853: 10 Trends for Week 16

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with your host jayj Zacher Retha Jay Jake Zacher reson what's up everyone? It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode eight hundred and fifty three of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. With the holidays, the Late Round podcast schedule, it's gonna look different next week. I'm gonna be doing the fifteen Transaction show on Tuesday, but it's gonna drop later on the day Tuesday. I won't be working on Christmas, but then rather than this ten Trends episode, I'll be skipping it and working on the Sleepers episode for Thursday morning. Those are the two episodes that are dropping next week for Championship Week. I don't podcast for Week eighteen because the vast majority of leagues are done by then, but that makes this the last ten Trends episode of the season. I'll do my best to make it a good one. DeAndre Swift has scored single digit PPR points in four straight games. I've talked about him a bit over the last month and a half, and he's definitely disappointed. Now. The reason who had been bullish on Swift was the playoff schedule. He unfortunately didn't come through with a big outing in Week fifteen. He scored nine and a half PPR points, but he was close to a totally fine day. He felt just short of the end zone. The good news is that his running back rush share in that game against Seattle was seventy five percent. That's his highest in three weeks. His target share it was solid enough at ten percent, and his route participation it was its highest that has been since Week seven. I still like Swift more than the consensus over the next two weeks because the peripherals aren't as bad as the numbers suggest. It feels like not enough people are talking about Isaiah Likely. Over his last three games, he's seen target shares of twenty percent, seventeen and a half percent, and twenty six percent. His route participation over his last four that's without Mark Andrews. For the most part, it's been elite. According to Fantasy Life's utilization report, Likely has seen route rates of eighty eight eighty three percent, ninety one percent, and eighty eight percent during this time. To me, even though the schedule could be better, he's a tight end one. In Week sixteen and seventeen James Cook is cooking, and you might be wondering has anything actually changed? Is he just getting lucky? Well, one thing that's happening is that since Joe Brady took over as offensive coordinator, Cook has been used more as a receiver. With Ken Dorsey, Cook's target share per game rate was eight point two percent without him, it's sixteen point three percent. He's not really running more routes, He's just been targeted at a much higher rate. Clearly the Bills are making a point to get him the ball. And there's also this from my friend Jim SNAs from FANDEBL. Jim tweeted earlier this week that Cook's snap right inside the twelve yard line with Ken Dorsey was twenty nine percent With Joe Brady, it's fifty five percent. So it's still not perfect, but Cook is getting more of those higher leverage looks. That's why he's become such a league winning type player. Now, speaking of the Bills without Ken Dorsey, how about Gabe Davis. During the four games that Davis has played with Joe Brady as offensive coordinator, he scored a grand total of twenty two point five PPR points. All of those points came in one game. That's right. He scored zero points in three of his last four. His rap participation really hasn't shifted that much. His target share has. He's seen a nine point four percent target share per game rate during this time. That number was over sixteen percent before the coordinator switch. You absolutely cannot trust Gabe Davis in the fantasy playoffs. Of course, he's capable of a big play, maybe even a monster week, but it's so risky at this point. If Devon a Chan is going to get back to his early season production, he's gonna need to see more work on the ground. In weeks fourteen and fifteen, he saw running back rushyares of twenty five percent and thirty five percent. Earlier in the season, that number was closer to fifty percent. Now maybe this has to do with his injury, but there is some good news regardless. His route participation over his last three has been pretty good. The Dolphins seem to be focusing his workload through pass catching that side of things, and with tough matchups against Dallas and Baltimore to close out the fantasy season, that might not be a bad thing for a Chan. If Miami hits a negative game script, we might see more of him. I've mentioned it before, but I love Justin Fields and the Fantasy football playoffs, mostly because he's been running the ball a lot. And he also had a great Week sixteen and Week seventeen schedule, and I still believe that to be true. He had a tough game against Cleveland this past week, and we all knew that was coming. I had talked about that on the show. But in Week sixteen and in Week seventeen he gets Arizona and Atlanta. Those are two favorable opponents. Fields has played five matchups this season against defenses that rank as bottom half opponents by justin points allowed. In those games against tougher opponents, he's averaged ten point one standard fantasy points per game. That's pretty horrific. In his five plus matchups, though that average goes from ten point one to twenty four point three. Justin Fields has a chance to really help fantasy managers over the next two weeks. Aaron Jones returned for the Packers in Week fifteen, and honestly, he had pretty good usage. Now, his snapshare was oddly only forty eight percent. We know the Packers typically split their backfield, but that was still a little bit low for Aaron Jones. The good news is that he handled eighty seven percent of Green Bay's running back rushes. That was by far a season high, and then he had an eleven percent target share, which was also strong. I'd anticipate his participation to get a little bit better as long as he's healthy. We know he's a good player when he's healthy. I wouldn't sleep on him with the Panthers upcoming in Week sixteen. I'm not sure people realize how how good David and Joku has been in fantasy during the second half of the season. Since Week eight, and Joku's averaging fifteen and a half PPR points per game. The only tight ends who have been better in points per game during this stretch Trey McBride, Sam Laporta and TJ. Hockinson. And Joku has more points per game than every other tight end. And it's no fluke either. His target share per game rate during this time twenty five percent. Cleveland has the fifth best tight end schedule in week sixteen and seventeen when looking at justin points allowed. I'm not sure why we'd assume that this production just comes to a halt James Connor ended up with a strong seventeen point nine PPR point outing in Week fifteen, but we've now seen him fail to hit a fifty percent snapshare in two of his last three. Two of those games were pretty big blowouts, and in those blowout games, his route participation it hovered the thirty percent mark. In the game that they won against Pittsburgh it was fifty six percent. They didn't use Connor more in that game against the Steelers because of some revenge game factor. They used him more because of gamescript. Now. Fortunately, Arizona gets Chicago this week. There's at least a chance that they can keep that game close. Therefore, Connor might be okay. But they get Philadelphia in week seventeen. That type of matchup's pretty scary for a player like Connor and how he's being used. The last trend this week is about the Detroit Lions backfield. David Montgomery returned from injury in Week ten, and he and Jamiir Gibbs have played six games together since then. In those six games, Gibbs is averaging seventeen point nine PPR points per game. Montgomery's still been good. He has fourteen point one PPR points per game. Here's the crazy thing, though, According to Next Gen Stats, during this timeframe, Jamiir Gibbs has played sixty one percent of the team's red zone snaps when David Montgomery is at thirty seven percent. Gibbs has played two more snaps than David Montgomery within the three yard line. Again, that's according to Next Gen statsmor Gibbs is doing what we drafted him to do. He's giving us awesome fantasy production. 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 it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found and TEO friends. Follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.