682: 10 Trends for Week 4

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Speaker 1: This is the Late Podcast with with your host JJ Zachera, JJ Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen in this episode six hundred and eighty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thank you for tuning in. Fandel and GMC are bringing you the GMC Sierra Mountain Climber Pick Them, a free to play contest series that gives you a chance to win a share of ten thousand dollars in Fandal site credit every Sunday courtesy of GMC. Every Sunday during the NFL season, you'll have a chance to answer questions based in the day's one pm and four twenty five PM games. The more questions you answer correctly, the higher up the mountain you'll move. If during any week you answer every question correctly for a perfect score, you'll reach the summit and when your share of ten thousand dollars in site credit. The contest series is now live, so head Tofandel dot com Slash Free Slash Contest slash GMC to start climbing the mountain. It's a ten trend show. Let's do this. So far this season, no quarterback has a higher completion percentage on fifteen plus air yard throws than to a tongue of ioloa. After everything people were saying about his deep ball ability, here we are. But here's the thing. I talked about this multiple times over the offseason. Tua's deep ball ability was never in question, at least for me. It was his frequency that I think we needed a question. He hadn't been throwing it deep very often as a starter, and to be honest, that hasn't changed all that much. He's still throwing at fifteen plus air yards at a below average rate. He's just completing a lot of those throws. But it works in an offense like this because he has two wide receivers who are great after the catch. That's why this marriage with Mike McDaniel can work. Amari Cooper might be the best Alpha that no one's talking about right now in fantasy football. He had a rough Week one, yes, but over the last two weeks, Cooper's ranked in the top ten and weekly wide receiver scoring, and he's seen target shairs of thirty seven percent and thirty five and a half percent. Ceedee Lamb is the only other wide receiver to have hit a thirty five percent target chair in both weeks two and three. I think the people with Amari Cooper understand what they have, but I don't think the rest of the fantasy world does. Antonio Gibson's peripherals keep getting worse. He started the season with almost a twenty percent target share in week one, that it was nine percent, and then two point four percent this past week. Meanwhile, his snapshare thanks to gamescript, has gone from sixty four percent to fifty four percent to forty four percent each week. It's tough to trust a player like this in fantasy football now running back isn't very deep, but the transaction from last week's fifteen Transaction show remains for Antonio Gibson, He's still a cell. Jonathan Taylor's having kind of a slow start to the season, but if you want to look at his performance thus far from a half glass full perspective, get this and twenty two twenty one, Taylor handled seventy eight point two percent of Indies' running back rushes per game this year. That's up by over six percentage points. In twenty twenty one. He had a nine point four percent target share per game this year. That's up by over a full percentage point, so his usage really isn't any different. He's just not quite as effective and he's only got one touchdown through three games. He's still the player that you want most, maybe aside from Cooper Cup and all of fantasy football. Let's talk about the Rams backfield. In Week one, it was Darryl Henderson. He played eighty two percent of the team snaps. In Week two, that number fell to fifty six point five percent. This past week it was fifty percent. Cam Akers out rushed Henderson twelve to four on Sunday. This is looking like a mess for fantasy purposes, but if you want some optimism around Henderson, the Rams did use him more in the first half this past week. Henderson's also played over eighty four percent of the Rams snaps on third down over the last two weeks, according to four for four Staticsplorer, So when they get into an actual negative game script, we're gonna see Moore Henderson. That's at least good for fantasy purposes. Breeze Hall played more than half of the Jets snaps for the first time this past week, and his overall usage leap frogged Michael Carter's for the first time this year too. In weeks one and two, Hall was averaging a nine point nine percent target share, Carter was at thirteen point seven percent, and Carter had seventeen carries Hall had thirteen. In week three, Carter had eleven carries to Hall's eight, but Hall had eleven targets to Carter's two. According to PFF, Hall ran eight more routes than Carter this past week. The week prior, Carter ran seventeen more routes. Maybe this is just natural variance. Maybe we're gonna see this flip flop all year, but this could be the start of the Jets using breeze Hall a little bit more. Remember, rookies tend to perform better during the second half of the season. If you have Lamar Jackson in fantasy right now, chances are you're looking pretty good. Sometimes single players can really carry you over small stretches, and that's going on with Lamar Jackson. But I'm not sure people realize how good he's been. He's averaging thirty four point one standard Fantasy points per game. During his MVP season, the one where he broke Fantasy Football, that average was twenty seven point seven. What he's doing right now is absolutely insane. Of course, he's not going to keep up this pace, but it does seem like Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Lamar Jackson they're separating themselves from the pack this year. Speaking of Jalen Hurts, over the last two weeks, he's targeted DeVante Smith a lot more. Thank god, Smith has seen about a twenty nine percent target share over the last two weeks. He's actually seen more targets than aj Brown during this two week stretch. It's good news for anyone who invested in those middle rounds second year wide receivers this year. Now, if only Elijah mor could get going through three games, the Joe Flacco led Jets have a pass rate of seventy three point one percent. Meanwhile, the Bears have a pass rate of thirty point two percent. I can't even explain how insane those two numbers are. Well, I guess I can explain it. I'm gonna explain it. Both of those numbers are going to regress since twenty eleven. The highest pass rate that we've seen from a team was from the twenty thirteen Atlanta Falcons. They won four games that year, and they threw it on over sixty seven percent of their total pass and rush attempts, so the Jets are well above that. Meanwhile, on the other end, the low is from the twenty twenty Baltimore Ravens. They had a pass rate of just forty two percent, so that's way higher than where the Bears are at. This is why looking at target share numbers can be so important. The Jets will probably be more pass heavy than the average team this year because of Gamescript, but they won't be like this, so understanding how that impacts players on the team that's so important. I like Tyler Conklin, for example. I think he's a decent AD at a really bad position this week, but he has a sixteen percent target chair. It's not like he's over that twenty percent mark. If he maintains that target share but the Jets throw it at a more normal rate, he's gonna suffer a little bit in fantasy football. That doesn't mean to avoid Conklin. I had him as an AD on the fifteen Transaction Show for a reason. It just means that volume like this can really impact fantasy football in small samples. Now, the last trend this week is kind of a wild one. There are two teams so far this year who have averaged one offensive touchdown per game. Every other team has averaged more. The two teams, the Broncos and the Buccaneers. Better days are ahead for both offenses. If you look at their rate of scoring per drive, so both a field goal or a touchdown. The Broncos ranked fourteenth in scoring rate, the Buccaneers aren't that far behind them. Denver's actually tenth in yards per drive. The Buccaneers are fifteenth, So overall, I would still be very patient with these offenses. That's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and know for to follow me on Twitter at LATEROUNDQB. Check out lateround dot com for everything I'm offering. 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