552: 15 Transactions for Week 4

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Speaker 1: Over the weekend, the fantasy football community learned that Mike Tagliaire passed away after battling COVID. You guys may remember me giving Tags a shout on this podcast about a month and a half ago as he started his fight. It's just a gut punch. It's just really, really sad. I wanted to share something that I wrote about Tags that was used in the introduction of this week's fifteen Transactions article. It gives you a good idea of the man that he was and what he meant to me as someone who got to know him through work over the years. He would always ask about my family first. We could go back and forth about fantasy football for hours if we wanted to, But when I did a show with Tags, the first question he'd ask before we hit record was how's your wife and little girl doing. Mike Tagliaire, Tags understood the importance of having that family foundation. He openly talked about how his wife, Tabby, pushed him to chase after his dream of being a full time fantasy football analyst, how she was the one he owed his success to. I met Tags and Tabby at a conference in Dallas years ago. We had plenty of group conversations that week, but I can remember Tags pulling me aside at one point to talk about his goals. Two things stood out to me during that chat. First, it was clear that he was just a good dude who cared about the right things. He was the classic, I feel like I've known this person for years type of stranger. And it was because he wasn't just interested in learning how I ended up landing a gig in a competitive space at a pretty young age. He wanted to know the why, the who. He wanted more than just a typical story about my resume. That's where we connected. Our mutual love for fantasy football was obvious. But our love for family, our love for our wives, and the endless support they'd given us as we chased one of the strangest career goals imaginable, that's where we really connected. The other thing that showed up during that conversation, well, let me just put it this way. I've talked to a lot of aspiring fantasy football analysts through the years. I've had loads of calls with people who want to analyze fantasy football for a living. One wanted it like Tags, not one. After our initial meeting, in Dallas. I stayed in touch with Tags through social media. We weren't everyday chatters or anything, but we'd hit each other up every now and again to talk about, of course, family and as simple as those check ins sometimes were, I'd love to have another one with him. Tags passed away over the weekend after battling COVID nineteen, and I wish more than anything that I could have thanked him before he left. Even though our chats weren't frequent, we generally knew what the other person was up to, not just because of Facebook and Instagram, where we'd both share more personal, non fantasy football stuff, but because of our jobs, because chronic tweeting is very real for professional and I use that term loosely fantasy football analysts. After that conference, I witnessed Tags become a force. He was determined to have his spot in the fantasy football industry. And he got it. He got it because he had the support of his family. He got it because he was good to others. He got it because he was determined. He was relentless. He was more relentless than anyone who's ever produced fantasy football content. And no that's not hyperbole. It saddens me that I can't just send you this message. It saddens me that I didn't send you this message, But Tags, thank you. Thanks for being so caring and for showing me what hard work looks like within this space. Because of you, when I get an email from someone who's looking to make fantasy football there nine to five, I know exactly what to say. Have a foundation at home, work harder than everyone else, be yourself, be Tags. This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa, jj zacher Reason. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandled and number fire dot com. And this is episode five hundred and fifty two of the Late Round podcast on many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the transactions this week, I wanted to send another reminder about the FanDuel NFL High Low, which is a free to play fantasy football contest. All you have to do is build your scorecard with the teams you think will score highest and lowest in four stack categories. The closer yard of being spot on, the more points you'll get. Players with the most points each week split the prize pool, and a perfect scorecard will win the jackpot. Head over to fandle dot com today and play the FanDuel High Low for free. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the fandel app for more details. By Stefan Diggs, Josh Allen finally brought it all together in Week three. Over the first two weeks of the season, Allen failed to reach three hundred yards in a single game with a yards pert tempt rate south of five point five. Against Washington, that all changed. He threw for three hundred and fifty eight passing yards and he had four touchdowns. So obviously Stefan Diggs went off right. Not exactly. Diggs has yet to finish as anything more than a weekly wide receiver three so far this year, but there's plenty of reason to be optimistic. His target share is a solid twenty six and a half percent. Now, that's lower than the twenty nine point two percent share that he had last year, but let's not pretend that a twenty six point five percent target share is easy to acquire. That we see that all the time. We just haven't seen the Allen Diggs combination hit on many deep balls this year. On the year, Stefan Diggs has seen eight targets that have traveled fifteen or more air yards. Only seven players across the league have more of those types of targets. While players like Marquise Brown or DeVante Adams, while they've connected on a handful of those looks, Diggs has one catch on those eight targets through Week three. Last season, Diggs had seven deep ball targets, so one fewer than this year. He caught all of them. Now, for the record, Diggs ended twenty twenty with a fifty percent catch rate on those types of time throws, so he did regress after the first three weeks, But one catch on eight deep ball targets is not going to continue. That's not gonna last, and considering his high target share, that makes him an obvious buy. Ad Chewba Hubbard. The biggest waiver wire add this week is probably Chewba Hubbard. He's gonna likely be the lead back while Christian McCaffrey recovers from this hamstring injury. Now, what we know about this injury with CMC is that he's likely to be sidelined for a few weeks. That's what they're telling us, But it is encouraging that Caroline is not putting him on the injured reserve. Reading between the lines, that tells me that there's a chance that we see McCaffrey back before three weeks is up, and research from Fantasy points Edwin Polross seems to back that stance. So in turn, I don't think that you need to go super hard and getting Chewba Hubbard this week off the waiver wire, like, yes, you should try to get him, don't get me wrong. And maybe this injury lingers, but I've seen people talk about spending eighty percent of their FOB to get Chewba Hubbard. I'm not into that. But he is the guy that you would want in relief. Last Thursday, he ended up playing almost four times a number of snaps as Royce Freeman, who's also in that backfield. He out touched Freeman eleven to five on the ground and he saw five targets to Freeman's won. So Chuba Hubbard is the ad this week. You should try to gain him, just don't go overboard ad Rashad Bateman. Now, the landing spot wasn't ideal for Bateman. But he was one of the best prospects in the twenty twenty one wide receiver class. He checked in with a ninety six percentile rating in My prospect model. That was behind only Jamar Chase and DeVante Smith, and he was tied with Elijah Moore. Bateman's been out since having core muscle surgery in August, and Raven's head coach John Harbaugh, when talking about Bateman's possible return last week, he said, we'll see. Now, that's not the greatest quote in the world, but he's not sitting there saying no. Bateman's not going to play for a month. Baltimore has still been a run heavy team this season. They've had more rush attempts than pass attempts. But Bateman's got a shot to grow into the top roll at wide receiver there, and that would be a valuable piece to a fantasy football roster, even if that team isn't throwing a ton Sell Kirk Cousins, So, I talk about this a lot on this podcast, but when it comes to pocket passers, there are a few ways to see if their performances are sustainable or if they're not. One thing to always look at is touchdown rate. The number of touchdowns divided by the number of attempts that a quarterback has thrown so far this season, Kirk Cousins, who has given US three QB one performances, he has a six point seven percent touchdown rate. Now, that's higher than normal, and it's also higher than his career average of five point two percent, but it's right in line with what he did last season at least, So let's push a side touchdown rate. Next, take a look at how many yards a passer is thrown for versus the number of touchdowns that he's thrown for, a yards per touchdown conversion that can tell you if a player is over or under succeeding in the touchdown column. Over the last ten years, quarterbacks have thrown a touchdown for about every one hundred and sixty one passing yards. This season, that numbers like one hundred and sixty point four, so it's very close. Cousins has thrown a touchdown on every one hundred and fourteen point eight passing yards. Now, finally, the third thing, take a look at how teams are scoring their touchdowns. Good quarterbacks don't just score touchdowns themselves. Their offense scores touchdowns they're able to manage drives and convert those drives into scores. That's why we should always look beyond the number of passing touchdowns that a player has, because if a quarterback has like ten passing touchdowns, let's say, and the offense has scored eleven touchdowns, then chances aren't moving forward. A lot of those touchdowns will eventually become rushing touchdowns. That's how math and regression works. On the season, Minnesota's offense has been good. They found the end zone nine times in three games, which is above the league's average. Of those nine touchdowns, eight of them have come from Kirk Cousins arm that's a pass to rush touchdown ratio of eight. During the seven completed seasons the Vikings have had Mike Zimmer, their average pass to rush touchdown ratio has been one point eight. They're high has been three point three. Since twenty eleven, we've actually only had two instances where a team had a pass to rush touchdown ratio of eight or above. So, to put this all another way, the Vikings probably aren't going to continue throwing for touchdowns at the rate that they're throwing them. That makes Cousins, who's someone who's fine. He could probably squeak in and finishes a low ENQB one maybe, but he's not someone who's gonna maintain this type of production. That's why he's a sell ad JJ Taylor. So James White was carted off the field on Sunday with a hip injury. As a result, veteran Brandon Bolden was the player who benefited the most from that injury. He ended up playing roughly forty six percent of New England snaps in a negative game script. He had a twenty seven point three percent running back rush share. Damian Harris was still getting some love, but he also had a seven point eight percent target share. So why am I talking about AJ Taylor as an AD this week? Well, aside from his elite first name, we know what James White's role is. In weeks one and two, he had target shairs of eighteen point four percent and twenty one point four percent. He's their pass catching back and Brandon Bolden stepped in and filled that role for New England. But my guess, and again this is just a guess. This is the New England backfield we're talking about, But my guess is that Bolden played that part in the offense because of his experience. JJ Taylor is a small, shifty running back who entered the league last year with a really good receiving profile. His best season reception share in college was well above the average in my model, and according to Player Profiler, he had an eighty fifth percentile target share in school. So he's my pick to fill the James White role. As we know, anything can happen with the new England backfield. But I think that he's a logical ad hold Justin Fields. And also I'm holding this l because one of my biggest misses in Week three was Justin Fields. Not only did Fields not do a whole lot in the fantasy points scored column, but he didn't do the one thing that Justin Fields is supposed to do. He didn't run the football. And yeah, sure, it was an ineffective offense and that led to fewer plays and that naturally limited Fields as touch ceiling. But three rushes three, what is Matt Naggey doing. If you're in any sort of typical twelve team league, now's not the time to give up on Justin Fields. We've seen the rushing upside in the preseason, and even when he entered for Andy Dalton last week. To assume that this is the norm, that would be taking a small sample too far in my opinion, especially when you consider the Bears offensive line Wes matching up against the Browns front. Now Fields is now banged up with a hand injury, so monitor that as the week progresses. Otherwise, keep in mind that better days should be ahead, especially if he can go this week in a plus matchup against the Lions and Hunter Renfro. So two things are happening for Hunter Renfro right now. The first is that Derek Carr is bawling out. Through three games, Car had by far the most passing yards, and he's thrown at fifteen or more air yards more than any other quarterback. And Renfro is benefiting from playing in this effective Raiders offense even he's getting in on the deep ball action. He has four targets of fifteen plus air yards this year. He had eleven of those throughout the entire twenty twenty season. Renfro's also got a seventeen percent target share so far this year in that offense. In twenty twenty that share was under fifteen percent. The Vegas passing attack is cooking right now. We shouldn't just ignore players in that offense who are seeing a decent chunk of the work there, especially in PPR formats. Renfro makes is a very safe ad this week by Joe Mixon. I know Joe Mixon has burned you. He's ruined your fantasy football season in the past. Every single person seems like they have a Joe Mixon story, and that overall sentiment is why going after Joe Mixon in a trade is not a bad idea. Through three weeks, Mixon ranks third in running back rush, are behind only Drek Henry and Naji Harris, and he's in the top thirty in target share at the position. The target numbers have declined since Week one, where he saw a fifteen point four percent target share, and in week three we saw his backfield teammates Chris Evans and samaj p Ryan. They stole some looks through the air. I'm not trying to deny that or sweep that under the rug. It's sitting there. It's the elephant in the room. But last week was also the first game where the Bengals had a pretty clear positive game script, and it was the only game this year where Mixon didn't dominate routes run at the position. Now, could this be the start of a trend, one where we see Mixon revert back to his old, veteran non PPR self. That's definitely a possibility. This could also just be somewhat related to game circumstance. At the very least, we know that Joe Mixon is going to see a lot of groundwork. I just said that he has one of the highest running back rush sharers in football right now, and that should come in handy as the season progresses. Because the Bengals have scored the vast majority of their touchdowns this year through the air. Seven of their eight touchdowns have come from Joe Burrow. Like I talked about with Kirk Cousins, that kind of thing does not continue. They're not gonna finish the season more than likely with a seven past rush touchdown ratio. And in two of their next three games, the Bengals get the Jags and the Lions. Those are two very good games for Joe Mixon. I don't think that you should break the bank to get mix in, but I think that he is a bye right now because we know how people view Joe Mixon in fantasy football, and he's put together back to back mediocre performances. I think he's gonna be fine, though. Ad Emmanuel Sanders. No player has been talked about more in season this year for me than Emmanuel Sanders. He's been on like every single Late Round podcast and finally finally I got it right. I've been waiting for this game and it finally happened. I've been talking about him so much on the show because of his peripherals. He now has a sixteen and a half percent target share in that Buffalo offense, and that's after he had six targets for ninety four yards and two touchdowns this past week. Seven of his twenty targets this year have gone fifteen or more air yards, and according to Pro Football Focus, he has an averaged up the target of eighteen point five Among the seventy five plus wide receivers with ten or more targets this year, that a dot is fourth highest. Josh Allen's deep ball, his intermediate ball, it got a little bit better in Week three. That was bound to happen. I talked about that last week. Sanders is going to benefit from that throughout the season. He's still rostered in too few of leagues, add Peyton Barber. You know, it's funny how the fantasy football world works. Sometimes we get Josh Jacobs out. In Week two against Pittsburgh. In that contest, Peyton Barber saw sixty five percent of Vegas's running back rushes. Meanwhile, his percent rostered barely changed on Yahoo from week two to week three it went up a little bit, but today, entering week four, it's still just seven percent. And I get it. We all understand why no one was racing to the waiver wire to get Peyton Barber. We were asking ourselves, are the raiders actually? For real? Would Barber get any receiving work if Josh Jacobs is out again? So what's the point? Well, in week three, Barber had seventy two percent of Vegas's running back rushes. He turned that share into twenty three carries. He scored on the ground, and he had five targets for thirty one yards through the air. He had nearly identical receiving numbers as Kenyan Drake, and evidently, according to John Gruden, he put Peyton Barber on the field instead of Kenyan Drake because Drake missed a pass blocking assignment that allowed Barber to get more love through the air. Now we might not know We probably won't know Josh Jacob's status when we have to go put in waivers this week. That's why you have to just add Peyton Barber sell James Robinson. So last week I talked about James Robinson as a hold because we had seen his running back rush hair jump from week one to week two, and his target shair still looked pretty solid. It was just tough to go buy him because, as we know, this offense is just tough to trust right now. But now we have a cell window, so let's take advantage of it. Week three was really good for James Robinson. He finishes a top five running back in Fantasy. He found the end zone, he caught all six of his targets, he had forty six yards receiving, and his touch numbers were not bad at all. He had a sixty five point two percent running back rush share and he had an eighteen point eight percent target share. The reason we're selling him this week is because I don't want to deal with this anymore. If I had James Robinson, I wouldn't want to deal with this. Robinson had good usage against the Cardinals, and it was a relatively decent game script when you give it the context that Jacksonville's playing in that game. But Robinson actually had his lowest snapshare of the season on Sunday, and even though he had six targets to Carlos Hide zero, Robinson only ran five more routes than Carlos Hide did. So you've got the opportunity right now to sell Robinson instead of dealing with the potential every week headache on the Urban Meyer train, It's probably just easiest to sell Robinson high by Michael Pittman. You know, when we target players to trade for in fantasy football, sometimes we have to realize that what we value isn't what other people value, And I think Michael Pittman's a good example of this. He scored twenty point three and thirteen point three PPR points across the last two weeks. During those games, his target shairs have been thirty five point three percent and thirty three point three percent. Those are elite target shairs. But if you asked a casual fantasy football manager what they thought about Michael Pittman, they would probably just shrug. They probably don't have any opinion about Michael Pittman. So the performance doesn't match the overall attitude towards Pittman. So given that he's seeing these really good target shairs and his output hasn't been totally crazy because he hasn't found the end zone and those touchdowns should come, he makes for a strong buy this week. AD Evan Ingram. So entering week three, Kenny Galladay was iffy for the Giants. He did end up playing, but his snapshare was probably a little bit higher because of injuries to Sterling Shepherd and Darius Slayton. The Giants pass catchers are banged up, so there's actually some opportunity for Evan Ingram. He made his twenty twenty one debut in week three. He ended up seeing over seventeen percent of the Giants targets. He didn't do a whole lot with them, but he's someone who should be on your radar this week because the tight end position sucks. Let's be honest. If the Giants are banged up and Evan Ingram's not, which is kind of shocking, he could see some volume. AD Curtis Samuel. You know, at one point there was optimism that Curtis Samuel was going to be able to play in Week one, but then he was put on ir to start the year. But he's eligible, just like Rashaw Bateman, to return in Week four, and just like Rashad Bateman, we're sort of in a wait and see mode. What we do know about this Washington offense, though, is that a number two pass catching option has not emerged. Terry McLaurin has a twenty eight point four percent target shair this year, but Logan Thomas is at fifteen point nine per Adam Humphries, who's second highest at wide receivers also at fifteen point nine percent. We've seen Curtis Samuel be relevant and fantasy football in the past, so why not throw that dart. He's still out there in sixty six percent of Yahoo leagues. Add the Tennessee Titans defense. There are actually a decent number of defensive streamers this week. You can go with the Bears, maybe the Dolphins, maybe even the Packers against Pittsburgh, but there's one unit that should be available in a lot of your leagues, and that's Tennessee. You'll be shocked to learn this, but the Jets, the Titans opponent this week, They're the most attractive team for a defense to face when looking at adjusted fantasy points allowed. They're allowing five sacks and two point three interceptions per contest, and they've scored a grand total of two touchdowns so far this year. Tennessee is seven and a half point road favorite. Should be fine as a streaming option. The sixteenth transaction this week that you can't get in my fifteen transactions call him overrun Number fire dot Com. It's another buffalo bill. It's to add Dawson Knock. I liked Dawson Knox entering the year. He fit a lot of the criteria that I found to be helpful when spotting breakout tight ends, namely the fact that he was playing with a top five quarterback. Knox, though, has seen two straight tight end one performances in a double digit percentage target share in each one of those games. And what's great is that we're seeing him run more and more routes. In Week one, Knox was running less than half the routes that Digs Beasley and Emmanuel Sanders were running. In Week two, he was right in line with them in Week three, same deal. Over the last two weeks, Dawson Knox has run more routes than Cole Beasley and just five fewer than Stefan Diggs. If that continues, then he's gonna keep seeing more work in this offense, and since tight end is a tough position to nail down, I think he makes sense off the wire this week. That's going to do for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and never follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow