915: 10 Trends for Week 4

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the last with your host, JJ zacheraj Zacher REEF. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode nine and fifteen of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. Before we get into the trends this week, I want to remind you to check out Underdog Fantasy. Underdog is just a great place to play fantasy sports. There's so many different offerings that will definitely fit what you're looking for right now. If you sign up an Underdog, you'll get a nice deposit offer, a free pick that'll help you win some cash, and then also my rest of season rankings. Those rest of season rankings are updated every Tuesday through the end of the season. You get access to all of those updates. Make sure you take advantage of those offers by heading to Underdog Fantasy dot com and signing up. When you do, use promo code Late Round. That's promo code late It feels like we have to start this week with Mark Andrews. He didn't do anything in week three, and by didn't do anything, I mean that he saw one target and he did not catch that target. He ran a route on just thirty five percent of Lamar Jackson's dropacks in weeks one and two. As we know that rat participation was down about ten percentage points year over year. That was a bad sign, but it wasn't a death sentence. Going to a thirty five percent rale participation is absurd, Like, that's really really bad. The only time that Andrews has been that low, basically across his entire career, has been when he's been hurt. Now, John Harbaugh came out and basically said that things will change week by week with this offense. And we can sit here and say, oh, we saw this coming because of his week one usage, but what we saw in week three was legitimately nothing like week one. I would take week one usage from Mark Andrews over Week three usage all day long. You have to at least wonder if there's more going on with Mark Andrews, whether it's the tightrope surgery and recovery or the car accident stuff that happened in August. What we do know is that the only reason he's in our starting lineup is because the rest of the tight end position is absolute trash too, A topic that was brought up on the show recently headed to with Terry McLaurin in this Commander's offense. I mentioned on last week's Mailbag episode how mclaurin's big problem was he just wasn't connecting on his downfield throws. I guess his downfield targets. He had four of them and had traveled ten or more yards. That was good for one hundred and tended air yards. He caught just one of them through two games, for twelve yards. His average at the target had been lower year over year by about three yards, but in week three the Commanders opened things up more. Jade and Daniels had an average at the target of nine point seven, by far a season high, and Terry McLaurin finally converted. It's no coincidence mclaurin's peripherals were actually pretty wild. In week three, he saw an average at the target of almost twenty six yards, but he also still had a twenty six percent target share. It could be the turning point that we needed to see from McLaurin and this offense. And by the way, Jaydeen Daniels super legit Rashee Rice is a good football player. We can all see that. My year two model saw that but we can recognize that while also recognizing that this situation has become a perfect storm for him as a player. Patrick Mahomes currently ranked second to last and twenty plus air yard rate. He's dead last in his percentage of attempts that travel fifteen or more air yards. That's among relevant starters across the league. That helps out a guy like Rashid Rice. He's been a lower a DOT, higher yards after the catch player in the NFL thus far. Rice is a five point two to A DOT this year. That ranks eighty third out of eighty nine wide receivers who have run fifty or more routes. He played that role last year too, and it's a great role for fantasy purposes. Rice is an easy top ten wide receiver for me rest of season. But how we're getting into these numbers strongly due to two high safety looks. It's pretty interesting given how Patrick Mahomes started his career. I always talk about team pass to rush touchdown ratio on this show as the season goes on because it's an easy way to spot regression. Team passed to rush touchdown ratio is just team passing touchdowns versus team rushing touchdowns. The percentage of team touchdowns that came via the pass. Right now, Denver is lowest in the league with a zero percent passing touchdown rate because they haven't thrown a touchdown yet, and then Minnesota, who's historically been a little bit higher under this metric with Kevin O'Connell. They're first at an eighty nine percent rate. That's reflected in Sam Darnold's touchdown rate, which is above ten percent. Expect those teams to meet more in the middle to regress as the season moves on. One player I didn't talk about the fifteen Transactions episode this week was Emmanuel Wilson. He got more run in Week three, partially due to game script, partially due to offensive environment, and partially to give Josh Jacobs a little bit of arrest. Wilson hit a forty one percent running back rush share and a ten and a half percent target share, though, and even though he's on a household name, he's kind of looked the part. According to ext gen stats, Wilson's rushing yards over expected per rush is just point two yards away from Josh jacobs number. They're both in the top twenty in the league. By the way, Wilson has an absurd fifty seven percent success rate, Josh Jacobs at thirty two percent. Now, I'm not saying that he's better than Jacob's because he's not, but he might be a better handcuff than people realize. With Marshawn Lloyd's sidelined, the Anthony Richardson experience has not been fun, and it's for two reasons. First, he's just not throwing the ball well. Richardson is currently last in the league a completion percentage over expected. That's not surprising to anyone who's watched him this year. He's missed some really, really easy throws. He'll make some crazy ones, but he's been wildly inaccurate. Now, that would be fine if the rushing production was there, at least from a fantasy perspective, but it hasn't been there. Richardson only has six scrambles on the season according to PFF for reference, Jane Daniels has seventeen, Lamar Jackson has twelve, Josh Allen has ten, all the while Richardson has eighteen rush attempts. That's twenty fewer than Jade Daniels and it's seventeen fewer than Lamar Jackson. My friend rich reebar at Lord Reeves on Twitter. He tweeted Richardson's seven point three percent scramble rate when pressured is twenty eighth in the NFL since last season. He has a lower scramble rate per pressure to start this year than Aaron Rodgers and Jared Goff. The Colts need to unleash Anthony Richardson more, and until that happens, we're going to see a roller coaster of results. Now, speaking of the Colts, Josh Dowens return to that lineup in Week three and it was bad news for eighty Mon Mitchell. Downs is their primary slot guy Michael Pittman. He's their strong perimeter receiver. So the final receiver spot opposite of Pittman comes down to Alec Pearson eighty Mitchell, and in Week three it was Alec Pierce who won out. Pierce saw a season low eleven percent target chair, but he did run twenty routes. That's the same as Michael Pittman. Josh Downs was at sixteen, Ashton Doolan was at three, and Adnai Mitchell was at two. Now that's subject to change each week, but so far that's bad news for mitchell I had JK. Dobbins as a cell in the fifteen Transaction Show last week, noting that you should only trade him away if you were seeing a big profit on the return because the way he was playing versus Gus Edwards, it was obvious who the better running back is. When that's the case, there's always room for more volume. Now, the fear with Dobbins was that the Chargers just don't want to give him a massive workload for obvious reasons. He hasn't been able to stay healthy throughout his career. But Week three was a really good one for him, even if the production didn't match. Dobbins saw an uptick of about forty percentage points in running back rush share week over week. He had an eighty three percent share. His target share was fifteen point eight percent, which is awesome. Now, the Chargers didn't run the ball quite as much as they did in Week two against Carolina, so that huge running back rush share still resulted in just fifteen rushes. But it's a really good sign. If you were able to profit big on Dobbins last week, that's totally fine. You shouldn't feel upset about that. Hopefully you were able to upgrade into one of the top ten backs. I don't think Dobbins is quite there yet, though my rest of season rankings do like him more than the consensus, but he's now more of a holder a bye. Given the Week three usage, ignore the production. You have to look at the peripherals. I like Tyron and Tracy as a prospect, at least as a Day three running back, and the Giants are starting to use him a little bit more. In Week three. Tracy he hit a season in career high twenty three percent running back rush share, and he had a twenty eight percent snapshare. Devin Singletary hasn't been all that bad, but it's a split worth monitoring. The last trend this week is about the Washington Commander's secondary. So far this year, no pass defense has been more advantageous for opposing wide receivers than Washington's. According to my adjusted Fantasy points allowed numbers, Washington has allowed opposing team wide receivers to score fifteen PPR points per game, more than they've scored another contests. So when a team has faced Washington this year, their wide receivers are scoring fifteen more PPR points per game. It's a small sample, size. Yes, but Washington has now allowed a wide receiver six, eight, three, and two performance already this season in three games. In Week eighteen of last year, they gave up a wide receiver two performance, in Week seventeen, a wide receiver five, and a wide receiver thirteen performance. They've actually surrendered nine top fifteen Wider sci You performances over their last eight games dating back to last year. Marvin Harrison Junior is next. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and doef for it to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, and make sure you're following the Late Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel that's YouTube dot com slash at Lateround FF. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll be back tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.