412: 10 Trends for Week 2

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ Zachera j Shake zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyes and the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number five dot com in this episode four hundred and twelve of the Late Round podcast with many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. The twenty twenty NFL season has officially started in Despite being just one week into the season, Fandel has already made somebody a millionaire and they plan on doing it all over again this week. For just four dollars, you can enter the Week to NFL Sunday Million and compete for your share of the three million dollar prize pool, including a one million dollar first place prize. With thirteen games on the slate, there's no shortage of big name fantasy players to build your lineups around. For more details, vi was at FanDuel dot com or download the FanDuel app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Trend Won this week is about the Steelers, and in particular the Steelers wide receivers. Juju Smith Schuster had a nice top ten performance on Monday night after scoring two times and James Washington found the end zone. Two. Deontay Johnson was horrific in the first half of that game, but he actually came through in the second half and he led the Steelers and targets. Johnson had a thirty two percent target share, Juju was about nineteen percent, and James Washington at ten percent. If you look at how social media is talking about the wide receiver group in Pittsburgh, people are ready to bail on Deontay Johnson, but the peripherals are there. He should be fine moving forward. Trend two is that no team targeted the running back position at a lower rate than the Chargers in Week one. Now, I talked a lot about Austin Eckler and Josh Kelly on yesterday's fifteen Transactions Show, but it's still pretty wild that the Chargers' running backs saw just three and a half percent of the team's targets against Cincinnati. I'm not bullish that this goes in the opposite direction and Eckler all of a sudden gets like a fifteen percent target share either. On Monday, Anthony Lynn talked about how this new offensive scheme is likely to limit checkdowns to the running back position. He did say he wants to continue getting Eckler the ball, but my fear is that he means on the ground and not just through the air. This is all why things are trending down for Eckler right now. But like I said in yesterday's episode, the next two weeks or two of the best matchups that Eckler could possibly walk into. Philadelphia threw it at the highest rate in the league on Sunday, with a pass rate of seventy six percent. Carson Wentz also threw at fifteen or more air yards on twenty nine percent of his attempts. That was a top five number in the league. The Eagles were very pass friendly. I was kind of surprised by the deep ball frequency when you consider their offensive line injuries going up against a Washington defensive line that's really really good, but at this rate, volume is going to be there for their pass catchers. When the game was within six points on Sunday game scripts, the Eagles had a three point one seven pass to rush ratio that was by far the highest in the league. Now, maybe things change when Miles Sanders returns and the Eagles didn't win, so maybe they'll force that change. But it was a pretty interesting development. In Week one, Kenyan Drake was out targeted five to two by Chase Edmonds in Week one. Now is it time to panic with Kenyan Drake. I don't think panic is the right word, but Chase Edmonds is definitely looking like he's gonna limit Kenyan Drake. We knew that would happen to some degree, but this could really limit the ceiling. I mean, consider this. When Drake moved to Arizona last year, on a per game basis, he had a thirteen point eight percent target chair. He dipped below the ten percent mark in just one game on Sunday. His target share is five point four percent. The good news is Drake saw over seventy percent of the team snaps and he saw the team's only goal line rush. He'll still be fine in fantasy football this year, especially if Arizona offense really clicks. Nick Chubb finished Week one seeing forty one point seven percent of Cleveland's running back rushes. His single game low last year was sixty two point five percent. Now, I sent this tweet out and I got some angry responses because there was an ultra negative game script in that game for Cleveland, which is why Chubb wasn't on the field that and he fumbled. Now I agree with this idea overall, a negative game script is going to favor Kareem Hunt more than it's going to favor Nick Chubb. And Chubb should be fine, absolutely fine in Week two. But the issue with this particular trend is at number one, Chubb is even more game script dependent than we might have thought entering the season, and number two. Even in the first half of this past week's game, the rushing share split between Chub and Hunt was fifty to fifty. It's definitely not a positive trend for Nick Chubb. Two running backs saw one hundred percent of their team's running back rushes in Week one. One was expected Derrick Henry, the other one was James Robinson. Now I'm really curious as to what Robinson's numbers are going to look like in a true negative game script, which I still expect to happen a lot for Jacksonville this year. But so far, so good. From my dude, James Robinson, I doubt you could treat him for that much right now, so just go along for the ride. He was free. After all. The forty nine ers had the highest target share to running backs at forty five point six percent in Week one. Meanwhile, something had to give in that offense to allow for that, and the forty nine Ers had the second lowest wide receiver target share at thirty three point three percent. Only Las Vegas was lower. This is really what the focus of the Raheem Moster transaction was all about on yesterday's show. I think Moster's going to be plenty fantasy relevant this year, but I highly doubt that we see him maintain his fifteen percent target share throughout the season once we get players like Brandon Aiyuk and Deebo Samuel back. But Mostard probably will be pretty strong in the short term, especially with this new George Hittle injury. Only two players saw more than eighty percent of their team's running back rushes to go along with a twenty percent or better target chair in Week one. One of them was Saquon Barkley, the other one Josh Jacobs. Jacob's target chair on Sunday was actually over five percentage points higher than his previous career high. If Vegas keeps this up, Jacobs has a good chance to move up into firm RB one status. It'll be interesting to see what happens in tougher matchups and negative game scripts which they could face in the coming weeks because they do have a tough schedule. But I'm optimistic about Josh Jacobs. Trend nine is that Tampa Bay was by far the run heaviest team in neutral game script situations in Week one. Their past to rush ratio in those situations was just point three to eight. I'm not really understanding this game plan from Tampa Bay, considering New Orleans has a strong front, but I'd expect things to get better this week and arguably the softest matchup in the league when Tampa Bay faces Carolina. Now, the final trend of the week is that Adrian Peterson was either targeted or had a rush attempt on seventy point eight percent of his snaps on Sunday. That was the highest utilization rate in the entire NFL. Now, even though Peterson was a thing in Week one, it wasn't all that bad for teammate and rookie DeAndre Swift. Swift still had a target share of twelve point two percent, and he still led that backfield and snaps played. Aside from that drop at the end of the game, things could have been a lot worse for DeAndre Swift and a crowded backfield. I don't think he's a by candidate though, because I do think that we'll see a committee this year. But I don't think that he's a cell either. He's one of those guys who you should be ready to pounce on if the peripheral numbers trend in the right direction, because remember, league winning running backs generally come from ambiguous backfields. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed 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. Thanks everyone. It'll be back in your ear tomorrow with the weekly matchup show.