439: 15 Transactions for Week 9

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zacherretha j J. Zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ Zacharyese and the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode four hundred and thirty nine of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thank you for tuning in. Fandel Sportsbook is giving new users an opportunity to win big on this week's Thursday night football matchup between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco forty nine Ers. Right now, you have a chance to bet one dollar on either the Packers or the forty nine Ers, and if they win, you'll make one hundred dollars. You heard that correctly. Bet one dollar win one hundred dollars. The offers for this Thursday's game only, So download the Fandel Sportsbook mobile app, sign up and make your first deposit to see your enhanced odds today. Must be twenty one years or older. President of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, West Virginia, Indiana. New users only must wager on designated boost market. Deposit required max bonus one hundred dollars ce full terms at sportsbook dot fandle dot com. Gambling problem called one hundred gambler in Colorado called one hundred five two two forty seven hundred, or in West Virginia visit one hundred gambler dot net, or in Indiana call one eight hundred and nine with it crushed it. Let's get to these transactions by Miles Sanders. So Miles Sanders has not been very healthy this year. That means there's probably a lot of frustrated fantasy managers out there. I know that I have Sanders in a lot of leagues and it's frustrating to have him right now because he's not finding the field. But this is your opportunity to pounce because the Eagles have a buy upcoming this week. That means the team that has Sanders might get rid of Sanders a little bit more easily. When he's been on the field this year, he's produced. He's finished in the top twenty and weekly running back scoring in four of his five games played, and he's handled over eighty percent of the team's running back rushes per game to go along with a thirteen point four percent target share per game. That's when he's been active. Those are both very very good numbers, and after the bye this week they get the Giants, Brown, Seahawks, Packers, Saints, Cardinals, and Cowboys through the end of the fantasy football season. Now, that might be a tough schedule in real football, but it should bring a lot of high scoring games. And not only that, but the only team among that group that's been really good at stopping running backs this year is New Orleans. So with Sanders likely coming back from this injury after the bye, I think it makes a ton of sense to trade for him this week. Sell James Robinson. Look, guys, this is really really tough for me to talk about. I love me some James Robinson. He saved me in so many leagues this year. I'm sure that he saved a lot of you as well. I liked him as a prospect. I'm really excited for what he could potentially do in the league moving forward. But I have to be honest, I think that James Robinson is a good sell candidate this week. And that's despite the fact that he's seen almost ninety five percent of Jacksonville's running back rushes this year and a twelve point seven percent target share. We know that he's a workhorse. He's pacing to see the highest running back rush share that we've seen in basically forever. The usage is there. The problem is that the situation kind of sucks. Gardner Minshew not gonna be playing. Jake Luton's gonna be playing. He's a sixth rounder from twenty twenties draft. Maybe Luton's good. I don't know. We're surprised by quarterbacks all the time. We were surprised by Gardner Minshew, But I don't think we should assume that he's gonna be good. And if he's worse than Minshew, then we have to worry about the lack of scoring opportunities in this Jags offense. And then the other situational thing that I don't like about James Robinson is the schedule. On the season, Jacksonville's had four top ten matchups favorable matchups in seven games. That's according to adjusted Fantasy points allowed to running backs, Robinson has faced just one team ranked lower than eighteenth. That came in Week one against the Colts, and he had his worst fantasy outing in that game. Now, over the next two weeks, he does get the two best matchups and adjusted fantasy points allowed. They get the Texans and then the Packers, but again, in both of those games, we might see a bad quarterback. There's a chance that there's some bad quarterback play, And you guys know how I work here. I look at this from a probability perspective. Can Lowton be good? Of course? Should we expect a sixth round quarterback to step in and dominate? Though? No, probably not. I don't think that's very logical. So those matchups are good on paper, but I still worry about the Jags offense in total. But then once those matchups are over, Robinson gets the Steelers, the twenty third best matchup for running backs according to adjusted fantasy points allowed, the Browns who are nineteenth, the Vikings twenty fourth, the Titans who are seventh, And then in weeks fifteen and sixteen, the two biggest weeks of the fantasy football season, Jacksonville gets Baltimore in Chicago. Those are two top ten defenses against running backs. So this is a bad situation for James Robinson in total. So I don't think it's a bad idea as a result to try to sell him now, and while you're negotiating that trade, use those upcoming matchups to your advantage. Talk about the fact that he gets the Texans and Packers across the next two weeks. Talk about the fact that he's already had his buy. I still think he's going to be productive moving forward. It's gonna be hard for him not to be productive if he keeps up that backfield market share. But there are a lot of concerns right now, so I think now is the time you have to let James Robinson go add Jacoby Myers. So this one's pretty straightforward. Over the last two weeks, Jacoby Myers has seen a twenty seven point three percent target chair and a forty three point five percent target chair. Yes, New England is a run heavy team, but because of those high target shairs, Myers has still seen sixteen targets over the last two weeks, and Julian Edelman is sidelined, So I think that Myers is going to be a usable piece moving forward. Josh Jacobs all right, So Jacobs had that big Week one performance against Carolina, and as we know, a lot of running backs do well against Carolina. But since the first week of the season, Jacobs ranks twenty third in running back PPR points per game. That's among running backs with at least four games played. He's averaged fewer points per game than Jonathan Taylor, who everyone hates right now, and David Montgomery, who everyone always hates now. Part of the reason Jacobs hasn't really lived up the expectation is because of his receiving usage. That's what we saw last year too. In Week one, we were so excited because he had over twenty one percent of the Raiders targets. But since then he's averaged a target year per game of nine point three percent and he's not finding the end zone a lot. He's scored twice since Week one, and they were both in the same game. Now. To be fair, Jacobs faced two of the toughest matchups against running backs already this year. He's faced New Orleans and Tampa Bay, and the only game where he finished outside the top thirty and running backs scoring was against the Bucks. So we know that each week he has some sort of floor, and according to his rest of seasons schedule, you could argue that more of a ceiling is coming. The Raiders get the Chargers and the Dolphins in weeks fifteen and sixteen. That's not bad. And then in between then they get the Jets and the Chiefs as well. So overall, the schedule is probably a little bit better than what Jacobs has faced so far. But this is not the time to buy Josh Jacobs because I think that there are concerns, mostly receiving concerns that receiving usage is not trending up. We need it to trend up before we buy him. Buy Jalen Rager. So we finally saw Jalen Rager on a football field again. He looked pretty good. He scored a touchdown in that game against the Cowboys. He had a twenty three point one percent target share, but he only finished with sixteen receiving yards and that makes for a by low opportunity. Despite the fact that he found the end zone he did have seventy five air yards. Was not bad, but sixteen receiving yards is not very good. Now. As I said with Miles Sanders earlier, the Eagles have a pretty favorable schedule moving forward. In fact, five of their final seven opponents during the fantasy football season, they rank in the top eleven and adjusted fantasy points allowed to wide receivers guys. This is why I talked about Jalen Reger and Travis Folgum last week. I really liked them as by candidates, and this is just a reminder that I still do so. By Jalen Rager drop Joshua Kelly. It was looking promising for Joshua Kelly earlier in the season. You guys know that I was pretty excited about it. And then Austin Eckler got hurt, and you would think that things would look even better for Joshua Kelly. But instead it's got in the opposite direction. He's looked bad too. I have not been impressed with Joshua Kelly over the last few weeks. He's failed to score a touchdown since Week one, and he's yet to see a weekly running back rush share higher than forty percent since that Eckler injury. But the worst part of all of this is that this past week, Kelly's running back rush share fell to a season low eighteen point four percent. Tremaine Pope was getting more run than Joshua Kelly. I don't mind him long term, like from a Dynasty perspective, but I don't think that you can trust him anymore. Here in twenty twenty, add Cam Akers and Malcolm Brown. So Cam Akers had his highest running back rush here since Week one on Sunday against the Dolphins, and it's because Darryl Henderson suffered a thigh injury in the first half of that game. Henderson's last touch came in the early parts of the second quarter. From that point on, Akers out attempted Malcolm Brown. He had nine carries to Brown seven. So if Henderson were to miss time, both Acres and Brown would get a nice bump in usage. Now, Brown is probably the player who's going to see a little bit more receiving work because that's how they've been using him. But if I'm choosing between Cam Akers and Malcolm Brown off the waiver wire, give me the upside, give me the potential with the rookie cam Akers, but both of them are technically ads. This week, hold Lamar Jackson. So I had some people ask me about Lamar Jackson this week, so I wanted to talk about him on the fifteen Transaction Show because the big question uestion right now surrounding Lamar Jackson is what the hell happened? What happened to Lamar Jackson? He had fourteen top fifteen performances last year and fifteen games played. He's had three top fifteen outings in seven games this year. He was the best fantasy quarterback that we've ever seen last season. Now he's almost not even a QB one, So what the hell happened? Well, let's look at this. Let's look at what's going on with Lamar Jackson. Number one, he's running the ball less frequently. In twenty nineteen, he averaged eleven point seven rushes per game. This year that numbers nine point four, and he's seeing point seven fewer yards per attempt. So he's running less and he's not as efficient on the ground. Now on the passing side of things, not only is his touchdown rate down, but his yards per attempt is down, his completion percentage is down, and his deep ball numbers are down. Now, individually, these dips and numbers, they're not that dramatic. They're really not that crazy. Just for an example, Jackson's completing thirty seven point eight percent of his fifteen plus air yard throws this year. That number was thirty nine point five percent last year, so it's pretty close. This season, he's seen twenty seven point four percent of his passing yards come on those deep passes that was closer to thirty one percent last year, So there's just a lot of that happening. There's a lot of these numbers that are worse, but they're not dramatically worse. Honestly, though, guys, there's a pretty simple reason as to why Lamar Jackson is not doing what he did last year. Baltimore is not converting like they did last year. We knew regression was coming. I talked about it all off season. Math told us that this was going to happen. There was no way Jackson was going to maintain his nine percent touchdown rate from last year in Baltimore. They scored fifty eight touchdowns last year. They weren't going to maintain that either. And there's really simple proof to show what's going on here. You can just look at how they've converted each drive in twenty twenty, twenty five point three percent of the Ravens drives are resulting in touchdowns. Seventeen point seven percent of them are ending in field goals. Last year, about thirty five percent of their drives resulted in touchdowns, so that's a ten percent drop and they were basically kicking field goals at almost the same rate, which means they're scoring a lot less per drive this year than they were last year. So I don't think anything's like really broken with this Baltimore Ravens offense. I think this is just what the Ravens are. But from a fantasy football perspective, I don't think this means that we should just give up on Lamar Jackson. There's a reason that he's a hold rather than a sell, and it's all about the upcoming schedule, specifically the playoff schedule. In weeks fourteen through sixteen the Fantasy Football Playoffs, Baltimore gets the Browns, Jags, and Giants. That means Jackson's going to face two of the five easiest opponents according to adjusted fantasy points allowed, and then a completely average one in the Giants. So even though the Ravens have officially regressed, this is the norm, this is probably what they are. Even though that's probably a little bit annoying to you. I do think that he can come through in the Fantasy football playoffs. I don't think this is the time to sell Lamar Jackson sell Damien Harris. I do think it's the time to sell Damien Harris, though he had his best outing of the season against Buffalo on Sunday. He had sixteen carries one hundred and two yards in the touchdown. That's great. I'm happy for Damian Harris. The problem is he still only played thirty point eight percent of the team snaps and he's had a grand total of two targets in four games since coming back from his injury. That's not what I look for in a running back. You guys know this. I need receiving usage from my running backs. I need snaps for my running backs. That's not there for Damian Harris. So you can sell him. Add Jordan Wilkins. So Jonathan Taylor has not lived up to the hype at the end of the season. When I look back on the season, I'm sure that I'm gonna be talking about Jonathan Taylor. But I will say in Week eight, specifically, I didn't think Jonathan Taylor looked like himself. And it might be due to this ankle injury that he's apparently dealing with. But whatever the case is, I think that Jordan Wilkins needs to be on your radar. He played over half of Indianapolis his snaps on Sunday, he saw over fifty five percent of the Colts running back rushes and he had over twenty PPR points. So if Taylor does miss time because of this ankle injury, Wilkins should see a good bit of work. But do know that the Colts get the Ravens this week. So if this Jonathan Taylor injury is anything significant, maybe they hold him out here in week nine and then he's back in week ten. Then you're playing Jordan Wilkins against the Ravens. So I would not go crazy on the waiver wire for Jordan Wilkins this week. By DeAndre Swift here in week nine. Looking at DeAndre Swift, what he did in week eight is exactly why we look at peripheral numbers. Because he only scored five point three PPR points. Fantasy managers with DeAndre Swift are sitting there saying, I don't want this guy. I don't want five points. Get this out of here. But here's the good news. When we look at the Paris and we look at how Detroit actually used DeAndre Swift, he had a good outing. We should view week eight for DeAndre Swift as a good thing. He saw his highest running back rush share of the season at fifty four and a half percent, and he played by far the most snaps in that Lion's backfield. He had a sixty two point three percent snap share that was also a season high. So this is like a classic by low opportunity in fantasy football. A guy doesn't perform very well, but his peripherals actually look amazing. And this is honestly the opposite of what we've seen from DeAndre Swift all season long. Things are changing for Swift and because of this down performance, you have a good buying opportunity at DJ Dallas. So the Seattle backfield is really really banged up, and DJ Dallas stepped in as the team's top running back on Sunday, and he had a pretty good game. He handled ninety percent of Seattle's running back rushes, he carried the ball eighteen times, and he had five receptions as well. He caught all five of his targets that gave him a top five weekly performance at the running back position. Now it's early in the week as you're listening to this and as I'm recording this, so I have no idea what the Seattle back that is going to look like by Sunday. But you can't just wait you have to add DJ Dallas now, and who knows, guys, maybe Dallas steps in and he has a bigger role. Even when Chris Carson returns, maybe he takes on a bigger receiving role. He's definitely worth an ad this week. Sell Todd Gurley. I get it. I've had Todd Gurley as a cell multiple times this season, and he keeps freaking scoring touchdowns. But it's hard to assume that he's going to keep up and maintain this touchdown scoring pace. He's averaging one rushing touchdown per game. The thing is, despite that, he's still outside RB one territory this season in points per game because he's averaging fewer than seventy percent of Atlanta's running back rushes per game and he's only seen six and a half percent of the team's targets. Those numbers also hit rock bottom in Week eight against Carolina, Gurley had sixty percent of the team's running back rushes and no targets. Those were both season lows. He is scoring touchdowns and he is getting opportunities to score touchdowns. Only Ezekiel Elliott and Dereck Henry have more goal line attempts than Todd Gurley this year, and that's great. I just worry about the declining backfield market share to go along with that touchdown reliance. I don't want that. I need more stability for my running backs, Ad Kirk Cousins. So quarterback streamers kind of suck this week. But I don't mind Kirk Cousins. He's rostered in just twenty eight percent of Yahoo leagues. He's not in a terrible spot. The Lions and Vikings game, according to Fandels Sportsbook, has a fifty three point over under. The Vikings are three and a half point favorites, so that gives them a pretty good implied team total. And Detroit's been fairly average against quarterbacks when looking at adjusted fantasy points allowed, and they are coming off a game against Indianapolis where the Ghost of Philip rivers through for two hundred and sixty two yards and three touchdowns. So this Detroit Lions defense is beatable. I don't mind Kirk Cousins this week. Add the Washington Football team's defense. The Washington football team is currently available in eighty four percent of Yahoo leagues, and they get a projected low scoring Week nine matchup against the Giants, were their favorites. That's not all that common for Washington, but Washington ranked sixth in the league in pressure rate this season. They shouldn't have any trouble taking advantage of a turnover friendly quarterback in Daniel Jones. So I think the Washington is a strong streaming choice, and also don't sleep on Houston facing a rookie quarterback. The sixteen transaction this week that you can't get my fifteen transactions call him over on number fire dot com is to add Allan Lazard. Lazard is still widely available in Yahoo leagues because he was put on IR but he practiced a couple of times last week, so he's probably gonna return soon. And don't forget Lazard was pretty damn good when he was healthy earlier this year. He only played three games when he was the wide receiver sixteen, sixty eight and six. In those three contests, he averaged an eighteen p send target share per game. If he can keep up that kind of share, he'll definitely be a worthwhile addition for fantasy teams. That's gonna do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've yet 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. Will be back in your ears tomorrow with the weekly ten Trend Show