don't let that fool you. After a monster Week five where he saw forty percent of LA's targets and finishes the wide receiver eight in PPR formats, Woods was back to seeing a below average target share in week six. His sixteen point seven percent share was the fourth time that he'd been below seventeen percent this season. He now has a twenty two percent target share this year, but that's largely due to a couple of spiked weeks in volume. The truth is he's not been the reliable fantasy asset that he's been over the last handful of years. He's not someone who's going to disappear, but I think we're bound to continue to see these fluctuations. I'd lean sell more than by right now because he's coming off that game where he scored, but it's not a strong lean considering he did run the most routes for the Rams in Week six. He's very clearly finally separated himself from Van Jefferson when that wasn't the case earlier this season. So I guess now that I'm thinking about a little bit more, maybe he's more of a hold. Mike Kasiki is killing it right now and no one seems to be talking about it. He's finished as a top seven tight end in three of his last four games, and during this stretch he's seen a target share per game average of almost twenty one percent. Maybe this is the result of some of the wide receiver injuries that Miami's been dealing with. In fact, I think we can say that those injuries have something to do with it, But the Miami pass catchers can't stay healthy, and as long as they're banged up, Kasiki, who's more wide receiver than tight end anyway, he needs to be in your lineup. We know that pass rate is clearly dictated by gamescript. When team are trailing, they throw the ball more they're trying to catch up. When teams are leading, they tend to grind down clock and run the ball more. With that being said, it's still pretty surprising to me that the top team in overall pass rate this season, not pass attempts, but pass rate, is Mike Kasiki's team, the Miami Dolphins. They have a pass to rush attempt ratio of two point zero six. That's the highest in the league. Since they've been playing so poorly and since Tua hasn't been healthy, I think we should naturally expect that number to lower a bit. But it's a good example of how even if a team wants to operate a particular way on offense, they can't always just do that. Dereck Henry is pacing towards history. I talked about that last week and it continued in Week six. One thing to watch out for those the Titans passed to rush touchdown ratio. I've brought this up on the podcast this season, but only Chicago has a lower pass to rush touchdown ratio this season than the Titans. Tennessee's tied with Cleveland now with a point five ratio, meaning they've run for twice as many touchdowns as they've thrown for. And as I've knowned in the past, this is well below the norm over the last decade for any team, and even if you look specifically at the Titans, this is still abnormal. It doesn't mean that Derek Henry is going to be bad all of a sudden. It just means that we'll eventually see some sort of shift where some of his scores turn into passing scores. That's going to help Ryan Tannehill and the pass catchers on that team. Trend five is that Najie Harris has seen almost eighty eight percent of Pittsburgh's running back rushes with a near twenty percent target share. The exact numbers are eighty seven point nine percent and nineteen point seven percent. If we use those numbers as filters, only two running backs over the last ten seasons have hit those marks across the entire season. Christian McCaffrey in twenty nineteen and Matt fourtey in twenty fourteen. Now Harris has the benefit that he's played every game so far this year. I'm sure we'll eventually get to a point where he's not one hundred percent healthy because that's what happens at the running back position. So there's some bias in a filter like this, But the fact that he's pacing towards this this type of season shows you how historically good his usage has been in general, let alone as a rookie among the thirty one quarterbacks with one hundred and more pass attempts the season, and you can just include justin fields to make this thirty two if you want, because he has ninety nine pass attempts. But among this group of starters, Matt Ryan is last in the league in fifteen plus air yard rate. Fewer than ten percent of his attempts have traveled fifteen or more air yards. I think we should expect that number to get better as the season goes on, especially considering his career average per season is over seventeen percent. And when this all happens, it's going to help someone like Calvin Ridley who needs to create more splash plays to get back to the elite status that we know that he can be in in fantasy football. Speaking of fifteen plus airyard throws, there are two defenses that seem like they're easily the best at defending those types of throws, or two defense who are likely to prevent these types of plays that you may want to avoid in fantasy football. One of them is Buffalo. The Bills ran thirty second in the league and deep ball rate allowed, but on top of that, they're fourth best in the league and completion percentage on those throws allowed. The Chargers are even better. LA is thirtieth in the league and deep ball rate allowed, and they've allowed just twenty percent of deep ball passes against them to be completed. That's the best in the league. The average team this year has allowed over forty three percent of those throws to be completed. So avoid the Bills and the Chargers' secondaries. One way to spot touchdown regression is by looking at a yards to touchdowns conversion. Clearly, there are more detailed ways of doing this, but if you look at how many yards a player has and divide that by the number of yards a player typically has per touchdown, you can get an expected touchdowns number for a player. For example, the wide receiver who's last in the league in touchdowns versus should have touchdowns is, unsurprisingly, Jacoby Myers. He has three hundred and forty six receiving yards this season, and based on that total, he should have two point one to one touchdowns. That number is just calculated by looking at how wide receivers have scored over the last ten years. Now, Drakobe Myers is not surprising. What might be surprising is who's second from the bottom. It's Devonte Adams. Adams has just two touchdowns this year, when his yardist Shuttle says that he should have more than four. Just something to keep in mind. I've seen a lot of people say that they're concerned about Darren Waller, and I think that depends entirely on expectation. Waller currently has a twenty four percent target share in Vegas' offense. That's the highest of any tight end in football. He scored double digit PPR points in all but one game this year. He's been a top fifteen tight end every single week. He's the tight end four and overall scoring, but he's also only found the end zone twice. Technically, if you want to look at a yards to touchdowns conversion, he should have closer to three. If you want to look at an expected touchdown model like the one that Pro Football Focus has, it says the exact same thing that you should have closer to three touchdowns. So I don't think being concerned is the right way to think about this. I think he's just playing a little bit below expectation and he should be fine from here on out. The last trend this week has to do with Zach Ertz and the Arizona Cardinals. I do think Ertz going there matters a little bit because he's not just going to walk into a situation where there was this huge tight end target share that's now being vacated. In fact, Arizona is dead last in the league this year in tight end target share. It's hard to imagine that with an upgrade at that position that that just remains the same, and if it gets higher, that means other positions suffer in target share. That's how this works. There's only one hundred percent target share to go around, so it's definitely something to monitor moving forward. 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 podcast, make sure you are by searching forward pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found and know it for it to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with a weekly sleeper show.