1029: Week 5 Sleepers

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1029 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings, thanks for tuning in. There's no better way to get closer to the action with DraftKings Daily Fantasy, the ultimate destination for football fans. New customers can play free for their share of millions and prizes with their first deposit of $5 or more. Download the DraftKings Daily Fantasy app and enter promo code LATEROUND to play free for your share of millions. The crown is yours. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. New York? Call 8778-HOPE-NY. And Connecticut? Call 888-789-77777.

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Last week's episode had a lot of big hits and had a lot of big misses. There wasn't much in between. At quarterback, Justin Fields went off, Matthew Stafford went off, and even Carson Wentz scored over 21 standard points. But Geno Smith was a big L. I'll take those results though. Most of the running backs were kind of whatever, which is typically the case. Running backs are tough to find off the waiver wire. But Woody Marksman, he came through with almost 28 PPR points in his breakout performance. At wide receiver, again, very hit or miss. I really like Keon Coleman's matchup, but that offense just keeps spreading things around. Trey Tucker was disappointing, and then Cedric Tillman and Darnell Mooney both got hurt. And then there was Adonai Mitchell. After he fumbled at the goal line, I sent a tweet out and I asked if I still get points for the process of calling out Mitchell as a sleeper. And you guys were very friendly, saying it was clearly just an unlucky result on the play. I'm not going to take a W, but I won't take an L for that either. But beside Mitchell, I did talk about Romeo Dobbs and Quentin Johnston last week. They both did really, really well. They had great days. And then at tight end, it was mostly the same. Overall, not a bad week. It was definitely better than week three. I hope we can keep it going into week five, but just a warning. This week is pretty brutal.

To kick things off, we'll look at players rostered in 50 to 80% of Yahoo! Leagues you might want to start this week, and Justin Fields is by far the easiest go-to, or at least the most obvious. As we saw on Monday night, Fields can save his day with just one big play. That was in a plus matchup against Miami, and this week, he's got an even better one. Quarterbacks against the Cowboys have ranked as a QB 8, 2, 1, and 5 this season. Dallas ranks as the best matchup for quarterbacks by adjusted fantasy points allowed. They're allowing 93 passing yards to be thrown on them over expected per game. The Jets have a reasonable 22.5 point total. Fields is in a great spot. I honestly think that you could rank him as high as QB 2 this week. Daniel Jones is another quarterback that you could look to in this tier. The Colts get the Raiders this week and they have an impressive 27 point total. It's hard to not be on a quarterback with that high of a team total. Now, the Raiders have actually been a bottom five team for quarterbacks this year through adjusted fantasy points allowed. They haven't been a good fantasy matchup. With that being said, they've been totally average when it comes to adjusted passing yards allowed. And they're below average in passing touchdown rate allowed, meaning more of the touchdowns they've given up have come via the ground than expected. That kind of thing should regress. Fields is the better play this week, but Danny Dimes is okay too. Now, I don't have any running max in this tier for you, but I do have some wide outs. And man, I gotta be honest with you guys, wide receiver is absolutely brutal this week in fantasy football. I'll be pleasantly surprised if just a couple of the picks that I talk about this week do well. It's just a tough spot at the moment. But we'll kick things off with Chris Godwin. He's coming off a 10-target game against Philly, and those 10 targets were on a 26% target share and a 91% route participation rate. Now, the annoying part about Godwin's week 4 was that he actually had just a 35% slot rate. His average up to target was over 15 yards. What we want from Godwin in fantasy football is more slot work, and ideally, not tons and tons of down-the-field stuff. Godwin's money in that short and intermediate area. I mean, last year, when he was dominating in fantasy football before that season-ending injury, Godwin had an average depth of target of 5.6 yards, and he ran 62% of his routes out of the slot. There are new circumstances this year, and it's something we have to be aware of. Regardless, that kind of target share, that kind of route participation, it's not something that's easy to find here in week 5 He's got a tough matchup against the Seahawks, but volume should allow him to be usable. Seattle has technically been below expectation in passing yards allowed this year too. Another wideout you could look at in this tier is Trey Tucker. Not that I feel great about it. Tucker only had a 10% target share last week, but he continues to run a lot of routes. He had a 100% route participation rate in week 4 Indianapolis has been the 6th best matchup for wide receivers in looking at adjusted fantasy points allowed, and we know Tucker is capable of some big plays. And the Colts, for what it's worth, they've allowed the 6th highest completion percentage on deep balls this year. He's a volatile player, but given the landscape this week, he does make some sense. That's it for this tier, though. There aren't obvious running max and there aren't obvious tight ends. So we'll just move on to the next one.