811: 10 Trends for Week 5

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the lad podcast with your host JJ zacherithas j Jae Zacherwson. What's up everyone, It's JJ Zacharyeson in this episode eight and eleven of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the trends this week, go to Lateround dot com right now and check out all of the site's offerings. There's a Patreon, there's this podcast, there's a totally free newsletter, and then there's a prospect in draft guides. Again that's Late Round dot com. Okay, let's do this. Trend one this week was actually one that I almost talked about on the fifteen Transaction Show. It's just not quite there yet. The player I'm about to talk about, he's more than likely going to get through this round of waivers. But the Patriots need a spark Offensively, they're twenty fourth in total touchdowns this year, they're dead last in the league and umber fires expected points model offensively, which adjusts for strength of opponent. On the season, New England has nine players who have run forty or more routes. The player who leads that group in yards per route run by far is rookie de Mario Douglas. Now, Douglas didn't look that great in my prospect model coming out. He was a sixth round pick. He went to a smaller program and that's a big reason why wide receivers from smaller programs get dinged a little bit in the model. But considering his draft capital delta wasn't that low, which measures how my model viewed a player versus where he got drafted, that's a good sign he did have some decent production metrics. The thing is with Douglas, though you watch him, he's an insanely shifty wide receiver. He's perfect for the slot and that's where he's lined up on eighty six percent of his snaps this year. That's according to PFF. Honestly, a lot of times, slot players don't always have the most amazing production metrics. In college Jujus Smith Schuster has played about half of his snaps the slot this year for New England and he's been far less effective than to Mario Douglas. So keep Douglas on your radar. Quentin Johnson didn't have a big Week four outing with Mike Williams sidelined. He finished that game against the raiders with three targets. That's a number that he hit the week prior to that, but his target share did jump above ten percent for the first time this year. It was twelve and a half percent, and his route participation was a whole lot better. He went from running routes on roughly thirty percent of Justin Herbert's dropbacks to a seventy seven percent rout participation in week four. So if you have Johnston, now is not the time to drop him. I talked about this plenty on the podcast, but I haven't adjusted fantasy points allowed metric that I use instead of simply looking at fantasy points allowed. All it does is adjust fantasy points allowed for strength of opponent, and I do it for defense too, meaning if a team's offense does well against the defense, then that offense isn't one that would rank as an advantageous matchup for fantasy defense. So with that in mind, guess which two offenses have been the worst offenses for opposing defense this year? And adjusted fantasy points allowed basically offenses that you want to avoid targeting because they're not good for your fantasy defense. And this is crazy, but it's Houston and Arizona. Now we're working with small samples, so that plays a role here. But look at Houston so far this season. Baltimore and Indianapolis in weeks one and two they were top eight defenses against them, but over the last two weeks, Jacksonville and Pittsburgh evering thirty second and thirtieth and weekly scoring against the Houston Texans. Meanwhile, with Arizona, they were bad. In Week one, the Commanders were the eighth best defense that week, but then the Giants ranked thirtieth, the Cowboys were twenty sixth, the forty nine Ers were twenty seventh. This Cardinals offense has done well despite facing some really good defenses the last two weeks. Now, these numbers are more volatile during this part of the season versus later, but when you dig into them, they do make sense. The NFL is such a crazy league. Now, speaking of Houston, everyone's rightfully excited about c. J. Stroud, who's looking like a complete stud, But that Texans defense has been low key good this year. From a fantasy perspective, they have back to back top ten performances. According to Next Gen Stats, Houston now ranks first in air yards and air yards per attempt allowed. They're forcing teams to dink and dunk. But they're also eleventh and passing epa per dropback allowed. They're eighth and rushing yards over expected per rush allowed. They're third in pressure rate. This isn't the cake matchup that many expected entering the year. This is a very very well coached team. My prospect model, like Jalen Hyatt, I ended up ranking him ahead of consensus with my rookie rankings as a result, and he's gotten off to a ss loow start, largely because he's not playing a lot, but he saw his snapshere rise from twenty nine percent in week three to sixty percent in week four. His route participation it increased to sixty percent when his previous season high was around forty percent. He's someone that you might want to consider stashing right now. The Giants clearly need to change something up offensively, and yes, you should continue to add Wandel Robinson. Kellen Moore is no longer working for Dallas, and we're seeing a change in how that offense is operated. They've had some really weird game scripts. Let's throw that out there first. But Dallas is currently dead last and airyards per attempt across the league. The only starter with fewer air yards in Dak Prescott who's played four games this year, is Lamar Jackson, But since Dallas has thrown the ball more, their air yards per attempt rate is last according to fantasylife dot COM's utilization report, which is totally free by the way, any of you guys can see this. But according to Fantasy Life's uation report, Prescott is last and average depth of target, with Joe Burrow and Bryce Young just ahead of him. This can help explain why Dak hasn't finished higher than QB seventeen in a given week. This year, the Falcons are throwing the ball more than last year. Over the last two games, they've had pass rates of fifty nine percent and sixty six percent. Because of gamescript, that's at least good to see. Kyle Pitts, though, is still struggling. Pitts has been outplayed by John new Smith to start the season. Part of the reason for that is how those two players are used. John new Smith has lined up out wide on fifteen percent of his routes run. That's according to PFF that numbers doubled for Pits and according to Fantasy Life, eighty percent of John Newsmith's targets have been catchable. For Kyle Pitts, that's sixty percent. Now keep in mind pits hasn't been one hundred percent this year. He's not healthy. I still don't think he's a buy lower anything right now, but he at least has some reason for such a bad start. Terry McLaurin has now seen his target shair increase each week this season. It was about fourteen percent in week one, then eighteen percent, than twenty one percent, and then twenty six percent this past week against Philadelphia. On the season, though, Washington ranks barely above average in wide receiver target share, which is completely wild when you consider their personnel, but there is reason for optimism with McLaurin because of this uptick and target share. The downside, and the big problem here, is that Washington wide receivers have the worst schedule in the league in terms of adjusted Fantasy points allowed from here on out, So you might want to consider selling McLaurin after that big game, though you might want to wait until after this week because they get Chicago. The Eagles faced a more difficult game script in Week four than they had in week three, and in situations like that, I always like to see how teams are using their running backs. For Philadelphia, they leaned on DeAndre Swift a little bit more. After Week three. There was somewhat of a split backfield between Swift and Kenneth Gainwell, but the Eagles were also leading big time. In that game against Washington, things were closer, and Swift ended up seeing a week over week increase in running back rush share of over sixteen percent. His target share was twice as good. His snaphare was ten percentage points better. He's an every week starter moving forward. Not that you needed me to tell you that. The last trend this week is about a rookie tight end. We've seen Sam Laporta breakout already and we're just waiting for Dalton Kincaid. Well, if you have Kincaid, I have some good news for you. Week four was different for him. In week one, Kinkaid ran thirty two routes, Dawson Knox had thirty four. In week two, they both ran twenty two. In week three, they also both ran twenty two, which is really weird. But in week four, Kinkaid ran twenty routes to Dawson Knox's thirteen. Kinkaid had his best route participation of the season, and that led to a twenty percent target share, also a season high. Most of us are struggling at tight end. If the person in your league with King Kaid is frustrated, it could be a nice time to buy him super low. That's it for today's show, though, thanks all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB and make sure you check out the Late Round Fantasy Football Instagram account at Late Round FF. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Weekly Sleeper Show.