839: 10 Trends for Week 12

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Rod Podcast with your host JJ zacherrethas Jay Jake Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight hundred and thirty nine 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 send another reminder about the Late Round Fantasy Football Patreon. I know the season is getting closer to the finish line, but the patreon has an awesome discord community. There's rest of season rankings in tiers, weekly rankings in tiers, and more. And if you just want something like playoff schedule rankings by team and by position, you can join the five dollars a month tier to get the weekly data dump. That information's in there and that can be a month to month thing, So check it all out by heading to Lateround dot com. From weeks one to eight, Josh Jacobs was averaging a target share per game of seventeen point four percent over his last three which three with Antonio Pierce's head coach, that target share per game has fallen to three point five percent. That's a super significant change. Now, is this noise well? There was also a quarterback change when Pierce took over. It wasn't just the coaching change. Aiden O'Connell has started those three games. Jacobs did see a really healthy target share earlier in the season when O'Connell got that start against the Chargers. But there's definitely some fear here. This is a quarterback tendency thing. Now. The good news that Jacobs is running a very similar number of routes. As a result, I do expect to see better target share numbers moving forward. But because there are a couple of factors that play here, the coaching change, the quarterback change, we have to downgrade Jacobs at least a little bit compared to his workload to start the season. Travis Etn has now averaged seven point seven PPR points per game over his last two During his four games prior to this two game stretch, he was averaging twenty seven point one PPR points per game. This is obviously a small sample size, but I also think it speaks to something I talked to Ben Gretch about on last week's Perspectives episode. According to PFF's Expected Fantasy Points model, Etn actually ranks twelve this season in expected points per game. He's outperformed that mark by two and a half points per contest. He's definitely playing above expectation. Now, I'm not overly concerned about ETN moving forward. Just to be clear, his route participation has dropped a little bit over the last couple of weeks, and they've used Deanest Johnson a little bit more, but they've also had some really weird game scripts. To me, he's still a strong RB one rest of season. When you watch the vikings, if you saw them in week eleven, it was evident that ty Chandler has more bursts than Alexander Madison, and that showed up statistically too. Madison had a thirty three percent success rate against the Broncos, ty Chandler seventy percent. Madison played sixty four percent of Minnesota snaps while Chandler was at thirty percent. That's a problem, and even though Chandler had more targets, Madison ran nineteen routes against the Broncos, Chandler only had five routes run. Madison was used a lot more than ty Chandler, but ty Chandler definitely looked better. This is a classic case where you should just be rostering who you think the more talented running back is. In my opinion, I think ty Chandler still presents a little bit more upside. I think that he's the better back per touch. But Madison's still fine to have rostered. Let's be honest. If they give him a lot of work, they have a favorable schedule, he can still be usable in fantasy football. The biggest thing about Justin Field's return this past week was the fact that he ran the ball eighteen freaking times. That's the most that any quarterback has run in a single game this season, and it's the most that we've seen from a quarterback since Justin Field's hit eighteen rush attempts last November. Now, fourteen of those eighteen rushes, according to PFF were designed runs. If the Bears are going to use him that way rest of season, he's going to be a locked in QB one. And keep in mind that Chicago has a pretty favorable rest of season's schedule. According to what justin Fantasy Points Allowed, Dawson Knox has now been out for four games. In those four games, Dalton Kin Kaid has ranked no worse than tight end seven in weekly PPR scoring He's averaged a twenty five percent target share per game rate, He's averaged over fifteen PPR points per game. He's actually been a tight end seven or better in five straight games. I'm just pointing out the games without Knox. Now, Dawson Knox is not ready to return yet, but even when he's ready, I have a hard time believing that the Bills are just going to revert back to what they were doing before Knox's injury. Kincaid is running a round on significantly more dropbacks these days. That's why we're seeing better numbers. To me, he's a top five tight end rest of season. Now. I didn't have this as a transaction this week because I'm not sure how sustainable it is, but I'll at least call it out right here. Justin Watson was something I mentioned on last week's Sleeper Show. I'm happy about that call because he was pretty good in Fantasy all things considered. Versus expectation. Watson has now seen target hirs of eighteen percent and twenty eight percent over his last two games. His route participation it hasn't been ideal because the Chiefs like to rotate their wide receivers, but he did run the most routes at wide receiver for them on Monday Night. If you want to throw a dart his way, be my guest. He's been seeing work. He has Patrick Mahomes throwing him the ball. My hesitation is that clearly something needs to change with this Kansas City offense, and Watson's also faced a couple of favorable matchups, But Justin Watson's been operating as the Chief's number one wide receiver. I can't believe that I'm saying that. In Week twelve of the twenty twenty three season, Calvin Ridley now has three top ten performances on the season, and his other seven games, his highest finish and weekly PPR scoring is wide receiver twenty eight. Okay, no big deal. Ridley's hit or miss at wide receiver right. Well, in those three games where he's performed really well, those are three of four games when Zay Jones has been active for the Jacks. Is this just a coincidence? I don't think totally. Zay Jones is an actual decent starting wide receiver, Like he can play on the outside far better than any backup wide receiver that Jacksonville has, So his presence can open things up for Calvin Ridley and get him moving around the formation a little bit more and more importantly, it can get Calvin Ridley running more favorable routes. You can look at his route tree from week eleven and see that. Now, do I think these splits are totally sustainable? Is Calvin Ridley some wide receiver one with Jay Jones rest of season? No? I don't think that's the case. I mean, the difference between Ridley with and without Zay Jones is just way too dramatic to simply say that it's all Jay Jones. It's still a small sample sized thing, and matchups come into play here as well, But I don't think it's simply noise. It should at least make you feel a little bit better about Ridley moving forward, as long as Jones is able to stay on the field. I saw a lot of tweets last week saying that Sam Howe was the QB three in fantasy football. I just have to say that we have to normalize points per game. How hasn't had his buy yet. He's played an extra game compared to his competition, or at least a lot of his competition. When looking at points per game, last week, he was more of a low end QB one, and as it currently sits, How's the QB five in total fantasy points scored. But if you look at quarterbacks with eight or more games played, he's the QB eleven in points per game. Now, he's had a great season in fantasy. Don't get me wrong. I brought this up before, though, He's had a pretty easy schedule. According to my adjustin fantasy points allowed numbers, only Carolina quarterbacks, which is kind of crazy. Only Carolina quarterbacks have faced an easier schedule this year than Washington quarterbacks have. How when you adjust for strength of opponent, is more like the QB fourteen in fantasy, which is still great. The only problem is that Washington has arguably the toughest quarterback schedule in the Fantasy playoffs because they get the Rams than the Jets and then the forty nine Ers in weeks fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. Speaking of the Commanders, let's talk about Brian Robinson, who's probably having the quietest fringe RB one season in fantasy football history. Robinson played without Antonio Gibson last week, and his receiving usage changed, not a surprise. He ended up seeing a twenty one point four percent target share according to Fantasy Life's awesome utilization report, which again you can look at yourself for free at fantasylife dot com. But according to that utilization report, Robinson played ninety percent of the long down and distant snaps. He played eighty six percent of Washington's two minute snaps this past week. Those were by far season highs. It wasn't even close. So it just goes to show how important of a factor Antonio Gibson is for Robinson's ceiling. With Gibson active, Robinson's more of a touchdown reliant player who can break a big play to really hit that ceiling. But without Gibson, that ceiling is a lot more achievable. Let's end today's show by talking about the Steelers. Because the Steelers no longer have Matt Canada their offense. People are rightfully excited about Jalen Warren in Fantasy after his back to back top ten performances. He's actually had three top fifteen PPR performances in a row. The problem is that his peripherals really haven't changed that much at all. He's still in that forty to fifty percent snapshare range. He's still in that ten to eighteen percent target share range, and he's still seeing forty to forty eight percent of the team's running back rushes. I don't think that's going to necessarily change without Matt Canada. The most probable outcome here is that things stay relatively the same. But there's at least some hope now because Jalen Warren has absolutely been better than Naji Harris this year for a second straight season. Warren's success rate right now is twelve percentage points higher than Naji Harris's. His expected points added per Kerry is point two five points better. That's absolutely crazy. His rushing yards over expected per carry it's two point one Naji Harris zero point one. Rational, so coaching would put Jalen Warren on the field more so. Let's hope this changing coordinator forces more rational coaching. 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 searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. Angel Fred to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Check out the Instagram account at LATEROUNDFF. And check out the YouTube channel as well, YouTube dot com, slash at LATEROUNDFF. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you later today with the weekly Sleeper Show.