436: 10 Trends for Week 8

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zacherwatha Jay Jake zacherwethon What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyese and the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode four hundred and thirty six of the Late Round podcast on the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. I record the fifteen Transaction show on Monday. I wait until the Monday night game is over. I make sure everything looks good, and then it gets published on Tuesday morning. Naturally, news is going to happen after that thing gets published, Like on Tuesday when it was announced that Chris Godwin was gonna miss week eight with a finger injury because of Mike Evans splits with and without Chris Godwin. I think it makes sense for Evans to be more of a hold now than a cell because you're selling him so low. Hopefully you can get a good outing from him here in Week eight. It's fine to field offers. You should always field offers, and you might see a good bit of James Bradbury in that Week eight game. I just wanted to call out that he's not as obvious of a sell anymore. But anyway, before getting into the trends this week, I want to let you know that Fandel's Sportsbook is giving you a chance to bet on Week eight of the NFL season risk free with their exclusive same game parlays. Simply place a three leg or more parlay on any NFL Week eight game to be eligible for the offer, and then follow along as the game unfolds. If you don't win your bet, Fanda will refund your bet up to ten dollars in site credit. What do you have to lose? You must be twenty one years or older. In president New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, West Virginia, Indiana, Colorado, and Iowa. Refund issued is non withdrawable site credit that expires in seven days. Max refund ten dollars. Terms apply. Gambling problem called one hundred gambler, and West Virginia visit one hundred gambler dot net, and Indiana call one hundred and nine with it. In Colorado call one hundred five to two two forty seven hundred, and in Iowa call one one hundred bets off without Chris Thompson. On Sunday, James Robinson saw a target share of twenty five percent. Other Jacksonville running back saw target in that game, and in addition to that, no other running back saw a carry. Robinson now has a running back rush share of ninety four point seven percent on the season. Not only is that the highest mark in the NFL, but the player who's in second, Derrick Henry, he has a significantly lower share at eighty five point six percent. And by the way, the data that I use for this goes back to twenty eleven, but since that point in time, no one has had this high of a running back rush share, not one running back. The highest that we've seen since then before this year was from Christian McCaffrey last year at ninety one point one percent. So what James Robinson is doing is borderline historic. Let's just hope the Jags don't hurt his fantasy value by making a quarterback change. From weeks three through five, AJ Green averaged a ten point seven percent target share per game, hitting a low three and a half percent target share in Week five. But since that point, so over the last two weeks, Green has seen target shares of twenty eight point two percent and twenty seven point seven percent. He had fairly high shares in weeks one and two at twenty six percent twenty two percent, but the production didn't match. Over the last two weeks, Greens averaged a solid sixteen point four PPR points per game. Like most fantasy analysts, I've been everywhere with aj Green this year. I didn't target him in drafts. I then called him a buy or a hold based on his peripherals earlier in the season, and then I called him a drop after that three percent target chair game in shallower leagues. Right now, honestly, I'd probably just see if I could swap some bench pieces for him, because there's always the chance that he's just gonna get back into a rhythm, and he's also getting used to Joe Burrow. He's definitely one of those guys who I would not be trading a starter for, though, But things are at least trending up. As you guys know. You can quickly look at a yards to touchdowns conversion to spot players who were over and underperforming in the touchdown column based on their yards. Of course, there's more context that's needed, but it's a quick and dirty way to see if a player is playing out of his mind or if he's not. Based on how many yards quarterbacks have needed per touchdown since twenty eleven, the player who's exceeding expectation most this year, it's unsurprisingly Russell Wilson, but the player in second is Baker Mayfield. It makes sense when you look at his touchdown rate this year, it's seven point six percent. It was five point six percent his rookie year and just four point one percent last year. If Baker is going to sustain this touchdown throwing pace, he's gonna have to up that yardage total and he's gonna have to throw the ball more. The Browns do have a really favorable schedule upcoming, so maybe he's gonna be able to do that, but we shouldn't expect this current pace. Trend Four is that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers have targeted their wide receivers on just a little over forty eight percent of their targeted attempts this year. They're one of three teams with a wide receiver target hear below fifty percent, the other two being Las Vegas and San Francisco. This should change a little bit with Antonio Brown in the mix, but it's still pretty wild and it's honestly slightly annoying. The are just spreading the ball around a lot. You would think that number would be higher with Godwin and Evans, even with the context that Godwin has missed some time, but things are definitely different with Tom Brady under center. Deebo Samuel currently has an average depth of target of just two and a half yards. Last season, that A dot was seven point six yards. It's sort of good that he's being used behind the line has scrimmaged so much because it means they're wanting to get him the ball, and it also means that matchups probably matter a little bit less. But you still would like to see more down the field work because that's how we score points in chunks in fantasy football. He's banged up right now with a hamstring injury, but the A dot seem necessary to call out today. In Zach Moss's Week six return, he had a third of the team's running back rushes, while Devin Singletary had two thirds in Week seven. So this past week, Moss's running back rush here jumped to forty seven percent, with Singletary at fifty three percent. So this trend is just note that we're seeing more of a split backfield again, and we know that is the better candidate for goal line work. Really though, all this means is that both players are going to be obnoxious in fantasy football. But I should note Buffalo has a pass to rush touchdown ratio of four point zero, meaning they've thrown for four times the amount of touchdowns and they've run for. That's a number that's third highest in the league, and it's also a number that's likely to regress. Another backfield that looked a little bit different in Week seven was Tampa Bay's Leonard Fournette was back and he handled over forty five percent of the team's running back rushes and more importantly, over seventeen percent of the team's targets. Ronald Jones had just a five percent target share to go along with a fifty four percent running back rush share. Ronald Jones was not the third down back that's been the case for a lot of the year given his struggles as a receiver, But with a more capable and total runner back in the backfield, which is Leonard Fournette, the Tampa Bay situation has become a mess. With Austin Hooper's sideline in Week seven, Harrison. Bryant played seventy seven percent Cleveland snaps to David and Joku's sixty percent, and he also ran five more routes. Heading into the game, I tweeted about how Bryant was technically running ahead of in Djoku and slightly preferred him as a result, But this game, since Hooper wasn't in, it makes it pretty clear that Bryant is ahead of Djoku right now. Hooper could be out again this week, which would make Bryant a good streaming play once again. According to Pro Football Focus is data, Joe Burrow is tied for the league lead with Russell Wilson in end zone targets or targets that land in the end zone. Digging into that more, he's only converted five of those twenty seven attempts. That gives him the second worst conversion rate on those throws, ahead of only Drew Locke. Meanwhile, his yards to touchdown conversion shows that he's underperforming in the touchdown column, and his three point one percent touchdown rate is very very low. All of this is to say that Joe Burrow is a regression candidate. Be prepared for better efficiency. The final trend this week is that the New England Patriots are currently the toughest matchup for opposing quarterbacks. When looking at adjusted fantasy points allowed, team quarterbacks against New England have scored about five point seven fewer points than their season long averages. Now, keep in mind, the Patriots ranked fourth best when you don't adjust for strength of opponent. What may be surprising is who's in second. It's Carolina. The Panthers are the fifth toughest opponent and just regular points allowed, but when you adjust for opponent they get even better. That's because they face Derek Carr, Tom Brady, Justin Herbert, Matt Ryan, Kyler, Murray, Andrew Brees. Carr, Brady, Herbert, and Ryan each ranked twentieth or worse and weekly scoring against the Panthers. This isn't just the product of the few pass attempts either. We know that you can run on Carolina, but they're allowing the lowest yards per attempt rate in the entire league. It's pretty impressive given the personnel that they're working with there. Now. I don't think it continues at this rate, but it's not a cakewalk matchup for quarterbacks this year. I think Thursday Night is gonna be pretty telling with Matt Ryan in a healthy Julio Jones facing off against them. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and as always, don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow