838: 15 Transactions for Week 12

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Speaker 1: This is the Late World Podcast with your host jaj Zacher. Retha Jay Jake Zacherwe what's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight hundred and thirty eight of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. This week's schedule is a little bit funky because of Thanksgiving. Today you're obviously getting the fifteen Transactions episode. That's what you're listening to right now. Tomorrow you'll get two shows. You'll get the ten Trends episode that's going to drop in the morning as it usually does, and then I'll get the Sleepers episode out as soon as I can in the afternoon. That way, you have everything you need before the games start on Thanksgiving. But there won't be a Mailbag episode or a Late Round Perspectives episode this week. That'll be the case for me in a couple of weeks as well, But we'll get to that when the time comes. For now, let's talk about some transactions. Sell Joe Mixon. So the Cincinnati Bengals offense without Joe Burrow is obviously going to be a lot worse than an offense with Joe Burrow. And even if the Bengals become more run heavy without Burrow, Joe Mixon still gets a rest of season downgrade. I talked about this last week on the Mailbag episode. When it comes to projections, you should take a top down approach. You start at the team level and then work into the player level. And if the team level looks bad, as it does for Cincinnati at least looks worse, that's bad for all players on that team. Not to be clear here, I'm not always an advocate of just selling players when their quarterback gets injured. The market will often overreact to situations like this. I mean Garrett Wilson, even though he had a bad Week eleven, he's had a better season than most probably projected when Aaron Rodgers went down, and I think that's probably the case for someone like Jamar Chase. With Joe Mixon, though there is some concern he's coming off a big performance, maybe you could sell high as a result. He's now finished as a top ten PPR running back in three of his last four games, and that's because he's had a touchdown in all four of those games. That's pretty unlikely to maintain. We should not expect Joe Mixon to score a touchdown every single week, especially without Joe Burrow. But not only that, Cincinnati running backs have a pretty brutal fantasy football playoff schedule. They'll get the Vikings, then the Steelers and the Chiefs in weeks fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen. Minnesota and Kansas City are bottom ten matchups by Jesse Fantasy points allowed to running backs, and Pittsburgh's about average, And you'd imagine a game against the Steelers that late in the season, a divisional rival that's probably going to be a lower scoring game, even if your trade deadline's already passed. It's important to temper expectations with Joe Mixon by Nico Collins. So right now, the fantasy football world is rightfully obsessed with Tank Dell because Tank Dell is a monster. He's been a beast over his last three games. He's averaged eleven point seven targets per game, one hundred and six point three yards, and twenty five five point eight PPR points. Tank Dell is looking like a league winning player, and that's not a phrase that I use very often. While everyone's obsessed with Tank Dell, though, don't forget about Nico Collins. After missing week ten. Collins re entered the picture in week eleven and he saw twenty eight point nine percent target share. He's averaged about a twenty two percent target share per game rate this year. That gives him a nice projection week in and week out in this pass friendly offense. Texans wide receivers have a pretty good rest of season schedule two. According to Jossah Fantasy Points Allowed, Texans whindeouts have the best median opponent during weeks fifteen through seventeen, and that makes sense because they get the Tennessee Titans twice. Tennessee's the third best opponent for wide receivers within that metric. Now, sandwich between those two games against Tennessee is one against Cleveland. That's not a great matchup, but with everyone focused on Tank Dell right now, this could be the time to get Collins a little bit cheaper than you should go for and Isaiah likely. Look, no one can replace Mark Andrews one for one. The Ravens are going to do their best to replace him with a variety of their weapons, and that starts with Isaiah Likely. He only had an eight point seven percent target share agains Cincinnati this past week but his route participation was almost ninety percent. That's an elite number at tight end. So if likely keeps running a route at that pace, he's likely you get it going to be usable in fantasy football. I'd project him to be a high end tight end two with upside week in and week out. And Odell Beckham So, like I said, the Ravens are going to have to rely on a lot of their weapons to help replace Mark Andrews, and one of those weapons is Odell Beckham. Obj is low key having a great season. According to Next Gen Stats data, among the one hundred and twenty whine Outs with one hundred or more routes run this year, Beckham ranks twenty second and yards per route run he's twenty fourth and targets per route run. He's been the best Ravens wide receiver by far within those two metrics. A reason that he hasn't been better in fantasy football is that his route participation is playing time hasn't exactly been there. His thirty point four percent target share was great in Week eleven, but he still ran around on just forty eight percent of Baltimore's dropbacks. Now, the hope here is that Obj's snaphare it increases down the stretch for Baltimore. Without Mark Andrews, they've run out of eleven personnel this year three wide receiver sets at one of the lower rates in football. But there's a chance that we see an increase there with Andrew's sidelined. So objs worth an ad this week sell Saquon Barkley. So look, this transaction has nothing to do with how good I think Saquon Barkley is. I actually think that he looked amazing in Week eleven. He cut four or five targets for fifty seven yards and two touchdowns. But New York's not going to play Washington each week, and that's a real problem. Barkley has only faced two teams this year who rank as a Boss M half opponent and justin Fantasy points allowed, so he's arguably only had two tough matchups, and they were both against Dallas. In those two games, he scored nine point three and seven point one PPR points, and his other six games played, he's averaged about twenty PPR points per contest. And from here on out, New York's schedule is not going to be very easy. Over the next four weeks, it ranks seventh toughest in football, and in the fantasy playoffs they get matchups against the Saints, Eagles and rams La is the easiest matchup of that group, at least by justin fantasy points allowed, and they're the twenty second best matchup for running backs within that metric. I would not expect Week eleven to be the norm for Saquon Barkley and Zach Sharbonay. So considering how much I've talked about the Seattle backfield this offseason and in season this year, Zach Sharboney is probably rostered in your league. Hopefully he is, at least, and hopefully it's your team that has him. Because Kenneth Walker's hurt, he has no bleak injury. His timetable to return is completely unknown at the time of this recording, but he was rolled out fairly quickly. In that Week eleven game, Sharboney ended up seeing an eighty four percent snap share That was actually the highest from any Seahawks running back this year. Now, Sharboney's performance wasn't great, and that was a bummer. He scored twelve point nine PPR points even though he saw seventy five percent of the team's running back rushes in a really strong fifteen point eight percent target share, and unfortunately Seattle's about to hit a really rough stretch of games. They get the forty nine Ers, Cowboys, the forty nine Ers again, the Eagles, and the Titans over their next five. None of those matchups or plus matchups by adjusted points allowed to running backs. But regardless of the tough schedule, you need to roster a player who has a real chance to be a bell cow. Now, keep an eye on reports about Walker because at this moment the length of his absence is completely unknown. Add to to two, at Well another high profile injury, and we eleven was with Cooper Cup. It sounds like it's a low ankle sprain, but he might not be able to go this week, and if he doesn't go, to to at Well is definitely in play because without Cooper Cup this year, Atwell has averaged a target share per game rate of twenty two point five percent and fourteen point four PPR points per game. With Cup, those numbers are twelve point six percent, so about ten percentage points lower in target share and six point three PPR points per game. The Rams get the Cardinals this week too. Arizona's a favorable matchup for wide receivers, so to tow at Well without Cooper Cup definitely can find your lineup by Austin Eckler. Look, I don't know if this needs to be said or not, but I would not be panicking about Austin Eckler right now, not at all. Yeah, he only had a seven point performance against the Packers, and yeah, his target share was lower than most weeks at only eight point three percent, but his route participation was actually a season high in Week eleven. And on top of that, there's a chance, a very real chance, that Austin Eckler is going to bring home a lot of fantasy titles this year. In Week fifteen, the Chargers get the Raiders. That's a top ten matchup for running backs and the justin fantasy points allowed. Then it's Buffalo, another top ten matchup. Buffalo ranks tenth, and then in Week seventeen it's Denver. Denver has been a team that all season has not been very good against the run. I know they've been better defensively, but that's still a weakness for them. There's no reason to panic about Austin Eckler. If anything, I would aggressively be buying him add Jaden Reid, so similar to the Zach Sharbonay recommendation. If Jaden Reid's not rostered in your league, that would be surprising. If you're listening to the show each week. Because I'm a Jayden Reid stan, I feel like I talk about Reid at least once a week on this show. But I need to bring him up again because he's still out there in sixty four percent of Yahoo leagues. The Packers this year have had a really, really frustrating wide receiver rotation. No Green Bay wide out this past week had an eight eighty percent snapshare. But I would argue that they should be using their rookie wide receivers a lot more than they are. On the season, four Packers wide receivers have run one hundred or more routes. Those four are Romeo Dobbs, Christian Watson, Jaden Reid, and Doantavian Wicks. Dantavian Wicks actually leads that group with a two point zero three yards per route run rate, and just below him is Jaden Reid at one point nine to three. Those are very good yards per route run numbers for rookies. Romeo Dobbs is at one point three seven, significantly lower, and then Christian Watson at one point two eight. Dobbs leads the team in targets per route run. Reid is second, Wicks's third, Watson's fourth. Even Still, even with all of that, Dobbs and Watson are usually the ones that are running the most routes for this team week in and week out. That's been a problem for Jayden Reid because it limits his upside, but he's still found a way to be fantasy relevant over the last couple of weeks with two nine point outings. We should be gobbling up talent for our benches and Jayden Reid and Dantavian Wis to a degree too. But Jaden Reid has that talent and he's been used even on the ground a lot too. So please roster Reid. This is the time of year where we should really be looking at rookies. And it doesn't hurt that Green Bay has the six best wide receiver schedule in the Fantasy playoffs by justin Fantasy points allowed. Sell or hold. Trevor Lawrence Week eleven was an awesome week for Trevor Lawrence. It marked the first time all season that he scored more than eighteen point one standard Fantasy points, and he posted over thirty two. But that's exactly the problem, right. He hasn't done this all season long. He hasn't been very good this year. He was strong against the Titans, but Tennessee doesn't have the best secondary in the world, and Lawrence outperformed expectation. Don't get me wrong, he had a great game. I don't want to take that away, but he did it against a beatable defense and he needed two rushing touchdowns to really get to that ceiling, to really get there. Basically, I don't think this is the start of some run for Trevor Lawrence. Jacksonville does get a couple of plus matchups over their next two they get Houston and Cincinnati. Maybe he'll be fine in those spots. But then after that, in really key matchups in fantasy football, in weeks fourteen and fifteen, they get the Browns and the Ravens. Trevor Lawrence is probably unstartable in those games. And then in week sixteen they get Tampa Bay that's a plus matchup, But then the Fantasy Football Championship they get Carolina and the Panthers have actually been the third best team and adjusted fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks this year. They're not a great matchup, so if you take a step back, Lawrence has three really tough matchups and then three decent ones remaining. So he's not a must sell as a result of that. But he's definitely not something that I'd be plugging to my lineup week in and week out, no matter what. If you can sell high, I think it's totally fine. If not, it's fine to just play him in those plus matchups ad Rashid Shahed and at Perry. So Michael Thomas, it sounds like he's going to be out for a decent amount of time. That should boost someone like Chris Olave's target chair a little bit. That's a good thing for a lave managers, but Rashid Shahed he should see more work too. The last time we saw the Saints, he had a season high twenty two and a half percent target chair with Michael Thomas getting injured, and then on top of that, he had an eighty percent route participation rate. That number usually hovers around seventy percent, so there was an uptick for Rashid Shahed in that game, but there was a bigger uptick for at Perry in Week ten. The last time the Saints played, Perry tied Chris A. Lave for the most routes run on that team. He played nine more snaps than Rashid Shahed. He was lining up on the outside when Shahid played half of his snaps from the slot. So I think Shaheed is the one that you probably should prioritize because we've seen it this season and we know he has big playability. But don't sleep on at Perry either by Kyler Murray. So, if I'm being honest with you, guys, I'm not sure what the market really thinks about Kyler Murray right now. What I have seen for a long time at this point is that people think that Kyler Murray isn't good because he's not elite. But you don't need to be elite to be good. Kyler Murray's a good quarterback. He may not be this high end, top three, top four, top five guy in the league, but Kyler Murray's not bad and he's a really good fantasy asset because of what he can do with his legs. In two games this year, we really haven't seen any signs of Murray's ACL repair slowing him down. He's rushed for a touchdown in both games. He's added eighty four yards on the ground. That's an awesome thing to see. Now he's faced two pretty easy opponents in the Falcons and the Texans. That's probably helped contribute to his seventeen point three and twenty one point seven Fantasy point score. But Arizona's quarterback schedule in the Fantasy playoffs, in particular, it's pretty nice. They do get San Francisco in Week fifteen, but in week sixteen, in Week seventeen, it's the Bears and then the Eagles. Those are two top ten matchups for quarterbacks. If someone's worried about the passing numbers for Kyler Murray, or maybe someone just has Kyler Murray on their bench, and that's very possible given that Murray was an AD in a lot of leagues. If that's the case, try to snatch him away. He should have a nice end to his season. Add Greg Dolsic. No, look, anytime there's a potential usable tight end on the waiver wire, he's probably gonna get a shout on this show. And that's what we're looking at with Greg Dolciic. Maybe Dulsag can technically return from IR but there hasn't been that much information around Dulsage since he reaggravated a hamstring injury back in Week six. I did do a little bit of digging and I did find an article with a quote from Sean Payton about Dulsage and that quote said quote, I think we'll see him this year. Yeah, so there's at least something. There's at least something saying that Dulsage is gonna find the field again this season. Now, for those of you who are here over the offseason, you know that I like me some Greg dolcig His peripherals during his rookie season were really, really good. So if you have a deeper roster or you just need a tight end, which a lot of you probably do, throwing that dart with Dulsiic and hoping that he's healthier than what's being reported isn't that bad of an idea right now? At Gardner Minshew, if you need a quarterback streamer this week, I don't mind Gardner Minshew. Indianapolis gets Tampa Bay and the Bucks have been an above average matchup for quarterbacks this year. By justin Fantasy points allowed. Now, they faced tough competition of late, but they've given up a top three quarterback performance in four of their last six games. Jared Goff, Josh Allen, CJ. Stroud, and Brock Purdy each hit three hundred and twenty yards passing against the Bucks. Now, Minshew has not been great in fantasy football, but he's also faced a pretty tough schedule. Only one of his six starts this year has come against a top half opponent by justin Fantasy points allowed. Four of his games have come against bottom set matchups. This is a pretty good spot firm, all things considered, and there's not a lot out there. I think Minshew's a decent streamer. Add to Denver Broncos defense. The Broncos defense has shown a lot of life over their last three games. They've been a top ten defensive unit in Fantasy football and all three of those contests, and those three games were against the Chiefs, Bills, and Vikings. It's not easy competition. This week, the Broncos get the Browns and they're playing in Denver. According to Fandels Sportsbook, the Broncos are two and a half point favorites and the over under is just thirty six and a half points. At the very least, they should provide a floor against Dorian Thompson Robinson. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for you pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found the Follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB, follow the Instagram account at Late Round FF, and make sure you check out YouTube YouTube dot com slash at Lateround that FF. Thanks for listening to everyone. I'll drop two episodes tomorrow. I'll talk to you then