Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is the Late Podcast with your host JJ zacher
Retha j J. Zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ
zachar Esen in this episode ten sixty seven of the
Late Round Fantasy Football podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Before
I get to the trends this week, I just want
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to send another reminder to subscribe to the Late Round newsletter.
It's free and you get my content straight to your inbox.
Just had to Lateround dot com, click newsletter and sign up.
It just takes a couple of seconds. Now let's get
to these trends. The Steelers were pass heavier than usual
against the Ravens on Sunday. I don't know if this
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is a sign of things to come, but it was
kind of encouraging from a fantasy perspective. According to Fantasy
Life's pass right over expected data, Pittsburgh saw plus nine
percent pass right over expected against Baltimore. That was the
highest of their season, and it was just the second
time they've been over plus us three percent this season.
The Steelers finally really focused their offense around DK Metcalf.
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He saw thirty eight percent target chair and his fourteen
point eight average up the target was his highest since
Week ten. It was his second highest since Week seven.
I know Arthur Smith is an avid listener of the
Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, so already more of that, please.
Dan Campbell started calling plays for the Lions in Week
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ten against Washington. Up until that point in time, in
their five previous games, Jamiir Gibbs had peaked at a
ten point seven percent target chair and during that stretch
of five games, he hit a ten percent target chair
just once. His target chair per game rate was eight
point six percent. From week one through week nine, Gibbs
had a target chair per game rate of thirteen percent.
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But since Campbell took over play calling duties, Gibbs has
had a target share per game rate of twenty one percent.
Now this could be Sam Laporter related. Laporter went down
with a season ending injury in Week ten. That's exactly
when this trend started. Regardless, gives us seeing more work
through the air. That's why he's been so dominant in
fantasy football. It'll be interesting to see how it all
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translates to the fantasy playoffs. Though Detroit they get the Rams, Steelers,
and Vikings. Not only are those teams bottom twelve matchups
for running backs by justin fantasy points allowed, they're also
bottom twelve teams and adjusted target share allowed to running backs.
Not that you're benching Jamior Gibbs. Of course, Trevor Lawrence
has been better in fantasy football than you realize. It
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was a brutal start to his season, but there may
be some anchoring bias going on. After he averages twelve
point three standard fantasy points per game across his first
four games. Since Week five, Lawrence is averaging eighteen point
six points per game. He's essentially been a low end
QB one, high end QB two for most of the year,
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and with Jacobe Meyers over the last four weeks, Lawrence
hasn't had fewer than fifteen points in a game. Now.
I don't know if he's going to be super usable
against the Jets, Broncos, and Colts that's his schedule in
the fantasy playoffs, but I do think he's been a
better option than people realize. The Cowboys traded for Quinn
Williams mid season. He's been playing with them since Week eleven,
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so it's been four weeks now. Across the Cowboys first
nine games, they allowed a little over one hundred and
ten running back rushing yards per game. Backs were averaging
four point nine yards per carry against them. Over their
last four games, all with Williams, Dallas has given up
fifty five running back rushing yards per game, so half
of what they were allowing pre trade. Their yards per
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carry allowed has gone from four point nine to four
point one. Now, matchup is obviously going to play a
role here, but the Cowboys over their last four games,
they've faced Ashton Genty, Saquon Barkley the Chiefs running backs,
and then Jamier Gibbs and David Montgomery. The first two
backs they underperformed on the ground, and Gibbs did two.
By his standards, Dallas is becoming a beautiful pass funnel
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for fantasy purposes. Speaking of the Cowboys, let's look at
their offense for a second. Dallas's offense leads the league
in yards per game, and the offense has by far
the most passing yards per game Dak Prescott on the year.
From a fantasy perspective, he's the QB four, averaging nineteen
point nine standard fantasy points per game. But here's what's
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really impressive about that. When looking at justin fantasy points allowed,
Dallas's median opponents so far this season has been the
fifth toughest in all of football, which means that you
could argue that from a fantasy football perspective, the Cowboys
have had a bottom five schedule for quarterbacks in the league,
and when you dig into it, you can see that
Dak has faced just four top half opponents this year
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by justin Fantasy points allowed, the Giants, Bears, Lions, and Commanders.
Everyone else has ranked eighteenth or worse in terms of
being a favorable opponent, and really Dak hasn't performed significantly
better or worse in those matchups. Now, in the fantasy playoffs,
Dallas gets the Vikings, Charger and Commanders. Those first two
matchups are not a cakewalk and that's why Dallas has
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one of the toughest playoff schedules for quarterbacks. But given
this passing attacks performance in fantasy, I wouldn't be overly worried,
and that Commander's game in Week seventeen it could be
a great one. Without Romadonesday on Sunday, the Bears ran
twelve personnel on thirty four percent of their offensive snaps
according to Fantasy Life data. Across the rest of the season,
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that number has been twenty nine percent, so there was
a little bit more twelve personnel. That's not that surprising
when you have Colston Loveland and Cole Comet. The crazy thing, though,
is that Comet actually ran one more route than Colston Loveland.
Loveland was at just a fifty nine percent route share
and he hasn't been above a seventy percent route participation
rate since Week nine, that's when Cole Comet was hurt. Now, look,
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Loveland looks like the real deal. His secondary numbers they're
great for a rookie tight end, but until we see
these route shares change, he's gonna have to be super
special in the efficiency front to be higher end fantasy asset.
In the Fantasy playoffs, we saw Marie and Hampton on
a football field again. That was great. He was active
against the Eagles on Monday night. I thought he looked
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pretty good considering the injury. The problem was that he
didn't have a great snapshare compared to Cammani Videll. Hampton
had a thirty one percent snapshare on Monday night. Videll
was at sixty nine percent. But when Hampton was on
the field, he was touching the ball. Despite the snap discrepancy.
Hampton had just one fewer rush and one fewer target
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than Videll against the Eagles, and Hampton found the end zone.
My guess is to why we saw the snapshare difference.
It's two things. One they probably want to ease Hampton
back into that lineup, but number two, he had a
blown pass pro rep that forced them off the field.
I still think Hampton's going to see a lot of
work for the Chargers down the stretch, but we could
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see a scenario where Videll's getting more work because of
his pass pro similar to what we have in New England,
and that at least hurt Hampton's ceiling to degree. Now
this is pretty obvious, but I think we all should
be pretty nervous about this Colts offense without Daniel Jones.
And when this kind of thing happens, a lot of
people just automatically go to the pass catchers, which fair,
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but the offense itself is gonna be worse. It's also
going to impact Jonathan Taylor a ton. And look, we
haven't seen Taylor play as well recently, at least from
a fantasy perspective. He's averaged just eleven point seven pper
points per game over his last three. That number was
twenty seven point four across his first ten, and one
thing I didn't like seeing in week fourteen was that
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he didn't see a single target. Things were really cooking
for him on the usage front in this offense. Any
sort of change brings a lot more volatility to his profile.
And then look the upcoming schedule. It's not amazing the
Colts get the Seahawks, the forty nine ers, and then
the Jags and the Fantasy playoffs. We just saw Taylor
post eleven pper points against Jacksonville, and we know that
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Seattle is good defensively. It's pretty amazing how things can
change so fast in this game, both for the Colts
but for us fantasy managers too. I'm still relatively bullish
about Lamar Jackson turning things around in the Fantasy playoffs,
at least compared to how the average fantasy manager probably
views it. Jackson came back from his injury in week nine.
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From week nine to week twelve, he had just one
game with more than one design rush attempt. Over his
last two games, he's had two design rush attempts in
both games. And then what I think is helpful here
is that over his last three games. He's seen five
to three and five scrambles. In his three games prior
to that. Coming off the injury, he was at two,
three and one. Jackson gave us that stinker on Thanksgiving,
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but he was also just a couple of weird plays
away from having a usable performance, and then he posted
twenty one standard Fantasy points on Sunday. He had forty
three rushing yards as the most of these had since
he was injured in Week four. With games against the
Bengals and Patriots over their next two, I think it
can be okay. The rushing is at least trending in
the right direction. I'm gonna end today's show with some
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data on Michael Wilson because this Michael Wilson's stuff is
absolutely wild. In games with Marvin Harrison Junior this year,
Wilson's averaged five point eight PPR points per game. He
doesn't have a single game with more than nine point
one PPR points. In games without Harrison Junior, He's averaged
thirty point eight. He scored thirty three point five, twenty
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one point eight, and thirty seven point two PPR points. Now,
I've seen the narrative out there that the Cardinals are
just passing more without Marvin Harrison Junior. That's what's really
helping Michael Wilson. But this is also why we look
at target share. Michael Wilson has had target shares of
thirty two percent, thirty three percent, and thirty six percent
in his three games without Harrison Junior and Marvin Harrison
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Junior short career, he's gotten too a thirty percent target
shair just three times. Now. Another narrative that's out there
is that Marvin Harrison Junior he could be doing this
with fifteen targets two And while I'm someone who absolutely
believes that targets are earned, I do think this switch
to Jakobe percent is making a real impact. Consider this.
Kyler Murray played the first five weeks of the season
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as their starter. In those five games, according to Fantasy
Points data, the top wide receiver, so this would exclude
Trey McBride, but the top wide receiver never saw higher
than a twenty three percent first read target share in
any of those five games. Trey McBride was consistently over
that mark. Then Jacoby Brissette takes over in Week six.
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Since then, the team's top wide receiver. He's been at
or above that twenty three percent mark in all but
one game. Even Marvin Harrison Junior, when he was active
earlier this year, with percent he had first read target
share games of twenty seven percent, fifty six percent, and
thirty eight percent. Michael Wilson has been at forty percent,
thirty seven percent, and fifty three percent in his three
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games without Marv. Now, you could say that targets are
more consolidated when Marvin Harrison Junior is out, But like
I said, Marvin Harrison Junior's first read target shares they've
also been higher with Brissett two significantly higher. So I
think a combination of things is happening here. One, the
Cardinals are weak at wide receiver, so it's a little
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bit easier for Michael Wilson to see looks when Marvin
Harrison Junior's out, and it's in an offense that has
the highest pass rate to overexpect it in all of football.
But Jacoby Pursett is likely just not getting through his
reads the same way that Kyler Murray was, or Bresett
just might be more of an aggressive passer that checks
out When you see that sixteen point five percent of
his throws are tight window throws. That's according to next
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Gen stats. Kyler Murray this year was at thirteen point
seven percent. What I do think we can probably conclude
is that if Marvin Harrison Junior were playing as his
top target, as Jacoby Presett's top target, I would imagine
that Harrison Junior would be getting more looks than he
did with Kyler Murray now that we have more data
on it, but without Marvin Harrison Junior, so many more
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looks are going to Michael Wilson because this is a
tendency of Jacoby Brissett's and Michael Wilson is capitalizing and
showing people that he's just been probably unfairly buried the
last couple of seasons. That's 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
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can be found, and to follow me on Twitter and
on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone.
I'll be back in your ears tomorrow with the Weekly
Sleeper Show.