307: Week 9 Matchups

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha, JJ zacher Resa, what's up everyone, It's JJ zach Reeson, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com in this episode three hundred and seven of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. The matchup show was pretty mediocre last week. There were some hits like Kyler Murray not coming through, Jacoby Brissett also not being a strong option. But there were some misses too, like Joe Mixon not doing well and then Ty Johnson not seeing the workload that we wanted him to see, or at least those of us who got him.

00:00:40
Speaker 2: Off the waiver wire last week.

00:00:42
Speaker 1: But as usual, the players on this show each week are fringe guys. They're players who you may consider benching, so missing on some of them is going to happen anyway. You guys just probably want to hear the goods for this week. That's why you hit play in the first place. Well, before getting to those players, I want to remind you guys about Number five Premium and I've gott an offer for you too with the NBA season here. Number five Premium has everything that you need to dominate the competition, whether you're betting on college or NBA games or building lineups for DFS. Premium has you covered, and it has you covered for the NFL as well. And you can get your first month of any of Number five's Premium packages normally as much as forty nine to ninety nine for just nine to ninety nine when you sign up today with Promo Code Champion. That's Promo Code Champion. Visit number fire dot com slash Premium for more details. The top streaming quarterback this week has to be Derek Carr. He actually hasn't been all that bad this year from a real football standpoint. According to number fires expected points model, among relevant quarterbacks, only seven have been more efficient per dropback than Derek Carr this year, and he's in a great spot this week. The Raiders are at home and they're facing a Lions team that's given up a top twelve QB one performance to all but one passer this year. They've a lot of completely average yards per attempt rate, and they rank as a bottom ten team in both pressure rate and sack rate, and just as importantly, the game has a fifteen and a half point over under according to Fanduels Sportsbook, and with Oakland his favorites, they have one of the highest implied team totals on this slate. So Carr to me, is a very safe option. I also like Sam Darnald in Week nine. I know he's struggled over the last two weeks against New England and Jacksonville, but he's got Miami this week, and it's a Miami secondary that's gonna be without its best piece in Xavian Howard. The Dolphins are already giving up the second highest yards per attempt rate in the league this year, and that should just make things worse. I also like the deep ball matchup in this game, which I'm gonna talk about a little bit later as well. But Miami's given up the second highest average depth of target and football this year, and Sam Darnold's thrown at fifteen or more air yards on twenty seven point four percent of his passes. That's the second highest rate in the league, behind only Patrick Mahomes, who's at twenty seven point eight percent. To me, this is a clear bounce back spot for Sam Darnald. And then if you really want to dig deeper, and I mean, if you're really in a pinch, you go back to Mitch Trubisky. I was wrong about him being a deeper play last week, but this matchup is a little bit better on paper, aside from the fact that Chicago's on the road, but Philadelphia can stop the run, which usually forces opposing teams to throw the ball more against them. They ring seventh in pass attempts against this year. The Bears are five point underdogs, so they've got a chance to be in a negative game script. Now, dropping back to pass more doesn't usually correlate that strongly with fantasy production on a week to week basis for quarterbacks only because efficiency is way more important, not volume, at least at the quarterback position.

00:03:37
Speaker 2: But Trubisky also has.

00:03:39
Speaker 1: Some upside with his legs, so there's always that potential in a negative game script that we see a little bit more rushing because more pass attempts means more dropbacks, and more dropbacks means a higher chance for scrambles. And Philly's played three mobile quarterbacks this year, and Aaron Rodgers, Dak Prescott, and Josh Allen. The three of them rushed for forty six thirty and forty five rushing yards. Now, I'm not saying that you start Mitch Trubisky over someone like Darnald, but he's a decent enough Hail Mary option.

00:04:07
Speaker 2: Now.

00:04:08
Speaker 1: When I looked across the consensus rankings this week, I didn't find a.

00:04:11
Speaker 2: Whole lot of players that I disagreed with.

00:04:12
Speaker 1: But I do think that Kyler Murray is ranked a little bit too high. He has been a little unlucky in the touchdown column this year. He's actually been really unlucky. He's only thrown a touchdown pass and three of his games played. But based on his yardage total, one looking at how many touchdowns a quarterback over the last five years on average would have thrown with that same yardage total, Kyler Murray should have over five more touchdowns than he currently has. The problem is you can't really bank on regression hitting in a matchup against the forty nine ers like last week against New Orleans. I'm really scared about this San Francisco pass rush going up against Arizona. The forty nine ers ranked first in pressure rate and their first in sack rate. That's helped them rank first in fantasy points allowed to opposing quarterbacks. I'm in a super flex league where I'm comfortably playing Sam Darnold over Kyler Muh this week. Maybe you're listening to this episode after the Thursday night game has already been played, and I sound like a total fool, but I think it's the logical move to make it makes sense to be a little afraid about using any of the Denver.

00:05:13
Speaker 2: Broncos this week.

00:05:14
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, I'll be talking about one now and also Courtland Sutton later. But even though Joe Flacco hasn't been very good, it doesn't mean that we should assume Brandon Allen can't be worse. Sure, the upside is there due to ambiguity, but he's essentially a third stringer for them. We can't really have confidence in that. I do think, though, that you can feel semi confident playing both of those running backs this week, both Philip Lindsay and Royce Freeman, not because they'll rely heavily on those players on the ground or more than they typically would, but because both Lindsay and Freeman have continued to.

00:05:45
Speaker 2: Be fed as receivers this year.

00:05:47
Speaker 1: Royce Freeman actually has a higher target share than Philip Lindsay now, and both players have had at least ten percent of Denver's targets and six of their eight games played. Meanwhile, Cleveland has watched over twenty one percent of their receiving yards go to running backs this year, which is the second highest mark in the league. They're also giving up a higher than average target share to opposing running backs. Now, the touchdown upside might not be there, but the floor should be in a PPR format, especially if Allen uses these running backs as a safety.

00:06:13
Speaker 2: Blanket out of the backfield.

00:06:15
Speaker 1: Mark Walton is also in play this week, partially because running back options suck, but also because of what I talked about on the ten Trend Show, and that's Walton's usage in that Kenyan drakeless game against Pittsburgh on Monday night. Walton ended up seeing seventy nine percent of Miami's rushes in almost nineteen percent of their targets in that game. If that kind of usage keeps up, regardless of the offense that he's in, he'll be at least in RB three. And the matchup against the Jets is actually a good one. Not only could the Dolphins find themselves in a neutral game script, but the Jets are a bottom half team against opposing running backs and they just lost Leonard Williams. I think Walton's a decent play this week, especially if he's more of a flex in your lineup.

00:06:54
Speaker 2: Now.

00:06:55
Speaker 1: Like I said, this week's running back group is pretty weak. But one thing that I noticed when looking at ranking is that there seems to be a little bit too big of a gap between Damian Williams and Lashaw McCoy, with McCoy being ranked too high. Technically that you could argue that Williams is too given their matchup against Minnesota, but this is just an annoying and confusing backfield. McCoy had half of Kansas City's rushes last week with an eleven percent target share. Damian Williams had thirty eight percent of his team's running back rushes and he didn't have a target. The thing is it was probably Damian Williams's best outing of the year in terms of how he looked and when it was all said and done, Williams played more snaps than Lashawn McCoy did, and it was probably because McCoy fumbled the ball. So we don't know how this backfield is going to be deployed. I likely wouldn't be starting either guy if I had the choice. But if you do have the choice, or if you're leaning one way or another, I guess I would still lean Lashan McCoy, but not by the gap that we're currently seeing in rankings. And then there's another teammate duo, and that's Frank Gore and Devin Singletary. I know I talked about Singletary on yesterday's show and how he's got a lot of upside moving forward, and I still believe if that's the case, But this matchup against Washington presents a problem for him this week. Chances are Buffalo is going to see a positive game script in this game that means a little less passing, which would mean a little more Frank Gore than Devin Singletary. Remember the Bills were trailing last week. That helped Devin Singletary see the snapshare that he saw, But Singletary still hasn't hit a running back rush share above thirty six percent this year. Gore is averaging a seventy four percent rate. So I actually think, given Gore could see gold line work, that Frank Gore is straight up the better play than Devin Singletary, that Singletary is sort of a trap, but that'll only come to fruition if the Bills continue to deploy their running backs as they have throughout the season. The real reason you're holding onto Singletary and fantasy is that you're hoping that he can take on a bigger role that hasn't happened yet. And until that happens, you can't just hope that the week that you use him is the week that they truly feature him. So I like Gore this week, and I like Singletary less than the consensustuff. The last running back I want to talk about this week is someone who I'm not super high on, is David Montgomery. Montgomery had great production numbers and peripheral numbers last week.

00:09:10
Speaker 2: It wasn't some fluke.

00:09:12
Speaker 1: The Bears gave him over eighty one percent of their running back rushes, which was a season high, and they targeted him on fifteen percent of their aimed.

00:09:19
Speaker 2: Throws, tying a season high.

00:09:21
Speaker 1: The problem is that we still don't know exactly what that'll look like when the Bears are in a negative game script, and like I said with Trubisky, that may happen this week against Philadelphia, and the Eagles can also just straight up stop the run. They've allowed the fourth fewest running back rushing yards in football this year, so I don't think Montgomery is close to a.

00:09:39
Speaker 2: Safe option this week.

00:09:40
Speaker 1: As a result, I'm excited that they actually started using him more, but who knows what that usage will look like when the Bears aren't in a close game, and a non close game could hypothetically happen this weekend. Now, one Chicago Bear that I do like a lot this week is Alan Robinson. You likely weren't benching Robinson, but he's a top ten wide receiver option for me. He'll mostly play on the outside, and that's where Philadelphia has been torched this year. The Eagles are allowing the fewest percentage of targets to go to the slot, which tells you that outside receivers are torching them, and that's been the case. No team is allowing more fantasy points to outside receivers than the Philadelphia Eagles are this year. Robinson hasn't seen fewer than twenty one percent of Chicago's targets in a single game this season, and he's got a twenty six percent target share overall on the year, so he's a must start one player who I thought was ranked way too low this week at wide receiver was Robbie Anderson. Like I said earlier, Sam Darnold's throwing it deep at the second highest rate in football this season and Miami's allowing the second highest average depth of target. Meanwhile, in Donald's three games since his return from Mono, Robbie Anderson has seen twenty five point eight percent, twenty five point eight percent again, and twenty point seven percent of New York's targets. Anderson is a deep ball threat who's seeing a lot of targets against a team missing their top player in their secondary, and that same team has allowed a high average depth of target. Sign me up now in that same game, Devonte Parker is ranked his wide receiver forty over on Fantasy Pros. But one thing I should have brought up a My ten trend show is that over the last four weeks, Parker has been wide receiver fourteen, twenty six, fifteen, and thirty two, and over his last two games he's had a twenty nine percent and a twenty five percent target share in a plus matchup.

00:11:27
Speaker 2: He's got a high floor.

00:11:29
Speaker 1: In PPR formats, and I do think that he should be ranked a little bit higher than he currently is now. On the flip side, one player who I already talked about is Courtland Sutton. I want to get back to Courtland Sutton. He was ranked as wide receiver twenty when I checked before the podcast. But I don't know how you can feel so confident, and it's not because of his ability. We just don't know how Brandon Allen is going to run this offense. We don't know if it's going to be effective, and we don't know if Sutton is going to be able to maintain this twenty four percent target share. So I can understand if you're going to play Sutton, there's not many alternatives in that offense. I just don't think his ranking really reflects the downside. And then there's Larry Fitzgerald. He's only seen about thirteen percent of Arizona's targets over the last two weeks, but he's ranked next to Robbie Anderson on Fantasy pros right now. I like Robby Anderson way more. San Francisco is a very tough matchup, but then on top of that, they've seen the second smallest percentage of targets go to pass catchers. In the slot this year, head of only Philadelphia. So not only could Arizona just generally struggle. And again, you may be listening to this on Friday, and I might sound like an idiot, but not only could the Cardinals just generally struggle, they could also not force the ball fits his way. If you can bench him, I would. I think you can keep streaming Dallas Goddard. Now there's some concern about what will happen with DeShawn Jackson back in the mix, but it's hard to ignore a waiver wire tight end who's consistently seeing a ten plus percent target share, and a tight end who's coming off a game with his highest snap share, and a tight end who is ranked as a top twelve one in each of his last three games. From a streaming perspective, I would still play Dallas Goddard. Darren Fells is kind of interesting too. He's actually been a top eight tight end in four of his last six games thanks to scoring five touchdowns over this time. But he's also hit a fifteen percent target shair in half of those games as well, So I think that that type of upside and volume alone makes him a worthy streamer.

00:13:23
Speaker 2: On defense. This week.

00:13:24
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna mention the Cleveland Browns once again since I talked about them on this week's fifteen Transaction show. I don't love that they're on the road, but their favorites against Brandon Allen and that Broncos offense, it's usually a safe bet to target backup quarterbacks with your defenses. And then there's also the New York Jets. They're actually kind of in a similar spot as Cleveland with them being on the road as three point favorites in a game with a low over under. But they're probably a safe option just like Cleveland is, because it's unlikely the opposing offense is just going to go off on them. I mean it's possible, just unlikely. But every defense to face Miami has finished as a top nine unit in weekly defensive scoring. Miami's been sacked at the third highest rate in the league, and they're averaging one point seven interceptions per game. I totally understand that the Jets are also kind of a dumpster fire, but the matchup is there for them this week. That's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get 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 go to Twitter and follow me at late round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly Mailbag episode.