305: 15 Transactions for Week 9

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Speaker 1: This is the Label podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa JJ zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ zach Reeson, the editor in chief at fandled at number five dot com And this is episode three hundred and five of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. I'm going to get things wrong on this show. Last week I had Aaron Jones as a cell candidate. Aaron Jones went off in week eight and I look like an idiot. And it's not the first time or the last time that I'm going to look like an idiot when I'm forecasting what's going to happen in fantasy football. This game isn't about being right one hundred percent of the time, and no analysts should package it that way. This is about being right most of the time. It's about being right more than your opponents are right. And when you have a process, which is what I use when evaluating Aaron Jones and his situation, When you have that process, you're going to be right more often than not. You at least can go back and look at why you felt the need to sell a player who ended up going off, and you can ask yourself, did this make sense? I can live with calls that made sense. It's far more tilting for me to see an outcome not go my way when it should have been easily avoided. When I look back at the process and see that the logic behind it all actually was pretty flawed. That's when it's tilting. That's when it sucks. That'll happen a couple of times per season. But the bigger point to make here is that if you're logical, you're winning. So apologies to any of you who ended up selling Aaron Jones last week because of this show, but I do think it was and it still is a situation where the process made a whole lot of sense. Now, before getting into this week's transactions, I want to send you guys another reminder to check out odds Fire. It's a sweet odds comparison tool that number Fire engineers put together, and it allows you to easily see odds across major bookmakers in the regulated US market. I used it a lot for analyzing things like line movement, because that can dictate who to play in my fantasy leagues each week. You can compare odds quickly identify the best value, and even examine first part already FanDuel data all in one place. Never settle, always get the best odds. Check out the experience for free at oddsfire dot com. Gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler sell the New England Patriots defense. So I keep bringing this analogy up on this show. But let's pretend that a friend of yours is running a mile. Your friend runs a five minute mile, but they did it on a track. Would you look at your friend and say, well, that's not that impressive because you didn't run up and down hills when you ran that five minute mile. Of course, not that mile is very very fast, just like the New England Patriots defense is very very good regardless of who they faced. But we have to pay attention to those matchups. Still. Just like someone running a mile on a track would likely do it faster than if they were running up and down hills, New England's defense is likely to not be as good when facing better offenses. Among the seven opponents that they've gone up against, they played the Jets twice, which is why there's only seven. Six of them rank in the top eight, and fantasy points allowed to opposing defenses. Even when you remove the Patriots defense from that equation, since that would skew numbers a bit, those six still rank in the top eleven, and five of them are in the top seven. And if you look at the Patriots' schedule, things are going to be a lot different over the next month. They get the Ravens this week. The Ravens are the sixth worst matchup for defense in Fantasy points against than the Eagles who are seventeenth, the Cowboys who are first, the Texans who are fourteenth, and the Chiefs who should have Patrick Mahomes at that time, who were in second. Those are some tough matchups. So I think it's logical to think that it's unlikely that we're gonna see this new England Patriots defense continue to perform this way. Now, I do want to note for any of you guys who are looking forward to the playoffs and might have a bye week locked in in the fantasy playoffs, in week fifteen and sixteen, the Patriots get Cincinnati and Buffalo, So don't sell the Patriots if you know that you're locked into the playoffs and you're likely to be playing in weeks fifteen and sixteen. You can shop them, and you should shop them just to see what's out there and what people would give you. But do not oh that they're in a very good spot for the Fantasy playoffs. By Leaveon Bell, It's been a rough couple of weeks for that Jets offense, and Le'Veon Bell has suffered as a result. Since Sam Darnold returned from mono, Bell's ranked no higher than RB twenty two and weekly running back scoring, he's only caught five passes. Now, the good news is that things should get better. It was good to see that Bell had a target share above seventeen percent on Sunday, and he's still seeing about eighty six percent of the team's running back rushes. The volume is absolutely there, and that volume should be really worthwhile because New York has a cake walk upcoming schedule. Over the jets next six games, they're gonna face the Dolphins, Giants, Washington, Oakland, Cincinnati, and then the Dolphins again. So not only could the Jets actually see some positive game scripts against these opponents which will help Le'Veon Bell, but five of the six opponents rank as top twelve matchups for a running back from a fantasy points a loud standpoint. Now, I don't expect Le'Veon Bell to see RB one numbers or strong RB one numbers, maybe lower end ones at best, But there are a lot of people out there who are sick and tired of Le'Veon Bell, so I would at least send an offer their way hold David Montgomery. So if you guys listen to the Mailbag episode last week, you're probably not that surprised by this particular transaction. I think in most cases, after a performance like David Montgomery had on Sunday, he would be a cell candidate. But like I mentioned on the Mailbag show, there are some decent matchups upcoming for Chicago, and that includes two games in the Fantasy playoffs where they're going to face the Packers, who are the sixth worst team against fantasy running backs this year, and then the Chiefs, who are fourth worst. So there's at least some reason to hold on to David Montgomery after this big performance. And then not only that, what if these market share numbers actually hold Because on Sunday he had eighty one point eight percent of Chicago's running back rushes and he had a fifteen point one percent target share. If those numbers hold all of a sudden, you have a strong RB two on your roster. Drop Jared Goff. So a few weeks ago on this show, after a really, really bad performance against the forty nine ers, Jared Goff was a hold, and it had everything to do with the schedule because they were facing Atlanta and then Cincinnati and back to back weeks. But now Los Angeles is on a bye you don't need to hold Jared Goff in most leagues through that bye week because we know that Jared Goff can struggle in bad matchups. In most cases, there's no reason to hold on to him. By James White, So it's really tough to find a more consistent PPR running back than James White, at least outside the elite players. On the season, he's finished no worse than RB twenty three and weekly PPR scoring, but he's been no better than RB fourteen. It's nice to have that week in and week out floor. He's been a great flex option. But what's interesting about his profile is that he also hasn't found the end zone that much. He's only scored once. In other words, he's maintaining this fantasy production without getting that boost from scoring, but he should have more touchdowns. He currently has three hundred and fifty eight receiving yards and sixty six rushing yards. Since we know that touchdowns correlate pretty well with yards. Over the last five years, a running back with those totals has scored on average two point two touchdowns. So White's underperforming in the touchdown column when you look at regression from a yards to touchdowns conversion standpoint. Now, if you dig deeper, he definitely should have more touchdowns. Entering last week, James White led the entire NFL in red zone targets. Now after Week eight, he's second in the league, I guess third in the league, beyond Julian Edelman and Mike Evans, and he also has four targets within the opponent's ten yard line. We know he's not going to be the goal line back for New England. He only has one goal line rush this year. But these red zone looks and how James White is being used there there should be better results. And keep in mind, this is all happening while the Patriots have just been steamrolling teams. They've had crazy positive game scripts. I just talked about how their schedule is going to be tougher. If that happens, If there are more neutral game scripts, maybe we see even more James White usage because he's the primary pass catching back. I mean, what happens if New England actually trails in a contest. Now, Rex Burkhead is somewhat of a threat, but we also know that injuries to that backfield can also help boost James White's value. We saw that last season. So I actually think that James White is one of the best lower key trade targets this week in PPR formats ad Dallas Goddard. Even though I've talked about Dallas Goddard on this show over the last few weeks, I still have to talk about him because his ownership percentage hasn't gotten up all that much. Over on sites like Yahoo, things have been trending up a lot for Dallas Goddard of late. He's now seen at least ten percent of Phillies targets in each of his last five games, and he's coming off a game where he played over seventy five percent of the Eagles snaps, which is his highest snapshare of the year. And over the last three weeks, Dallas Goddard has been straight up way better than zach Ertz. He's seen seventeen targets to Ertz his eighteen, and he's more than doubled Ertz's fantasy output. And unlike zach Ertz, Dallas Goddard has a target within the opponent's ten yard line. If you need a tight end, and a lot of you probably do, Dallas Goddard is the one to add sell Kenyan Drake. So on Monday, the Cardinals made a move, kind of a surprising move to send a later round pick to the Dolphins for Kenyan Drake, and everyone who has David Johnson or Chase Edmonds on their fantasy team, they all panicked. We later find out that Chase Edmonds is probably out for a few weeks with his hamstring injury, and we don't know all that much more at the time in this recording about David Johnson. But here's why I'm selling Kenyon Drake. This week they get San Francisco. We know that's a really tough matchup. The following week they get the Buccaneers, another really tough matchup. The Bucks have allowed the fewest rushing yards in the NFL so far this season. After that, they get San Francisco again, and then there's a bye week. So basically that's potentially four weeks of absolute crap for Kenyan Drake, even if he's seeing a ton of volume, even if David Johnson isn't back, And if David Johnson is back, then Drake's volume potential is going to ten. And by the time this bad stretch of weeks and games is over, both David Johnson and Chase Edmonds might be healthy. Add Rashadpenny. So Penny's available in sixty nine percent nice of Yahoo Fantasy leagues right now, and that number should actually be higher. It's not just because he has standalone value. He doesn't have that much standalone value. He only had twenty eight percent of Seattle's running back rushes on Sunday without a target. But it's handcuff season. You should be adding handcuffs right now. But then, on top of that, Ian Rapaport of NFL Network he reported that Rashod Penny could be dealt before the trade deadline. If that happens, all of a sudden, his value is going to rise. By Mike Williams. So as bad as Mike Williams has been this year from a fantasy perspective, his peripheral numbers really aren't that bad. He's seen at least fourteen percent of the Chargers targets in every single game since Week one, and he's seen a target share north of twenty percent in three of his last four games. According to ariyards dot Com, only seven wide receivers have more air yards than Mike Williams this season. He has the highest average depth of target on that Chargers roster. He just hasn't found the end zone this year, which is kind of hilarious because on sixty six targets last year, he had ten touchdowns. He has zero on fifty this year. But his receiving yardage total does tell us that he should have over two and a half more scores than he currently has, So there's positive touchdown regression coming, and if he did have those two to three touchdowns, we might be viewing Mike Williams a little bit differently right now. I do think that things are going to be better through the end of the year for Williams. He's a great bi low candidate, add Josh Reynolds. Brandon Cooks unfortunately suffered another concussion on Sunday that allowed Josh Reynolds to play about eighty nine percent of the Rams offensive snaps and he had a twenty six point seven percent target share. That's really good. Now the Rams are on a buy this week, but that should make Reynolds really easy to get off the waiver wire. Cooks has a concussion history, there's a shot that he misses an extended period of time. But Reynolds is kind of one of the borderline wide receiver ads this week to go along with guys like Chris Conley or Alex Erickson. But I wanted to mention Josh Reynolds specifically because he might be a lot easier to acquire given this bye week. Add Trey Carson. You know, I don't know if you're ever actually going to play Trey Carson in your fantasy lineup in a lot of shallow leagues. You probably never will. But like I always say, this is a game about probability, and there's a chance that Carson ends up seeing a bigger role in Detroit as the season goes on. Because he handled fifty two percent of the Lion's running back rushes on Sunday, though he didn't have a target, and Ty Johnson actually did see more snaps than Trey Carson did, despite the fact that Trey Carson started. But look, he's a running back. It's hard to get running backs who we're seeing any sort of volume. Maybe his role grows. I wouldn't bank on that, so don't go spending a lot of money to get him off the waiver wire. But I do think that he's worth a flyer. Sell Joe Mixon so out of nowhere. This past week, Joe Mixon had a good game, but he still didn't see a big improvement in his involvement in the passing game. He only had an eight point five percent target share, and he still only played fifty point six percent of Cincinnati snaps. His highest snap share over the last three weeks has been just fifty four percent. So I think this is an easy sell. It's a bad offensive situation. His overall usage isn't very good and that's specific to his receiving work, or he's still not seeing a lot of targets in the passing game. So now's the time to sell Joe Mixon. Ad Mitch Trubisky. Trubisky is a streamer. This week, He's rostered in about a quarter of Yahoo leagues and I like his matchup. In Week nine. The Bears are going up against Philadelphia, a team allowing over twenty one fantasy points per game this year. When you exclude quarterbacks from that subset named Luke Falk, they rank thirteenth worst in yards per attempts. They're pretty average in the secondary, and their top ten in pass attempts against. Fandal Sportsbook has the Bears as five point underdogs, so we probably shouldn't expect them to be very run heavy. Now. Pass attempts don't correlate that strongly from a week to week standpoint fantasy output. It's more about efficiency. But with someone like Mitch Trubisky, when he's dropping back to pass more, there's more upside for him to run with the football, there's more upside for scrambles. So I don't mind Mitch Trubisky in this matchup AD Derek Carr. I do think that Carr is the better streaming option compared to Trubisky. He's facing the Lions this week. He's at home, and the contest is a pretty high fifty one and a half point over under according to FanDuel's Sportsbook, and Detroit doesn't have a special secondary they're pretty average according to yards per attempt against. The Lions are also not that great at getting to opposing quarterbacks. They have the sixth worst sack rate and pressure rate in football. So I like Derek Carr this week. Add to Cleveland Browns defense. So the Jets defense is an obvious defensive ad this week because they're facing the Dolphins, but don't ignore Cleveland. Now, the Browns are traveling to Denver, and I usually don't like streaming defenses on the road, but they're gonna be going up against Brandon Allen. Now that Joe Flacco has a herniated disk in his neck and he's gonna be sidelined. Any time that you can get a defense facing a backup, in this case, he's almost like a third stringer, you go for it. So I like Cleveland's d So the sixteenth transaction this week that you can't get in my weekly fifteen Transactions column over on number five is to add a bunch of iffy running backs. I know I already talked about Trey Carson, but there's Raheem mostart if Matt Breida's injury is bad, though Pro Football Doc doesn't seem to be too down on it, but there's mostert. Brian Hill is a deep one, Boston Scott potentially with Miles Sanders injury, and the obvious one is Mark Walton, who I've already talked about on this show, but he's gonna be without Kenyan Drake in the mix moving forward. And how about this one, Darius Geist started practicing. He's back at practice, so he might be an interesting ad right now in order to just be ahead of things, but I wouldn't expect the world from him right away. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got to subscribe 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 for listening everyone. I'll talk to you tomorrow with a ten trend show