903: 10 Trends for Week 1

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacheris j J zacher.

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Speaker 2: Reson What's up everyone?

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Speaker 1: It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode nine hundred and three of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in the shortest Late Round podcast episode of the week. It's this one, the ten Trends episode. This is where I give you ten data driven nuggets that could help sway you one way or another about a particular player or a team. I won't always have a strong take about what I'm saying on this episode, but the information I provide might make you think twice about a situation in fantasy football.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, it's ten trends. It's that simple.

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Speaker 1: Now, before we get to those trends this week, I want to let you know about something cool happening over an Underdog Fantasy. On Wednesday, September fourth, the day this episode is published, Underdog is dropping something special. If you hate when one of your entries gets ruined by a vulture stealing your running backs touchdown, then you'll love Underdog's vulture protection. If you select a designated running back to score a touchdown in your pick A entry, and may get vultured. Underdog will rescue your entry. You can learn more about it on underdog Fantasy dot com and when you're there, sign up with promo code Late Round. Not only will you get access to these cool promotions, but you'll also get a deposit bonus and free copy of the Late Round Draft Guide. That's by signing up using promo code Late Round and then making a deposit. And that's all at underdog Fantasy dot com. Now let's get to this week's ten trends. The first trend this week is about the Baltimore Ravens offense. Last season, the Ravens led the NFL and plays run with a lead that resulted in them finishing the year with the lowest pass rate in all football. But what's wild is that there pass rate over expected actually ranked eleventh in the NFL last year according to NFELO, which is a great resource, by the way, it's nfelo app dot com. And what that means is that when you give their offense a little bit of context, they were way more pass heavy than you realize. If the Ravens take a step back this year, which is almost definitely gonna happen because they were so good last year, it's gonna be hard to consistently.

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Speaker 2: Be that good.

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Speaker 1: They could easily see a more pass heavy approach overall, and that should honestly be the expectation. Now, another team level trend has to do with Pittsburgh. Arthur Smith is now offensive coordinator for the Steelers, as we know, and his offenses typically don't feature a lot of eleven personnel. This is another poll from NFELO, but on first downs only, Smith's Falcons last year ranked thirty second in its use of eleven personnel or three wide sets. In twenty twenty two, they were thirty first. In twenty twenty one, they were also thirty first. We're gonna see George Pickens on the field a lot, but it's gonna be interesting to see if a second wide receiver emerges in Pittsburgh, because that wide out has a shot to see a relatively decent target share of things hit. Because fewer wide receivers on the field means there's fewer alternative options to go to when a quarterback is throwing the ball. Now, I'm not really optimistic about anyone, but it's at least something to watch. I was cool with drafting Hollywood Brown this year, along with basically any Chiefs pass catcher. But with this being a ten Trends episode, I got to call out a trend about Hollywood Brown. Brown has played in the NFL for five years. He's seen his yards per route run rate drop every single year of his career. It started at one point eight to one as a rookie. It's a really good number for a rookie. Then it was one point seven to two, then one point six to one, then one point four to four, and in this past year it was really poor at one point two five. There's a lot of volatility to Hollywood Brown's overall.

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Speaker 2: Profile right now.

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Speaker 1: I bought into him Rice and Worthy because I'm very, very bullish on this Chiefs offense this year, but there's no doubt some concern surrounding Hollywood Brown. There's been a lot of talk about Chris Godwin playing more in the slot this season, and fantasy managers they're excited about the possibility. In his extremely extremely small preseason sample, according to PFF, Godwin ran two thirds of his routes out of the slot. That was more in line with what we saw from twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, but in twenty twenty three, last season, his slot rate fell to thirty seven percent. Now, if you recall last season, Chris Godwin wasn't that great of a fantasy asset. He finishes the wide receiver thirty five in PPR points per game. During his previous four seasons he was wide receiver two, wide receiver fifteen, wide receiver seven, and wide receiver fourteen. But this isn't as simple as he played less than the slot last year. That's why he was bad. That's only part of it, and honestly, it's not even the biggest part of it. Last year, Godwin's yards per route run rate and his target's per out run rate they were right in line with his career averages. He had a fine year on a per route run basis. His average up of target was ten point three. His previous two seasons were at six point zero and seven point six, so it did rise, but that a dot was no different than what we'd seen from Godwin over his first four years of his career. His target share also not that different. In fact, last year, Godwin's target share per game rate was the highest of his career. One of the issues in twenty twenty three was his catch rate. It fell to levels that we haven't seen from him since he was a second year player. It was ten to fifteen percentage points lower than what he'd experienced with Tom Brady, and that's something where this slot alignment could help him a little bit. There's no doubt he'll see more advantage just matchups. His catch rate might increase, and in last year he also only scored twice, so there's some favorable regression coming his way. But him playing in the slot isn't magically gonna necessarily make him a top fifteen wide receiver in fantasy football like he used to be. We have to remember that he had a different quarterback, and most importantly, last year, he was playing in an offense that threw the ball a lot less. In twenty twenty three, Tampa Bay ranked fifteenth in pass rate. With Tom Brady, they were first, first, and third, and before Tom Brady they ranked eighth, sixth, and third. In other words, last year was the first time Chris Godwin was in an offense in the NFL that ranked worse than eighth in pass rate. Now, that team level information is why we shouldn't overinflate this slot stuff. Yes, him lining up in the slot, it should help. It could increase his reception total, but it's not necessarily gonna philosophically change the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an offense. So he should be better than he was last year, but don't overstate this slot stuff in my opinion.

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Speaker 2: I talked about.

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Speaker 1: Samaj Pea Ryan on yesterday's fifteen Transactions episode, but I didn't talk that much about how pe Ryan might impact Isaiah Pachecko, and there's definitely some worry there. Pachecko was set to be a legit belcal for the Chiefs this year before this pe Ryan signing, but if pee Ryan ends up playing the Jeric McKinnon role, that could really cat Pachecko's ceiling.

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Speaker 2: McKinnon missed five regular season games last year.

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Speaker 1: Pachecko was active for four of those games, and in those four contests he finishes the RB four, eight, twenty eight and two. In weekly PPR scoring, he averaged twenty one point eight PPR points per game and a target share per game of sixteen percent. Now, when McKinnon was active last year, Pachecko's PPR points per game average was twelve point seven, significantly lower than that twenty one point eight mark his target share per game rate. It was sixteen percent without McKinnon, it was seven point nine percent with McKinnon. Now it's a small sample, sure, but if pe Ryan plays the same role that McKinnon did, and yes, that's still an if, I don't think we can just assume that happens. But if pe Ryan does play that role, then Pachecko has a legit shot to disappoint. But fortunately for any of you who drafted Pachecko, the Chiefs will be better offensively. It's an offense, like I said earlier, that I've invested in that I feel good about, so I highly doubt he's as low as that twelve point seven PPR points per game.

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Speaker 2: Number this season.

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Speaker 1: There's a good chance that the Dolphins lines in forty nine ers see fewer touchdowns in twenty twenty four than they had in twenty twenty three, at least compared to the rest of the league. Who knows how this kickoff rule is going to change scoring, but since twenty eleven, there have been twenty six teams with next season data who hit three point three offensive touchdowns per game. The three teams to get their last year were the Dolphins lines and forty nine ers. Now, of those twenty six, just one of them. One of the twenty six ended up scoring more touchdowns per game. The following season, eleven of the twenty six saw their touchdowns per game rate drop by a full touchdown. So expect a little regression from those teams this year. It doesn't mean they're gonna be bad. It doesn't mean you need to fade them. I like all three of those offenses. It just means to understand that their performance from the previous year is not automatically repeatable. Now, speaking of the Dolphins, one thing to keep in mind with them is that last year a whole lot of their touchdowns came on the ground versus the air. Their past to rush touchdown rate was fifty two point six percent, meaning fifty two point six percent of their total touchdowns came via the pass. Only eight teams last year had rates below fifty three percent, and the these eight teams could be considered at least moderate regression candidates. In other words, we'd expect these teams to see their touchdowns skew towards the pass a little bit more than it did last year. Those teams are Arizona, Baltimore, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Philly, Pittsburgh, and Tennessee. Pittsburgh and Tennessee, those are two teams in particular that should see a really big swing because both of them were under forty seven percent last year, so fewer than forty seven percent of their touchdowns came via the air. Now, some of those teams that I just listed, they're going to skew more towards the run because they do have mobile quarterbacks. But it's at least something to keep in mind. This next trend is something that was lifted from the Late Round Draft Guide, but I think it's interesting. I want to bring it up because it's very, very important when looking at middle round running backs now to find that as running backs drafted between RB twenty five and RB forty two, you generally want to target backs from what I've called ambiguous backfield.

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Speaker 2: Their backfields where.

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Speaker 1: A running back has a teammate who's also drafted near him or in the middle rounds with him. You can sort of place middle round running backs into four separate backfields. The first is where they have a teammate running back getting drafted in the top twelve or as an RB one. The second is when they have a teammate drafted as an RB two or the RB thirteen to RB twenty four. The third is when they have a middle round teammate getting drafted alongside with them in the middle rounds.

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Speaker 2: The fourth is when they have.

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Speaker 1: No teammate being drafted near them they have a late round running back teammate. Now in the draft guide, I talk about moderate and true breakouts. Moderate breakouts or when players exceed ADP expectation by three or more PPR points per game. True breakouts or when players exceed ADP expectation by six.

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Speaker 2: Or more PPR points per game.

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Speaker 1: Middle round running backs with middle round teammates the truest of true ambiguous backfields. They have a true breakout rate of ten points. No other subset has a true breakout rate above three percent. That's why all off season I've told people to target the backs from Cincinnati or Tennessee. The median outcome is that it's a split backfield. That Tajy Spears and Tony Pollard they're sharing a backfield together. That Chase Brown and Zach Moss, they're just sharing a backfield. But there's more upside with players from those backfields than players who are in more standalone backfields, and upside in most rounds, but definitely the middle rounds. That's all we should be caring about. Continue to target those ambiguous backfields, and even if we're past your draft, you know that you can trade for them right now too. I surprisingly ended up with a decent amount of Kenneth Walker this year across my leagues. His early down explosiveness, his touchdown scoring ability that's never really been in question.

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Speaker 2: It's all about his receiving.

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Speaker 1: Walker failed to hit a best season reception share in college above nine percent. We usually won our prospects to be over the ten percent mark now. Fortunately he had good marks elsewhere. He still scored ninety four point one in the ZAP model, which is really good. But in the NFL we haven't seen the receiving work.

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Speaker 2: Not yet.

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Speaker 1: He's been RB twenty and RB seventeen in PPR points per game during his first two NFL seasons, and that's largely driven by the fact that his target share per game rates haven't topped eight percent. That's not a very high number for a high volume back. The reason I've been okay drafting him though this year is because this new coaching staff seems to really like him. I also don't think he's incapable of catching passes now. I doubt that he's a fifteen percent target share guy. But even if he gets to like a ten percent eleven percent target share, he could finish the year in RB one territory and in an area of the draft with a lot of question marks.

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Speaker 2: I was fine with leaning into that a little bit.

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Speaker 1: But make no mistake, you guys, we have not seen it yet from Kenneth Walker. I'm not sure the expectation should simply be that he's going to catch a ton of passes this year, but playing probability, it's okay to think that he might. The last trend this week is about one of the most interesting storylines, in my opinion, in all fantasy football, and that's with the Green Bay backfield. Matt Lafleur has historically been a coach who splits his backfields. The Titans split their backfield during the season that he was there as offensive coordinator, and it took a while for him to finally give Derrick Henry a full workload down the stretch in twenty eighteen. Henry wasn't fully Derrick Henry that year, but still it took Matt Lafleur a little bit of time to give Derrick Henry that backfield. But he's been in Green Bay since twenty nineteen. Now that's five seasons. In his five seasons there, the Packers have given a running back eighty percent or more of the team's running back harries just eight times. Only Baltimore, Atlanta, and Detroit during that period have had fewer games where that's been the case. Jacksonville, Cincinnati, Tennessee, Vegas, and the New York Giants have all been over the forty mark.

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Speaker 2: Green Bay is at eight. Now.

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Speaker 1: Obviously, personnel is going to dictate something like this, or we hope that it would. And that's why we should feel good about Josh Jacobs early on in the season because AJ Dillon's out and Marshaw Lloyd is banged up.

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Speaker 2: But here's the thing.

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Speaker 1: If Jacobs doesn't see a huge backfield share, assuming Marshawn Lloyd is out, maybe Lloyd is out week one, maybe week two, that might signal that we want to trade away Jacobs after week one, as long as there's a good performance, because his competition is only going to get tougher. I'm expecting Jacobs, though, to have a really good month of September, just given how everything has fallen. 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 messaging for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found indevort to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I'll be back tomorrow with the weekly Sleeper Show.