569: 10 Trends for Week 8

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j Jake Zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at fandel and at number fire dot com. And this is episode five hundred and sixty nine of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Hey, football fans, Fandel is giving you the opportunity to bet on Week eight of the NFL season. All you have to do is go to Sportsbook dot Fandle dot com or download the Fandels Sportsbook app, place a three or more leg same game parlay wager with cash on any Week eight NFL game, and if your bet loses, you get a refund and site credit with a max refund of ten dollars. 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Same game parlay available for multiple sports in all states on mobile slash web gambling problem called one hundred gambler, visit fandel dot com slash RG in Connecticut call eight eight eight seven eight nine seven seven to seven seven, or visit CCPG dot org slash chat in Indiana call one hundred nine with it for confidential Hall of Michigan called one hundred two seven zero seven one one seven and Tennessee called the red line at one hundred eight eight nine nine seven eight nine and West Virginia visit one hundred gambler dot net and Arizona called one hundred next step or texts next step to five three three four to two. Jalen Hurts is the only quarterback in fantasy football who scored at least twenty standard Fantasy points in every game this year. He scored no fewer than twenty and a half points, and he's been a top twelve quarterback every single week. No other quarterback has scored seventeen or more fantasy points in every game. Hurts is h at twenty and a half in every game. He's showing us why rushing at the position matters. It's not everything. Quarterbacks can be great in fantasy without the rushing component, but quarterbacks don't need to be elite passers to be elite fantasy quarterbacks can do what Hurts does with his legs. On the season, only Lamar Jackson has more rushing yards, and Hurts is tied with Sam Darnold for the league lead and rushing touchdowns. At quarterback, Tom Brady is pacing to have one of the highest touchdown totals of his career, if not the highest, especially with seventeen games. A lot of that is being fueled by how the Buccaneers are calling plays close to the goal line, or rather how many plays they're getting at the goal line. If you've watched any Tampa Bay games, especially this past week, then you know this just by watching. But here's some data for you. On the season, Tom Brady has nine passing touchdowns from within the opponent's five yard line. That's three more than any other quarterback. Unsurprisingly, no team has thrown the ball more frequently from that area of the field. But I should note that Tampa Bay is not the leader in pass rate at the goal line, not even close. They're actually just inside the top half of the league and pass rate there. The Bucks are just there all the time because the offense is so good, so they're able to get volume both through the air and on the ground. It's allowed Tom Brady to maintain his high end fantasy relevancy, and it's allowed Leonard Fournette to be a pleasant RB one surprise. The next trend is one that was tweeted by NFL Networks Andrew Siciliano. The Bears have failed to throw for two hundred or more net passing yards that include sacks. They haven't done that in a single game this year. They're the first team since the two thousand and eight Titans to go the first seven or more games without a two hundred plus yard passing game. Now I dug into this a little bit more. Chicago's quarterbacks have produced half the number of passing yards this year as Rams quarterbacks. Meanwhile, the Chiefs, Raiders, and Buccaneers all have more than double the number of quarterback passing yards than the Bears have. It's honestly depressing speaking of depressing, let's talk about the Jets. They haven't been great for fantasy this year, but Corey Davis has had some spiked weeks, and a lot of that is because of touchdowns. On the season, Davis has four touchdowns, the Jets have five total passing touchdow As a team. That eighty percent touchdown share is the highest in the league since twenty eleven. The highest wide receiver touchdown share came from Mike Evans in twenty fourteen. That's when he scored twelve of Tampa Bay's twenty one passing touchdowns. So chances are Davis won't be able to maintain this. What needs to happen in order for Davis to score touchdowns is that the just just need to throw more touchdowns in general. Jonathan Taylor has been a top ten running back in fantasy football in each of the last four weeks. He's also had a single game low target share of just nine point four percent during this time, and he's averaging an eleven percent target share per game during this stretch. Now, for some context, when you compare that to the first three games, Taylor failed to hit a ten percent share in two of his first three and we've seen a shift in how the Colts are using him. According to Pro Football Focus, from weeks one to three, Nahim Heines ran twenty more routes than Jonathan Taylor did. From weeks four through seven, Taylor's run fifty eight rounds, Nahim Hines has run thirty. There's a very simple reason as to why this is happening. Indianapolis is winning. They started the season zero and three, and that's when they utilized Nahim Heinz Moore in that third down roll. They're three to one over their last four, but that one loss was that overtime loss to Baltimore where they led for a lot of the game. That's allowed Jonathan Taylor to be more involved in this offense. The better the Colts play, the better Jonathan Taylor will be in fantasy football. Chase Edmonds was averaging almost fifteen PPR points per game across the first four weeks in the season. Over his last three games, he scored four point four, eight and ten fantasy points. If you have Edmunds, I'd only be moderately concerned about this change in output. His target share per game has fallen by about four percentage points. Out of that split, and his running back rush share is a little bit skewed because of an injury. The bigger thing with Edmonds is that he's doing what we projected him to do. This is basically his median outcome. There was a slight chance that Edmonds would have ended up being the goal line back this year. So what was projected to happen, which was James Connor playing that role. That's happened. And it doesn't help Edmunds that the Cardinals have been so good, so they're not in hurry up mode very often. But Edmunds still doesn't have a touchdown this year. That should change eventually, even if he's not seeing goaline work. In Brandon Ayuk's twelve games played last year, and remember he was a rookie, but in his twelve games played last year, he had a target share of seventeen percent or more eight times, so eight of twelve games he had a target share at or above seventeen percent. He's played six games this year and his highest target share in a game has been fifteen point eight percent. This probably doesn't need to be said, but you can't come close to trusting Brandon Ayuk in fantasy football this next trend exists just to point out the silliness of Devonte adams workload. In Week seven, Adams had his lowest target share of the season, with a twenty point six percent share, which is still totally fine, but it's low for Devant Adams. Now, I went back and I looked at his regular season game locks and in games where he didn't get injured, he hasn't had a single game target shair below twenty percent since Week three of twenty nineteen. I mean, think about what that means. That's absolutely ridiculous. So I had to share it. The Rams really haven't been targeting their running backs in the passing game over the last few seasons. Sean mcvayh got to LA in twenty seventeen. That year the Rams were twentieth and running back target share. The next year they ranked twenty third, and twenty nineteen they were dead. Last last year they were thirtieth. Now this season, they're last in the league with an eleven point three percent running back target chair. Darryl Henderson just had his first game where he finished outside the top twenty and weekly running back scoring in PPR formats, and the good news is that he's the one who's seeing a huge backfield share in that offense, so that low team running back target share is less of a deal for Darryl Henderson. He's still averaging a ten and a half percent target share per game, so as long as he keeps this bell coow roll, he should be absolutely fine. The last trend this week is about DeAndre Hopkins. If you recall, he was a cell candidate on last week's fifteen Transaction Show and he ended up scoring a touchdown in Week seven. On the season, Hopkins is now averaging a touchdown per game, and he's averaging a touchdown on every six point seven targets. For some context, that's the best mark in the league among relevant wide receivers, and his season high within that statistic that came back in twenty seventeen. That season, he averaged a touchdown on every thirteen point four targets. So needless to say, Hopkins is scoring unlike any other season of his NFL career. That's going to do 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 podcast can be found and evergots follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow.