424: 10 Trends for Week 5

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ Zachersa jj zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at Fandel and at number fire dot com and this episode four hundred and twenty four of the Late Round podcast, the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. The twenty twenty NFL season is in full swing, as you guys know, and there's no easier way to get in on the action than with Fandel's Gridiron Pick Them contest. All you have to do is pick the winner of each week's matchups correctly, and you'll take home a share of the five thousand dollars weekly jackpot. And the best part, it's completely free to play. You should definitely check it out. Who doesn't love free things to enter? Visit playfree dot fandel dot com slash Gridiron Eligibility restrictions apply. Trend one this week is a continuation from one last week, and it's that the Seahawks have now allowed five hundred more yards to wide receivers than any other team in football. Eighty two point three percent of the receiving yards that they've allowed have gone to wide receivers. The next closest team, San Francisco, is at seventy five point seven percent. Keep starting your wide receivers against the Seattle team. The Minnesota Vikings have had a grand total of eight tight end receptions this year. Not only have they thrown the fewestass attempts in the NFL to start the season, but their tight end target share as a team is just fourteen point seven percent. The league average is closer to twenty one percent. Now, I know, guys, I was into Irv Smith as a late round dart throw tight end this year. That's definitely not gonna happen. He's not going to be a breakout tight end now. Speaking of the Vikings, Kirk Cousins has a higher deep ball rate than any other quarterback in football rate now, So even though they're not throwing a lot, at least the two pass catchers that matter on that team, Justin Jefferson and Adam Thielen, they're at least seeing targets down the field. Felan actually second in the NFL in fifteen plus aer yard targets and Justin Jefferson is tied for fourteenth. Trend four is still loosely related to the Vikings, but it's that the Dallas Cowboys have thrown the ball two hundred and three times this year, the most in football through four weeks. They've thrown it more than twice as much as the Minnesota Vikings, who've thrown it one hundred times, and they've also thrown it more than twice as much as the Ravens, who are at one oh one. Dak Prescott is now pacing for over eight hundred pass attempts when Matthew Stafford's league record is seven hundred and twenty seven pass attempts. Now. I mentioned this on the fifteen Transaction Show when talking about Hollywood Brown, but this is where we need context with target shairs. I talk about target share on this podcast because the majority of teams meet in the middle in terms of passing volume, we're not always looking at the extremes. What target share allows us to do is see how a team values an individual player by giving him the ball, and it helps us project future performance when things aren't thrown off by gamescript. But in the case of the extremes, you need high target chairs for wide receivers and pass catchers on run heavy teams. You don't need that if you're a wide receiver on Dallas, and this trend shows that two teams have targeted their wide receivers on fewer than forty percent of their targeted attempts, the Raiders and the forty nine ers. We've actually only seen that happen once since twenty eleven, and it was the twenty thirteen New Orleans Saints. I'd expect we see more volume go to wideouts for both Vegas and San Francisco moving forward when their wide receivers get healthy. We're seeing that with Deebo Samuel and then obviously in Vegas will eventually see their rookie wide receivers get back on the field. Hopefully. Brandon Cooks gave you a goose eg in week four, but he still ran five more routes than any other Houston Texans wide receiver, and on the year, he still has a target chair north of seventeen percent. So I don't think it's time to drop Brandon Cooks, especially with the coaching change, but you can't start him until the production matches these peripherals. Trend seven is kind of a sad one f time t Y Hilton ranked higher than tenth and weekly wide receiver scoring was Week one of the twenty nineteen season over his last nine games, because ten games ago he did rank tenth in weekly scoring, but over his last nine games he's finished as the wide receiver fifty eight, sixty four, fifty eight, sixty one, thirty eight, fifty eighty seven, fifty six and seventy six guys. That is atrocious. I don't think that you need to drop Hilton, but you cannot start t y Hilton moving forward. Similar to Brandon Cooks, you need the production to start hitting before you can have any confidence throwing him in your lineup. Over the first two weeks of the season, Marvin Jones had target shairs of nineteen and a half percent and twenty percent, and then Kenny Galladay returned, and over the last two weeks those shares have fallen to nine point seven percent and six point nine percent. This is definitely a concern. I put this back to back to back with the Cooks and Hilton trends this week because he's sort of in a similar boat where you want to drop him, but you I might not really want to. I'd actually be more inclined to drop Jones than Brandon Cooks, right now just given their peripheral numbers, given their environment, I don't think we see this continue for Jones to this degree, but it's definitely not a good sign. After seeing just five point seven percent of the Browns targets in week one, Austin Hooper has seen nineteen point one percent, eighteen point two percent, and twenty six point nine percent of the team's targets from weeks two through four. He now has a top ten target share at the tight end position. Now, I won't lie guys. I almost thought that Hooper would be a drop candidate after week one, but he's really turned things around. Cleveland now is targeting their tight ends at the fifth highest rate in the league, which is something that we figured would happen in this Stefanski offense. It is pretty interesting to see what's going on in Cleveland versus Minnesota since Kevin Stefanski isn't with the Vikings anymore, and that's especially true at the tight end position. In what I talked about earlier, with the Vikings not utilizing their tight ends, the final trend this week is that Josh Allen currently rank outside the top ten in rushing yards at the quarterback position. He was third in quarterback rushing yards last year. Alan sort of reminds me of how people viewed Lamar Jackson earlier in the twenty nineteen season, where Jackson showed clear improvement as a passer, but so many people were like, but you drafted him for his rushing. That's not true. We draft players because we know they can give us that rushing floor, but if they combine that with a good passing ceiling, then you have an awesome fantasy asset. Now, Alan isn't on Jackson's levels from last year, but this trend shows us that Alan is going to be a strong fantasy asset moving forward because he doesn't actually need his rushing anymore to be a super strong fantasy quarterback. Of course, he's been able to find the end zone on the ground and that hasn't hurt. But the main point here with Josh Allen and any other quarterback with rushing upside is that he now has even more ways to hit each and every week. That raises both his floor and his ceiling. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found. You no forget to follow me on Twitter at late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll be back tomorrow with the weekly matchup show.