698: 10 Trends for Week 8

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Speaker 1: Then this is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zachera Jake zacher reefon what's up everyone, It's jj zach or Esen in this episode six hundred and ninety eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into trends this week, I want to remind you about FanDuel Faceoff. Fandle Faceoff is where you compete in quick, fun games against other real people for real cash. It as all sorts of games that you're familiar with, like homerun Derby, Wheel of Fortune, puzzle and strategy games, and there's more on the way. Contests are action packed and last between two to five minutes, so you can play on your couch, waiting in line during a commercial break, wherever, and on your schedule. Plus, you can practice for free anytime, whether it be head to head, multiplayer or larger tournaments. Fandel Faceoff is something for you plus and most contests you'll be matched against players of similar skill levels. You're never totally overmatched even as a beginner. Face Off is also tied to your Fandel account and wallet, so you can easily use your daily fantasy funds or Sports Winnings in the app. Visit fandle dot Com slash Faceoff or download the Fandle Faceoff app in the app l app Store today to get in the game. Agent location restrictions apply void where prohibited. Seefandle dot Com slash Faceoff hyphen terms for terms and conditions. Damian Harris was back for New England on Monday Night, but in that game it was the Remandre Stevenson Show. The Patriots hit a negative game script and Stevenson was playing third downs for New England, so as the pass catching back, he ended up playing seventy seven percent of New England snaps. He had a twenty nine percent target share in that contest, and he now has a fifteen percent share on the season. This is a great sign for him to at least maintain pretty good fantasy value, even if he does end up seeing less work on the ground and potentially some goal line work. The two players will likely rotate drives in neutral game scripts, with Stevenson coming in as the pass catcher. In that same game was Justin Fields. I mentioned Fields on last week's fifteen Transaction Show as someone to target because the Bears offense had been operating differently Over the last couple of weeks. Leading up to Week seven, they were throwing the ball a little bit more and that was allowing for more scrambles. Fields has just run more in general. Over the last three games. He's averaging eleven point three rush attempts per game during this stretch. Across his first four the number was eight and a half. He's now been a QB one, a top twelve quarterback in three consecutive games. He's got a tough one against Dallas this week, but Field should definitely be rostered, at least for quarterback needy teams. My stans only got stronger after seeing what happened this past week. Now, speaking of mobile quarterbacks, let's talk about Lamar Jackson. From weeks one through three, Jackson ranked eighth, first and first in weekly quarterback scoring. He was averaging over thirty four fantasy points per game. Since then, sover weeks four, five, six, and seven, Jackson hasn't given us a single QB one performance. He's averaging thirteen point seven points per game. So what happened? Well, The Ravens offense just isn't playing as well well. From weeks one to three, they were averaging four offensive touchdowns per game over their last four that's been under two, and how the Ravens have scored touchdowns has changed two I mentioned just last week on this ten Trends episode how I created a new metric that looks at regression in terms of how teams are scoring touchdowns. It takes a team's overall pass rate and it tells us what we should expect from a pass to rush touchdown ratio standpoint. In other words, if a team is running the ball a lot, but they're throwing for a lot of their touchdowns, that metric would show regression. It would tell you what we should expect. Baltimore was on the extreme with a un expected passing touchdown rate metric. They should have been seeing far more of their touchdowns coming via the ground than the air. In weeks one through three, eighty three percent of their touchdowns came from Lamar Jackson's arm, and then the touchdowns that didn't come from his arm, they came from his legs. So the Ravens not only were scoring more, but Jackson was involved in literally every offensive touchdown. Since then, we've seen JK. Dobbins score a rushing touchdown. Kenyan Drake scored one Gus Edwards said two who this past week. Now. I don't think this will maintain to this degree because the Ravens are objectively not this bad offensively, and their schedule isn't that bad moving forward. But this is why we've seen such a shift with Lamar Jackson. Deebo Samuel has run the ball just one point eight times per game since Week three. From weeks one through three that number was five point seven. I'm not sure this is gonna change that much either, because they now have Christian McCaffrey. Last year Deebo splits before his big role change, they weren't dramatically different when looking at fantasy points per game, but his front half splits as mostly just a wide receiver also saw him with an unsustainable target share, meaning going back to that type of role means less production overall, at least from a projection standpoint, and at least compared to how he was performing during the front half of last year. Deebo hasn't really lived up to expectation this year in fantasy football, and I'm not overly optimistic that he will given the CMC deal. He's certainly not a bad player to have on your roster, but he's given fantasy managers just one performance where he's ranked higher than wide receiver nineteen and weekly scoring this season. I've got Travis Etn as an RB one in my rest of season rankings now that James Robinson is gone. In Week seven, Etn played about eighty two percent of Jacksonville's snaps when his previous high was a little over fifty three percent. He saw ninety three percent of Jacksonville's running back rushes on the year. We've had fewer than twenty instances of a running back hitting that high of a running back rush share, and only ten running backs in total have done it. So if you were a patient with Travis Etn, your patience has paid off. We had a new quarterback under center in Washington, and it looks like that was a good thing for Terry McLaurin. In Week seven against the Packers, McLaurin saw twenty five percent target share. That was his highest target share of the season. He scored eighteen PPR points, that was his highest point total of the season. It's almost like getting the ball to your best offensive player can result in production. Taylor Heineke is probably a better solution for McLaurin than Carson Wentz's. Here's a little Tampa Bay backfield update. Rashad White had a forty four percent snap share this past week. He had that little blip against Pittsburgh where he felt at twenty two percent, but White had his highest snapshare of the season this past week against Carolina. White's been pretty good this year. He has a fifty percent success rate that's better than Leonard Fournette's forty five percent, which is also still good for the record. Now, I don't think White just takes Fournette's job this year, but he's someone who needs to be rostered everywhere as a potential by week fillin, maybe a flex play, but he also has upside as a high end handcuff. Remember, folks, Leonard Fournette has never played a full NFL season before This. Next trend is that Brian Robinson saw two targets on Sunday. That might not seem like it's noteworthy, but it actually is the first time that he's seen a target in a game. Robinson still trailed both Antonio Gibson and j D mckissickan routes run this past week, though, so I wouldn't get my hopes up if I had Robinson. He's very much an early down back in that Washington offense, and with Antonio Gibson playing well, it doesn't seem like we should expect that to change. Austin Eckler's crushing it. He's amazing. He's one of the best players in fantasy football. But it's still absolutely wild that Eckler has five rushing touchdowns without a single goal line rush. Sony Michelle still leads that team with two goal line rushes, Eckler still hasn't seen one. Now. The Chargers rank towards the bottom of the league with just thirteen goal line plays run this season, and nine of those thirteen of impasses. But it's still crazy just how good Eckler is in fantasy despite not even seeing goal line work. There's a quarterback change in Indianapolis. Let's hope it forces Michael Pittman to see a freaking down the field target. Pittman has not been that great in fantasy this year, and part of that has to do with how he's being used. After six games played for Pittman, he has just one target that's traveled fifteen or more air yards. None of them, according to Pffstata, has gone over twenty yards. For some perspective, Chris Alave has nineteen fifteen plus airyard targets. He leads the league. Listen to some of the names with more fifteen plus airyard targets this year than Michael Pittman, Andy Isabella, samajp Ryan, Dennis Houston, Isaiah Hodgens. You get the idea. I'm not sure the quarterback change is an upgrade, given there's going to be more mobility under center for the Colts, but let's be honest people, it's been absolutely awful with Matt Ryan. That's it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football 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 LATEROUNDQB. Remember to check out Lateround dot com, join the Patreon, subscribe to the newsletter, all that good stuff. Appreciate you for listening. I will talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly Sleeper Show.