278: 10 Trends for Week 2

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Speaker 1: This is the Lab podcast with your host JJ Zacher Resa, j J Zacher Reason. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacher Eason, the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com and this is episode two hundred and seventy eight of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. We finally got some twenty nineteen data to work off of now that the season's underway, and on today's ten Trend show, I'll be looking at that data and some of the interesting things that happen in Week one to hopefully help you manage your fantasy football squad a little bit better. But before digging in, I just wanted to send a reminder that the weekly NFL Free Play is back on fandle for this year and it's only for FanDuel podcast Network listeners. This week, add app took down the top prize, ending an all pro premium subscription. At number Fire. They had a Cowboys stack with Dak Prescott and Michael Gallup and they also got a huge day out of Christian McCaffrey. To enter into the week to contests and win yourself free Number five or premium. Tune into Friday's Mailbag episode and I'll give you a link to the free play. So today's first trend is that Christian Kirk and Larry Fitzgerald both played more than eighty eight percent of their snaps from the slot, and that's because the Cardinals played a ton of ten personnel, where there are four wide receivers on the field at once. According to Graham Barfield of NFL dot com next Gen stats at, the Cardinals in ten personnel on seventy three percent of their offensive snaps on Sunday. And then, as Graham mentioned on Twitter, no team used ten personnel on more than twelve percent of their snaps and twenty eighteen. Just to reiterate, the Cardinals use that type of personnel on seventy three percent of their snaps on Sunday. This is the air raid offense. The Cardinals are gonna spread teams out, they're gonna throw the ball a lot, and then they're gonna run at a fast pace as well. That's what we saw in Week one. It's really what we expected all offseason, and that's why I wasn't ready to sell the Cardinals offense entering the season. But This is really good news for Fitzgerald and Christian Kirk. We may not see huge target share numbers in that offense because there are so many alternatives on the field at once, but the high volume should make up for it, and fitz and Kirk are an advantageous slot matchups, which is why I wanted to call out the trend this week. I would call Christian Kirk a by candidate, but they get Baltimore this week. Don't be surprised, though, if Christian Kirk is a bye on next week's fifteen Transaction Show. Trend two is that Ryan Griffin ran the most routes at tight end in Week one in the entire league. The routes run data is courtesy of Pro Football Focus, and while I don't think this says you've got to start Ryan Griffin, it does give some hope for Chris Herndon when he returns from suspension. So we'll monitor this situation moving forward, and Ryan Griffin makes for at least a deeper sleeper or a streamer here in Week two. Aj Brown played nineteen fewer snaps than Corey Davis in Week one, but he ran just three fewer routes and then all the While Brown had a yards per route run rate of five point six on Sunday while catching three passes, other Tennessee wide receivers had one reception while netting five yards on forty five routes. This is all to say that AJ Brown was the best Tennessee Titans wide receiver in Week one. My prospect model thought that he was one of the best wide receivers in this entire draft class, if not the best. So it's not all that shocking that he did well. He probably had the most complete profile. I just was really nervous about the landing spot and I still am, to be honest, but Week one should make us all feel optimistic about AJ Brown, and if you drafted Corey Davis, you should be a little bit worried about his production this year, at least from the standpoint of it being consistent. Trend four is that on Sunday, Minnesota became the third team since twenty ten to win a game while throwing the ball ten or fewer times. As I talked about consistently this offseason, we saw how the Vikings offense shifted from a play calling standpoint when Kevin Stefanski took over as offensive coordinator. They went from being one of the most past friendly offenses when games were close to one of the most run heavy and this is going to have an impact on everyone in this offense. We saw Dalvin Cook go off against Atlanta, but if Minnesota has their way with things, Adam Thelen and Stefan Diggs are going to suffer from a volume perspective. That's really why I think that they're more inconsistent wide receiver twos now than borderline wide receiver ones. A lot of people were drafting Adam Thelen specifically as a borderline wide receiver one, and for the record, I understand Minnesota saw a nice positive game script in that game against Atlanta. Things will likely be different against Green Bay at Lambeau this weekend. I'm not just completely writing off this passing attack, but I'm noting that this low volume passing attack was by design. The Bengals ran seventy plays on Sunday, when over the last two seasons they've averaged less than fifty nine plays per game. That's consistently been one of the lower marks in the league. The crazy thing, all of those plays in that game on Sunday came in a neutral game script, which means they just went with a pass heavy approach. Part of that was matchup based, but that's a good thing. That means the coaching staff and Cincinnati is actually competent and I'm not just brushing off this John Ross game. Because of this, the Bengals can end up having a better passing attack than people think, and they've got three pretty favorable matchups over the next four games, So hooray for not bad coaching. Trend six is that Devin Singletary ran the ball on just eight point three percent of his rushes on Sunday, which was one of the lowest marks among all relevant running backs. Frank Gore, his teammate, ran it on fifty seven point nine percent of his snaps played. This really explains the difference between the two players snap rates and their volume in that game. Singletary played almost thirty more snaps than Frank Gore on Sunday and t. J. Yelden only played two. This difference in snaps was pretty big between Singletary and Gore, yet Gore had eleven rushes versus Singletary's four. Some of this could be partially due to how this game was going, but this is an awesome sign for Devin Singletary. I know last week I wasn't buying Singletary because of how I thought they'd split this backfield up entering the season. But with new information you adjust, and I'm adjusting Singletary might see a bigger workload sooner rather than later. And it was also nice that he saw six targets through the air as well. When the peripherals look good but the volume in production isn't totally there, that's when you've got a buy opportunity. So I actually think that Singletary is a good by option right now, even though I didn't feature him on Yesterday's fifteen Transaction Show. Chris Carson had a freaking thirty seven percent target share against Cincinnati on Sunday. The problem is that Brian Schottenheimer still ran a really run heavy offense. The Seahawks only threw the ball twenty times, and that was in a completely neutral game script. If that's not telling, I don't know what's telling. Brian Schottenheimer wants to run the football. But it is good news for Carson for when the Seahawks are forced to throw the ball more, and that could happen pretty frequently given their upcoming schedule, and for the record, only Chicago and New England targeted their running backs at a higher rate in Week one, and the only reason Chicago is being mentioned is because Tarik Cohen played as a slot receiver against Green Bay and those targets being counted as a running back. So it's a plus for Carson overall, but it's still annoying af that Brian Schottenheimer is running this incredibly run heavy attack. Trend eight is that James Connor played forty six point six percent of Pittsburgh's snaps on Sunday night, while Jalen Samuels played thirty three point three percent of them. I didn't mention Connor on this week's fifteen Transaction Show, but I would be buying him all day long. Through three quarters against New England, Connor had thirteen touches to Jalen Samuels two. The game just got out of hand and there was no reason to throw Connor out there. That's what we often see from teams in their running back usage when things get out of hand, So by James Connor and really just buy the whole Steelers offense. The ninth trend is that Darren Waller played every single snap and he had a thirty point seven percent target share on Monday night. And this is really big. This type of usage will make him the late round tight end to break out this year, maybe TJ. Hawkinson aside. The Raiders don't really have a ton of pass catching alternatives. Waller's and athletic freak, and he's gonna be on the field a lot. I was into him entering the year, and I'm most definitely into him now after a week of games. This last trend is that only two point six percent of the Rams targets went to running backs on Sunday, the lowest mark in the league in Week one, and for the record, that includes the Ravens because they did target a full back against the Dolphins. But this has to be at least a little alarming for those of you With Todd Gurley. He made a living at the goal line and as a receiver in the pass under Sean mcvah, and his goal line work went to Malcolm Brown and the Rams didn't target him much out of the backfield against Carolina. If there's one silver lining here, it's that he ran twenty nine routes according to Pro Football Focus, that was the ninth highest mark in the league, so I would guess that the pass catching usage does come to Gurley eventually, but it's still a pretty important and shocking number to hear after just one week. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got to subscribe to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and if you're on Apple Podcasts, please do me a favor and leave a rating and review. You can also follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. I'll be needing some mailbag questions this week, so it definitely hit me up. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with this week's matchup show.