298: 10 Trends for Week 7

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacher Retha J J. Zacher reson What's up everyone? It's JJ zacharieson, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at number fire dot com in this episode two hundred and ninety eight of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. Before talking about this week's ten trends, I wanted to send a reminder so you guys don't forget to enter this week's Gridiron pickup contest over on FanDuel. Just pick all the games for this week's NFL slate, and if you do well and get them all right, you have a shot to win a piece of the ten thousand dollars jackpot to enter head tofanduel dot com. Trend one this week is that Dallas Goddard has seen at least sixty nine nice percent of Philadelphia's snaps over the last three weeks, and he ranks twenty first and tight end routes run over this time and all the while, he's seen at least ten point seven percent of Philly's targets over this time when he didn't hit that mark once during the first three weeks of the season, when he wasn't always one hundred percent healthy. I'm pretty into adding Dallas Goddard this week off the waiver wire, especially since so many teams need tight end help, because not only is god A gonna be just as good of a play as other tight end streamers, but he has upside if something were to happen to zach Ertz, if zach Ertz has hurt, or if he's out all of a sudden, god hear it's a fringe top five or six tight end. But given the fact that he's seeing usage and he's playing more, you should get him now before the production starts to match. Matthew Stafford has thrown at fifteen or more air yards on almost twenty seven percent of his attempts this year. Only Patrick Mahomes is throwing it deep at a higher rate, and this has really benefited the team's passing attack and specifically Kenny Galladay. Baby Tront has a really strong twenty seven percent target share this season, but his average depth of target is almost two yards higher versus last year. That's going to help the sustainability of his production. Has a higher chance for a bigger play. Over the last five years, quarterbacks have thrown a touchdown on every one hundred and sixty one passing yards. Based on that yardage to touchdown conversion, the quarterbacks who should have three or more touchdowns than they currently have this year are Jared Goff, Andy Dalton, Kyler, Murray, Cam Newton, and Baker Mayfield. Mayfield is by far the worst on this list. He should have four point three more touchdowns than he currently has. The problem for Mayfield and the Browns is the schedule. Like I talked about on yesterday's fifteen Transaction Show, after the Browns by this week they get four straight tough matchups, so you could theoretically buy later rather than right now, which is why they were either a sell or a hold. I do think they'll bounce back and plus matchups later in the season, but if you're a struggling team right now, you can't trust this passing attack. They're more stashes than anything else. Trend four is that the Steelers are still awful against the slot so far this year, and this is according to data compiled a Pro Football Focus. But so far this season, no team has allowed more slot targets a higher percentage of targets to go to the slot, more slot receptions, yards, and touchdowns. On the flip side, no team has seen a lower percentage of targets go to the slot than Philadelphia. They've seen fewer than eighteen percent of the targets against them go there versus Pittsburgh's forty two percent, so you can use that information accordingly when making your lineup decisions. No team has allowed a higher percentage of their receiving yards to go to wide receivers than the Carolina Panthers. Now I partially wanted to include this particular trend this week because the Panthers have faced some really wide receiver heavy teams this year. They had the Rams in Week one, who like to feature their trio, then Tampa Bay twice who funnel targets to Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, and then Houston, Jacksonville and Arizona who all target their wide receivers at a higher rate than the league average. So if you see Carolina as a cake matchup on paper moving forward for your wide receiver, give that some context. It's not as easy of a matchup as it probably appears. Trend six is that Melvin Gordon has a twenty percent success rate. That number is measured by looking at the percentage of positive expected points runs made by a running back, and that's according to Number five's expected points model. Essentially, just twenty percent of Gordon's rushes have been deemed successful. Among the fifty seven running backs who have had twenty or more carries this year, only Giovanni Bernard has a worse success rate. So things really haven't been going well for Melvin Gordon so far. Speaking of the Chargers in Melvin Gordon, over the last two weeks, they've run one hundred and forty offensive plays while trailing. For reference, the average number of plays while trailing in the NFL this year among all teams is one hundred and ninety seven, and nine teams have run fewer than one hundred and forty plays while trailing all season long. But I bring this up because it's two games with Melvin Gordon active. Keenan Allen has a fourteen percent target share over the two weeks. He had over a thirty percent share from weeks one through four. They've targeted their running backs on thirty five percent of their throws over these two games, when their season long average before Gordon's return was twenty six percent. So the question becomes, what the hell does this all mean? Well, I'd say one reason the running backs are seeing the target shair that they're seeing over these two weeks is because the Chargers have faced the Broncos and the Steelers. Those are two teams who rank in the top eleven and quarterback pressure rate this year. That's forced Philip Rivers to dump the ball off a little bit more. I do have some worry about Hunter Henry being back and how that's gonna affect Keenan Allen, but what we've seen over the last two years from the Chargers is that the running backs are going to see a bigger hit in target chair with Hunter Henry back than Keenan Allen will. So I expect that high running back share to dip over the coming weeks. That makes Austin Eckler and Melvin Gordon less attractive as fantasy options. The next trend really highlights how much the Packers need to Vante Adams and how much they miss him. But it's that DeVante Adams still leads the Packers and targets despite playing four of six games, even fewer games than that technically, I mean there was a point on Monday Night where Aaron Rodgers wide receivers were all undrafted players. When MVS went down, every single wide out that he was throwing too was undrafted. The Packers really need DeVante Adams back. Over Robbie Anderson's last six games with Sam Darnold, He's averaged nine targets, five point two receptions, eighty point seven yards, and point seven touchdowns per game. I know that I mentioned Jamison Crowder as a by candidate on this week's fifteen Transaction Show, and I stand by that because he's sort of the un sexy name in that offense. But if you can get Robbie Anderson for cheap right now, for whatever reason, he's not a bad get either. This last trend is that Kansas City has been by far the worst rush defense in football this year against running backs. They're allowing about point one point nine rushing expected points per rush. Now, usually that number is negative because rushing is far less efficient than passing is, but they're also allowing a fifty four point two percent success rate, or again, the percentage of positive expected points runs made by a running back. No other team is higher than forty nine percent. This should really bode well for Denver's running backs on Thursday, and maybe, just maybe Royce Freeman will finally regress positively in the touchdown column. That's going to do it for today's show, though, Thanks to all of you for listening. 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