286: 10 Trends for Week 4

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Speaker 1: This is the Lab Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j Jake zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachareson, the editor in chief at FanDuel and at Number five dot com. And this is episode two hundred and eighty six of the Late Round Podcast, one of the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Before we dig into this week's ten trends, I want to remind you guys to check out odds Fire. It's a really cool tool for your research, whether it's for sports betting, daily, fantasy football, or even your season long leagues. You can shop for the best lines in each market and see which side is getting the most bets in money, and that's helpful when making decisions in fantasy football. Odds Fires the premier odds comparison experience across major bookmakers in the regulated US market. Never settle, always get the best odds. Check out the experience for free now on oddsfire dot com. Gambling problem Call one eight high hundred Gambler. The first trend for today's show is that the Rams running backs have seen seven point seven percent of the team's targets. This year. Not only is that the lowest mark in the league, but no other team is below ten point nine percent. Now. Todd Gurley made a living getting targeted out of the backfield under Sean McVay, and those have essentially evaporated. Through three weeks, He's averaging just two targets per game when he averaged almost six per game last season. As a result, Gurley's just not been the fantasy asset that a lot of people were hoping for when they drafted him in the second round back in August. And I don't think that we can just assume the Rams are going to start using their running backs more as receivers. I should say I would be surprised if they kept up this pace, but I don't see regression to the mean from the standpoint of them getting close to how they utilized Todd Gurley over the last couple of seasons. So Gurley may see some uptick in receiving volume, but I wouldn't bank on five targets per game moving forward. New England has run zero plays while trailing this season. Denver. They the league in plays while trailing at two hundred and eight. The weird part with Denver is that They actually have a below average pass to rush attempt ratio this year, which means they really don't trust Joe Flacco. They're trailing a lot, and they still have a low ratio, So these negative game scripts haven't even benefited the team's pass catchers as much as it could. Then with New England, we need to panic about Sony Michelle. I had him as a cell candidate on last week's fifteen Transaction Show, and this is precisely why New England's had positive game scripts all season long, and Michelle hasn't done a whole lot despite that. Maybe they're saving him for later in the season, but even still, you don't have time to wait around. Unlike the Patriots, you're not guaranteed a playoff spot this year. Trend Number three is that based on his rushing and receiving yardage totals, Jeff Wilson should have point three to six touchdowns this season. Instead he has four. That's the largest discrepancy in the entire league. Now, these totals are compared to the average for running backs over the last five years, so I'm looking at how many rushing yards typically have equated to a rushing touchdown over this time period, which is one hundred and forty five yards, and I'm doing the same for receiving, and thus far Jeff Wilson should have just point three to six touchdowns based on his yardage total. Now, clearly he's seen work in high leverage situations, which changes this formula a bit. We're just trying to spot outliers at a high level here, though, But Wilson is on top of that list, with mark Ingram at number two and Derreck Henry at number three. Among running backs, Jimmy Graham saw twenty one point four percent of green based targets in Week one against Chicago. In his two games since, he's failed to reach a six percent target share and his target shair has gone down week over week. This is really just to say that Jimmy Graham probably can't be relied upon week in and week out like some of you are hoping for. After week one, the workloads isn't there. Meanwhile, trend five tells us a different story about another tight end. Darren Waller has over thirty percent of Oakland's targets through three weeks. George Kittle is second in tight end target chair, but he's under twenty five percent, so yes, that means that Darren Waller has by far the highest target share among tight ends to start the year. The strange thing with these higher targeted tight ends this season, though, has been their lack of scoring. Waller doesn't have a touchdown, Kittle doesn't have a touchdown, Kelsey has just one, Ertz hasn't scored. Expect that to regress positively moving forward. Waller does look like the late round tight end this year though, based on volume alone, but there have been a lot of other good ones too, like Mark Andrews and Delaney Walker. The next trend is that the Broncos still don't have a sack this season. I have no idea how this is possible with the talent that they have on defense and a defensive minded head coach, and they faced Chicago, Oakland and Green Bay this year, teams who rank in the bottom half of the league in sack rate. This has obviously gotten them in trouble from a fantasy perspective. Denver's defense ranked twenty fifth and weekly scoring against Oakland in Week one. They were thirtieth against Chicago and they were twenty eighth against Green Bay. On paper, they've got a good matchup this week at home against Jacksonville, but because of the way that they're playing defense, they're not a locked in play like they would have been earlier in the season. Trends seven has yet another one about the Broncos, and it's that Joe Flacco has thrown at fifteen or more air yards on just nine point one percent of his attempts this year. That's the lowest mark in the league when you don't count Teddy Bridgewater, who hasn't played a full two games. For even more context, the lowest deep ball rate among two hundred plus attempt quarterbacks last year came from Nick Mullins. He threw it deep on twelve point eight percent of his attempts. So Flacco's nine point one percent rate is really really low, and it's really really concerning for players like Emmanuel Sanders in Cortland Sutton, but Philip Lindsay and Royce Freeman have benefited from it. They've combined for almost twenty eight percent of Denver's targets. The Broncos have targeted their running backs at one of the higher rates in the league. And for what it's worth, Lamar Jackson is throwing it deep at the highest rate in the NFL at thirty two percent. That's a key reason Hollywood Brown was a by candidate this week on the fifteen Transaction Show. The next trend is kind of a weird one, and it's that Devonte Parker is fourth in the NFL and air yards through three weeks, and he's also fourth in targets that have traveled fifteen or more air yards. We actually should expect some positive regression for Parker moving forward. I know his situation is trash, it's horrendous, and I know he's caught just six of his twenty targets this year, but there's no place to go for the Dolphins team. But up right, right, maybe he's worth a roster spot in deeper formats at least. I just wouldn't expect him to become some weekly reliable option given how that team is functioning. Trend nine is that Emmanuel Sanders, Preston Williams, and Taylor Gabriel all have one hundred percent of their teams receiving touchdowns to start the year. That's because the Broncos have just two passing touchdowns, the Dolphins have one, and the Bears have three. And actually there's a regression alert that stems from this trend. Sutton suffered from the lack of touchdowns, and he now has the second most receiving yards at wide receiver without a score. If I felt better about Joe Flacco throwing the ball down the field, I'd consider Sutton a by candidate, but right now he's simply a positive regression candidate. That's a lot less fun. The final trend today is that only two teams have neutral script pass to rush of tempor ratios below one. A couple of teams are actually exactly at one, but just two of them are below one, and these are teams that are running it more than passing it when games are within six points. The first is a fairly obvious one, and that's Baltimore. They're at point nine to three. The other one, though, and they actually have the lowest in the NFL, is San Francisco at point eight six. This doesn't bode well for the fantasy options in that offense. George Kittle, as I mentioned earlier, has a good target share in the offense, but the highest target share for a wide receiver is Deebo Samuel. He's under seventeen percent and the rest of the pass catchers are under ten percent, and that's of an overall passing pie that's clearly not very big. So I hate to say it, but the only player who's going to give you reliable production despite this offense operating fairly well might be George Kittle this season, at least through the air. 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 podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and if you could do me a favor if you listen to the show through Apple Podcasts, leave the show a rating and review, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. I'm on there throughout the week tweeting trends similar to the ones that you hear on the show, and I'm also answering your fantasy football questions. Thanks everyone, I'll talk to you tomorrow with the Matchup show.