846: 10 Trends for Week 14

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the lad podcast with your host JJ zacher rethas j J Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode eight hundred and forty six of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before we getting into the trends this week, I want to remind you about the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. The patreon's a place to get all sorts of rankings and tiers, along with livestream q and as with yours, truly data dumps, a great discord community, and more. There are two tiers of the patreon, a five dollars a month one and a ten dollars a month one, and you can join month to month. As I always say, I'm not trying to take all your money. I'm just trying to make a living. You can learn more about it over on Lateround dot com. Entering Week thirteen, Joe Mixon's lowest running back rush here of the season came all the way back in Week one, where he saw seventy six and a half percent since nineties running back rushes against the Jags on Monday Night, though that number fell to sixty seven point nine percent. His average entering that game was ninety one and a half percent. But the Bengals started using rookie Chase Brown more. Brown had a season high thirty two percent running back rush here. Now, it's good that the Bengals offense looks strong in Jacksonville because it's gonna give Joe Mixon more scoring opportunities. But between the tough Fantasy playoff schedule and this Chase Brown usage, Mixon, to me is still more of a cell than a buye. Another backfield ship this week came for Carolina, and I think that's noteworthy because it was the Panthers' first game without Frank Reich this season. Chuba Hubbard ended up seeing seventy three and a half percent of the Panthers' running back rushes against the Bucks. During his two previous games, that number was about forty eight percent. So the Panthers used Hubbard more on the ground and that's great, But he didn't see a single target and he ran a route on about thirty four percent of care aline is dropbacks. Now, to be fair, that route participation, it was pretty consistent with what he's been seeing with Miles Sanders in the lineup. So we should expect at least a slight bump and target share moving forward. Hubbard was productive last week. I'd expect him to continue being the one A in that backfield with that new coaching staff. He was a Week thirteen winner. Mitch Trubisky is now starting for the Steelers. That might not be a bad thing for Deontay Johnson. Trubisky started five games for Pittsburgh last season. In those games, Johnson averaged a target share per game rate of thirty two point two percent. His PPR points per game output was thirteen point four out of that split. So without Mitch Trubisky, Johnson's target share went from thirty two percent to twenty five and a half percent. His points per game went from thirteen point four to nine point five. That's something to keep at least an eye on. As Kenny Pickett heels, Austin Eckler has not been good in fantasy football. He scored seven, nine point four and four point seven PPR points over his last three His lowest PPR total last season it was nine and that happened in Week eighteen when fantasy football didn't even matter. So what's going on? How concerned should Austin Eckler managers be well, we know that players coming off high ankle sprains, they'll often see a dip in production rest of season, and I do think that Eckler's looked a little bit worse this season than last just when you watch him. But it's not like every performance has been like this. In twenty twenty three, he had a three game stretch from Week eight through Week ten where he scored twenty three to twenty one and twenty two PPR points. His peripherals really haven't been dramatically different of late. They were a little bit worse than Week thirteen because of the weird game script they played in His route participation was at a season low forty three percent, But I'm not overly concerned about his usage. I really think that when you look at recent performance, some of this has to do with the fact that they faced Baltimore that was a tough opponent, and then, like I said, they had a weird game against New England. The offense didn't really have to do that much. I'm still more on the by side than the cell side with Austin Eckler. To close out the season, they get Denver, Vegas Buffalo and then Denver. Again, those are some nice matchups. Overall, he may not have the same burst, but he can still be viable in fantasy football. Travis Kelsey has been fine when compared to other tight ends this season, but he hasn't been his usual dominan itself. He hasn't hit sixteen PPR points in a game since Week seven. That's five straight games maxing out at about fifteen PPR points. Kelsey's averaging two fewer PPR points per game year over year. We knew that some regression was gonna come, so it's not that big of a surprise. But I think the tough part right now is that Kelsey's production has just been trending downward. It's not like we've seen the elite Kelsey every other week. We've just seen this mid range tight end one week in and week out. I wish I he had some sincere answer for you, aside from the fact that he's just not seeing the same volume as he did a year ago or even earlier this year, which is likely the result of the Chiefs having such bad options across the offense. Defenses can really hone in on Travis Kelcey. His target share per game rate is just twenty percent over the stretch of bad games. That was closer to twenty seven percent to start the year. Last season, his target chair per game rate was twenty five percent. Now, I'd imagine the Chiefs are going to try to force things more with Kelsey moving forward, but the entire offense is struggling. It's hard to imagine Kelsey as the dominant force that he was last year. At least, Kansas City's rest of season tight end schedules eleventh best according to adjustin Fantasy points allowed. Now, speaking of Kansas City, I feel like I've talked about Rashi Rice a thousand times in the ten Trends episode this year, but here I go again. Rice has now seen a thirty percent target share in back to back games. According to Next Gen Stats routes data. His RALE participation in Week thirteen it was a season high seventy two percent. So it's good that things are trending up. His rale participation is getting a little bit better. Just a little bit better, because seventy two percent is still not that great. It's not very high for a number one wide receiver. The Chiefs are still rotating their wideouts. They need to stop this. They need to change something on offense, and I think that Rashi Rice could be that change. So definitely still hold on to him, and I do think that there's still a ceiling rest of season now. Another backfield that saw some movement in Week thirteen was Houston's. Even with Damian Pierce back. In Week twelve, Devin Singletary played eighty two percent of Houston's snaps and he saw season high nineteen percent target share. He ran a route on eighty percent of the Texans dropbacks. This past week, his rale participation was cut by more than half. His running back rush are dropped by almost twenty percentage points, his target share was just three point eight percent. This isn't just some committee backfield where we know one guy is gonna get like sixty percent of the team's backfield touches and another guy is gonna get the remaining forty percent, like what we've seen with the Patriots this season. That's predictable. Obviously, 'mandre Stevenson's out now, but how they deployed their running backs was fairly predictable. This is a backfield, this Houston backfield, where it looks like it's going to be incredibly difficult to predict usage week in and week out, and that lowers the value for both Devin Singletary and Damian Pierce. It was a fun four weeks for Devin Singletary, but he's now one of those I like him more and best ball type of players. I mentioned the utilization report over on fantasylife dot Com all the time on this show because it's free and I want people to dig into this stuff themselves. It's fun to get your hands dirty and do some analysis. But that utilization report also as a team section. It's not just for players, and there's something interesting to know with Pittsburgh. As we know, Matt Cannon has been gone for two games. In those two games, the Steelers are playing at what the utilization report dubs as a slow pace. They only had one slow paced game with Matt Canada calling things now. On top of that, their dropbacks over expected have been minus seven percent and minus thirteen percent. They're running the ball in situations where most teams throw it at a way higher than normal rate. Basically, what I'm saying is overall in order to get a real offensive overhaul for fantasy with the Pittsburgh Steelers, this team's gonna have to change personnel, not just the coaches. On last week's Mailbag episode, I was asked about which quarterback could essentially be a league winner this year, and I named two of them. The first was Justin Field, who I talked about again on yesterday's fifteen Transactions episode, and then there was Brock Perdy. Perdy then had a great game against Philadelphia, as we saw. Now, I'm not bringing that up to pat myself on the back. I'm bringing it up because my answer was dictated by schedule, by opponent. Perdy face Philly. Philly has been a great matchup for quarterbacks this year, and adjusted Fantasy points allowed, he scored twenty nine and a half standard points. Perdy has now faced four top ten opponents by Justin Fantasy points allowed this year. He's averaged over twenty three fantasy points per game in those contests, and like I said last week, he gets the Cardinals and the Commanders and the Fantasy Football playoffs. He does get Baltimore in the middle of those two, but Arizona and Washington are both top seven matchups or quarterbacks by Justin Fantasy points allowed based on our sample this year, that should lead us to believe that brock Perty can easily be a QB one in those matchups. The last trend this week is about the Cleveland Browns backfield. Jerome Ford's fantasy total. It was fine in Week fourteen because he had a receiving touchdown, but his usage really plummeted. Ford ended that game with a thirty nine percent running back rush here that was his low since he was hurt back in Week eight. His seven point three percent target share was also a concern because he ran a route on just thirty nine percent of Cleveland's dropbacks. He's now had a sub forty percent rout participation in two of his last three. He was well above that mark in his two games prior to this stretch, so I definitely have some concerns. The Browns used more Pierre Strong in Week thirteen. He had a fourteen percent snap share. That was his highest snapshare in over a month. It's a small difference, but when you have a player like Ford who's sort of a part time player to begin with, all of those touches matter. Let's not overreact, but let's recognize that Week thirteen was different for this Cleveland Browns backfield. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by starting for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, the Late Round Fantasy Football Instagram account at Late Round DEFF, and the YouTube channel YouTube dot com slash at late Round FF. Thanks for listening to everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Sleeper Show