282: 10 Trends for Week 3

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha JJ zacher Reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ zach Reeson, the editor in chief at fandel and at Number five dot com. And this is episode two hundred and eighty two of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. I don't have a trend on today's show related to the quarterback injuries, but I'll speak in hyperbole and say that I've never seen anything like this. I'm in a lot of super Flex leagues, and I'm in a lot of super Flex Dynasty leagues, and everything's a disaster. So if you're feeling the pain, you're not alone. Now, before getting into this week's ten trends, I wanted to send a reminder about FanDuel's World Fantasy Football Championship from now through December. First, you can enter a number of different qualifiers at different prize points to earn a seat to the two and a half million dollar live final in Puerto Rico or the three and a half million dollar online Championship. For more info in the WFFC, visit fandle dot com. Slash WFFC or download the app today. Eligibility restrictions may apply. Okay, So the first trend this week is that Cincinnati has a three point nine to three pass to rush ratio so far this year in neutral game scripts. That's absurd. So basically this is saying that the Bengals are throwing the ball four times as much as they're running it when games are within six points when there's a six point margin for reference the team and second in neutral script ratio is actually the Jets, who have a two point five ratio. The Bengals have a new coaching regime that's clearly not afraid to throw the ball around, and that's great for all the fantasy assets there, including aj Green, who should be back at some point this season and Andy Dalton's become a great streaming option each week, except I don't like them that much here in Week three. Trend two is that Baltimore has targeted their tight ends at the highest rate in the league so far this season. The tight ends have a forty five point nine percent target chair, but as a result, they've targeted their wide receivers at the lowest rate. That seems like it wouldn't bode well for Hollywood Brown, and in most cases it wouldn't. But Brown has a near thirty percent target share on the season. He's seen two thirds of Baltimore's wide receiver targets. That's tied with Michael Thomas for the highest share of wide receiver targets in the league. This high tight end share is why those of you with Mark Andrews should feel pretty good about having him as your late round tight end. Not only has he been super efficient and really good, but the high target share means that even when Baltimore is more run heavy, he should still be just fine. There are only two running backs who have a running back rushing share above ninety percent and a target share above eighteen percent through two games. One of those running backs is Christian McCaffrey. That's no surprise. The other one is Leonard Fournette. I talked about this on yesterday's fifteen Transaction Show, but this is essentially why it's okay to buy Leonard Fournette right now, despite the fact that he's in a bad offense. I don't like buying running backs or in bad offenses because it lowers their ceiling. They don't have as many scoring opportunities, but he's one of the few running backs in the NFL who's going to see a huge rushing share and a huge target share week in and week out, and volume drives this game. He may not have a huge touchdown ceiling, but now's the time to buy because he hasn't found the end zone yet and he hasn't been super effective, but that production is coming. The Steelers have allowed the most receiving yards, receptions, and touchdowns to slot receivers to start the year. Now this isn't anything new, but the Steelers have continued to be bad against receivers in the slot. We saw Tyler Lockett with seven catches for sixty one yards last week against them, and in Week one, Josh Gordon and Philip dor Set combined for three touchdowns from the slot against the Steelers. Now, we can sit here and go back and forth about the Mink of Fitzpatrick deal that went down this week, but at the very least we know that Fitzpatrick fills a need for the Steelers given his versatility and his ability to cover that area of the field. Pro Football focus great in him as the best college slot corner they'd ever seen, So that'll likely change the way that we've used slot receivers against Pittsburgh, and that's why I wanted to call out this specific trend before things change. Trend number five is that the Miami Dolphins are the only team with fewer than one hundred combined passing rush attempts. Meanwhile, they've run three total plays from a neutral game script this year. Now, I wanted to bring this up because there's this notion out there that if teams are trailing, then they're going to throw the ball more. That's true from a ratio standpoint, but teams need to be efficient in order to see volume. This is another reason to be a little bit worried about running backs and wide receivers on teams that just lost their quarterbacks. Less efficiency could mean fewer plays. Fewer plays means less volume, and that definitely means fewer touchdowns. Next is that Marcus Mariota has thrown just five passes that have gone fifteen or more air yards this season. Rest in peace, your Corey Davis shares. The Titans are still running a conservative offense that's led them to a below average pass to rush ratio. Mariota's five deep ball attempts are the lowest in the league among quarterbacks who have pl played two full games. On the other side of that list is unsurprisingly, Patrick Mahomes. He's thrown at fifteen or more air yards on twenty two of his throws. Number two is Kyler Murray, and then you have Matthew Stafford, Philip Rivers, and Deshaun Watson. All of them have seventeen or more deep ball attempts or more than three times the amount as Marcus Mariota has. Trend seven is that Aaron Jones actually saw a slightly smaller share of running back rushes in week two than he did in Week one. Now, this is just a reminder that we shouldn't just look at final game production and assume that everything is bad. This is really why we look at market share numbers, because the Packers went from not being able to move the ball much in Week one against Chicago, where they had just fifty two combined Russian pass attempts, to sixty seven in week two. So by looking at rushing share and target share, you can get more accurate usage numbers because when teams blow up and see a lot of offensive plays, the players seeing a higher percentage of their team's rushes or targets, they're gonna benefit more. And that's why it happened for Aaron Jones in Week two, and that's why it was easy to not sell him after his Week one performance. Ben Roethlisberger leads the league and drop right, or the percentage of attempts that have been dropped. That's things to Dante Moncreeve having five drops on eleven targets, close behind Roethlisberger those Josh Allen and by the way, this is all according to Pro Football Reference, but Josh Allen and Ben Roethlisberger are the only quarterbacks whose wide receivers have dropped ten percent or more of their attempts. And actually no quarterback has a rate above seven point seven percent outside of those two quarterbacks. Now, I don't really know if there's anything specifically to this one. I just thought it was interesting. Trend nine is that David Montgomery now has two more rushes at the goal line than any other player in the league. This is big news for those of you who have Montgomery on your roster because it's very clear that he's Chicago's goal line back. We didn't see the Bears within the opponents five in Week one, but in Week two, Montgomery had five goal line rushes. It's not a huge surprise, that's the way that it should be. But it's good news for Montgomery, as is the fact that his running back rush share went from fifty five percent to seventy two percent from week one to week two and his target share from two percent to eleven percent. Things are absolutely trending in the right direction for David Montgomery. And this last trend sort of plays on the previous one, and it's that there are four teams right now who still haven't run a play at the goal line. Those teams are the Lions, the Dolphins, the Jets, and surprisingly the Saints. The Dolphins aren't that shocking. The Dolphins offense is an absolute joke, it's an absolute disaster, and the Jets aren't that surprising either, And we know that the Jets are going to use Le'Veon Bell when they are close to the end zone. But like I alluded to in the fifteen Transaction show, we haven't seen who's going to be the goal line back in Detroit this year yet. That's a big deal for carry On Johnson. That's going to dictate his fantasy value. A lot, and we'll likely see a lot of Alvin Kamara at the goal line for the Saints. Maybe not as much with Teddy Bridgewater under center, but we'll still see a lot of Kamara. But the question is how is that going to be split with Latavius Murray, Because Latavius Murray has been one of the best goal line runners in football over the last couple of seasons, So we don't know how that split is exactly going to look, but we do know that Alvin Kamara should still get a lot of looks when they are there, but those opportunities are certainly being lowered now that Drew Brees is sidelined. That's going to do it for today's show, though. Thanks to you all for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. And just so you guys are aware, Twitter is where I'm taking all of the mail bag questions this season. I'm still getting a good number of emails from people, but in season it's just not possible for me to answer all of these emails. I apologize for it, but I just have to be honest. So hit me up on Twitter, send those mail bag questions in, and I'll try to get them on the show each Friday. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with a new Matchups episode