935: 10 Trends for Week 9

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Speaker 1: This is the Late with your host JJ Zachera JJ zacher reefon what's up everyone? It's JJ Zachary's saying in this episode nine and thirty five of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog, Thanks for tuning in. Even though you drafted your fantasy teams back in August, you can still do snake drafts right now over on Underdog. Just head to Underdog Fantasy dot com or download the Underdog app. In the draft section, click NFL and you'll see tons of drafts that you can participate in right now. And if you're new to Underdog, make sure you sign up with promo code Late Round. That'll get you a nice deposit bonus as well as my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are updated for you each Tuesday once you get the link to them, but to get them you have to sign up use promo code Late Round, make a deposit, and start playing. Now, let's get to these ten trends now. I of course at the start today's show by talking about my guy Tyrone Tracy. Tracy missed the end of their game against the Steelers because of a concussion, but even still he finished the day with a ninety one percent running back rush share, and he dominated. He had twenty carries for one hundred and forty five yards on the ground. That ninety one percent running back rush share. That's noteworthy because not only was the highest of his season, but it was in a game where Devin Singletary was active. Tyrone Tracy went healthy is the Giants RB one. Let's hope he can get back on the field sooner rather than later. It's so alarmingly clear that the Browns were running out their worst quarterback when Deshaun Watson was healthy this year. Jamis Winston jumped in this past week. He got the start, and he threw for three hundred and thirty four passing yards. Watson hadn't gotten over two hundred passing yards all season. The last time he threw three hundred yards January of twenty twenty one. Now, the Ravens have been a team that teams are throwing up and in fact, when you are just for strength of opponent, Baltimore has given up about seventy one more passing yards per game than their opponent's season long averages. We can't expect Jamis to do what he did in Week eight. Each week but it's very clear that the move to Winston it's a plus for everyone on the Browns. No way that outcome would have happened with Deshaun Watson. And I've got more on the Browns later in the show. Devon A. Chan has been an absolute beast in fantasy football this year when Tua has started. It's a small sample, but he's now scored twenty three, twenty nine and a half and twenty six point seven pper points and Tua starts this year, he still hasn't Diplow a thirteen percent target share in a completed game all year. He hasn't been nearly as efficient as he was last year, but his receiving usage is making him a really, really strong fantasy asset in PPR formats. The quarterback change is huge for him. The Jets have played three games since their coaching changes. It hasn't gone well for them, but it started out as a huge plus for Breeze Hall. In Week six and seven, Hall had running back rush shares of eighty six percent and eighty percent. He saw target shares of eighteen percent and twenty three percent in those two games. In Week eight, those numbers dropped to more so what we were seeing right before the coaching changes. Hall had a running back rush share of just fifty seven percent against the Patriots. His target share was twelve percent. His route participation dropped by about sixteen percentage points two. Now, I don't know if there's something deeper going on here. One theory that I have is that they felt good about New England and they have to turn things around quickly this week because they're playing on Thursday night, so they wanted to save Breze Hall. But it's something that we have to monitor because it's basically the difference between Hall being an elite RB one and a low end RB one in that same game as Breece Hall this past week was Remandre Stevenson. He hadn't seen more than a fifty six percent snap share since Week two in the Patriots offense. His running back rush share hadn't been higher than seve seventy percent since Week one. Well, in Week eight, Stevens has had an eighty percent running back rush are he played seventy nine percent of the team's offensive snaps. Those are basically his best numbers since Week one. Game script in the game being relatively closed throughout likely help things here. But overall, it's really good news for Ramandre Stevenson. I like talking about how teams are scoring their touchdowns because it's a place where we can spot team level regression. I talked about this just last week with the Rams and Matthew Stafford, and they went out and they scored four touchdowns in Week eight, and all of their touchdowns came through the air. Now, that was an over correction, but we couldn't assume that they were going to be running for their touchdowns at such a historic pace. The team that I'm watching now is the Seattle Seahawks. They have nineteen touchdowns this season. Eleven of those nineteen have come on the ground. That's the third lowest ratio in the league. But the difference between them and a team like Washington or a team like Philadelphia, who are all so very low is the fact that Seattle throws the ball more. No team has a higher pass rate over expected than the Seattle Seahawks. Gino Smith right now has a two point six percent touchdown rate. That's by far a low for him since he's been in Seattle. So I'm anticipating things turning around a little bit for the Seattle passing attack. Their touchdowns scored should start skewing more towards the pass. I'm interested to see how DeAndre Swift performs in tougher matchups. He's really seen a resurgence over the last month after starting the season off really slow in weeks one to three, Swift average six point five PPR points per game over his next four games, so through week eight he's averaged twenty two point six. The thing is, Swift face an average opponent rank and adjusted Fantasy points allowed to running backs of twenty two over the first three weeks, meaning the average opponent that he faced had a rank and adjusted Fantasy points allowed to running backs of twenty second, and the other split the average rank was eight and a half. He's seen a much easier schedule over the last four games. Now. I'm bringing this up because it's a trend, but also because the Bears will face teams ranked as the tenth most favorable, the fifth most favorable, and the seventeenth most favorable and adjusted points allowed to running backs over their next three games. But then there's a stretch after that where they get the Vikings and the Lions each twice over a five game stretch, and those are two of the most difficult matchups for running backs. So the short term thing should be okay. Long term it remains to be seen. It's gonna be really interesting to watch on the season. Only one relevant quarterback has an average depth of target above ten, and it's Anthony Richardson. His a dot is twelve point three. He's throwing the ball down the field at the highest rate in football according to PFF. His rate of throwing at twenty plus air yards it's almost five percentage points higher than the player in second. When you're throwing the ball deep, it's gonna be naturally harder to complete those throws, which is part of the reason that his completion rate is so low. Now, with that being said, his completion percentage over expected is still by far the worst in football. So it's understandable why the Colts want Joe Flacco under center. Maybe not long term, maybe they're thinking is really short term. But if they want the best quarterback under center right now, that's got to be Joe Flacco. I think the bottom line with Richardson, he's got to stop playing hero ball, and one way to figure that out is by sitting on the sideline and learning and I think that's what the Colts are thinking right now. Some may consider me an Elijah more Truther, and I'm happy to report that in Week eight he saw a twenty nine point three percent target share for the Browns. He had a fifteen percent target share the week before. He's now scored ten plus PPR points in back to back games, and those are games without Amari Cooper. You could consider him an ad right now, at least in deeper formats. This is one of the better environments that he's been in during his career. He was a very good prospect who put up honestly elite rookie season numbers. Why not see what he has now. The last trend this week is about one of the least talked about storylines of the fantasy football season. In my opinion, that should be talked about more. Brock Purty is running the football a lot more than any of us expected. Perty's currently eighth in quarterback rush attempts. He's ninth in quarterback rushing yards. He scored three times on the ground. Guys, brock Purty is averaging more rushing yards per game right now than Josh Allen. Perty's already almost increases twenty twenty three rushing total by fifty percent, and we're seeing that help his fantasy totals. He hasn't been as good through the air, which was expected entering the season because of regression, but he's averaging four point nine points per game right now with his legs. Last year that number was one point seven. Now we'll see what happens when Christian McCaffrey returns, because a lot of this rushing production is on scrambles and if Christian McCaffrey's there, then he might look to dump it off instead of running the football. But this rushing production, it's keeping him afloat in fantasy football because his yards per attempt it's down year over year. His touchdown rate, a metric that we knew was gonna regress. It was seven percent last year, it's four point one percent this year. Without the rushing production, party would be really struggling in fantasy football. But with the rushing production, he's got pretty interesting upside. That's it for today's show, though thanks to all of you for listening. You get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast. Make sure you are best hurting for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found and to follow me on Twitter at late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.