1040: 10 Trends for Week 8

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 1040 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 than with DraftKings Daily Fantasy, the ultimate destination for football fans. New customers can play free for their share of millions of 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 100GAMBLER. New York? Call 8778HOPENY. And Connecticut? Call 888-789-7777. 18 plus in most states. Eligibility restrictions apply. Ends December 31st. See terms at draftkings.com/promotions.

It's a 10 Trends day. Let's get to it.

Rashid Rice's season debut with the Chiefs couldn't have gotten that much better for fantasy football managers. Rice only ran a route on 48% of Kansas City's drop backs. That's probably due to him not having played for a while, but also due to GameScript. They didn't need to use Rashid Rice. Despite that, he still saw 10 targets. My friend Adam Levitan over at Establish the Run tweeted this, but Rice, on 19 routes, he's now tied for 11th in the entire NFL with 4 targets inside the 10 yard line. There is so much touchdown potential for Rashid Rice. There's so much fantasy potential for him. If you are patient, he should pay off. Now, I didn't have the best read on Jawan Jennings a couple of weeks ago when I called him a sneaky buy. I mean, I was mostly saying that he should be traded for bench assets, but it was still the wrong read. I didn't know how hurt he evidently was. The good news is that things are pointing up, or at least they're pointing up more than they were a week ago. In week 7, Jennings ran the most routes for the 49ers. Only Christian McCaffrey had more targets. Jennings finished the day with a 30% target share. He got four of seven targets for 31 yards. That's not great. With Brock Purdy hopefully back soon, I'm more optimistic than pessimistic about Ja'Juan Jennings having a usable second half of the season. I mean, I'm to the point where I probably want Jacoby Berset to start for Arizona for fantasy purposes. More specifically, for Trey McBride purposes. Get this, over the last two weeks, McBride has scored 21.2 and 29.4 PPR points. He had 21 PPR points just four times last year, all obviously with Kyler Murray. More importantly, McBride has three receiving touchdowns over his last two games. He scored three touchdowns over his previous 21 games with Kyler Murray. We joke about the touchdown stuff with McBride, but I don't think this is all just a coincidence. McBride has seen five endzone targets over his last two games. He had two endzone targets over his first five. In 2024, McBride only had two games with two or more endzone targets. And he had two endzone targets in both of those games. He's had two and three over his last two contests. It seems like this really is a Kyler Murray problem.

I almost had Jaxson Dart this week as a transaction, as an ad, just because pre-waivers, he was available in like 60% of Yahoo leagues. That should be 0% or at least close to 0%. Dart has now started four games. He's averaged 21.9 standard fantasy points per game during those contests. The only quarterbacks who have been better than Jaxson Dart on a point per game basis this season are Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson. That's it. And get this, Dart has faced the Chargers, Saints, Eagles and Broncos. The Chargers, Eagles and Broncos are all bottom 10 matchups for quarterbacks by adjusted fantasy points allowed. He's also faced tough matchups. The schedule for the Giants and for Giants quarterbacks, it's below average in the short term. But long term, it's not a bad schedule. Rest of season, they have the 11th best schedule by adjusted points allowed. And don't forget, they get the Raiders in the fantasy championship. I think you have to just keep starting Dart until he gives you a reason not to. The rushing production is there and he's getting it done with his arm too. We have to talk about Travis Hunter's usage. Hunter started week one with a really solid 82% route participation rate and a 29% target share. The production wasn't there, but there was hope that the Jags would just use him a good bit on offense. That didn't happen. From weeks two through week five, so a four game stretch, Hunter saw route shares of 61%, 61%, 70% and 74%. But over Jacksonville's last two games, Hunter's been at an 86% and 89% route share. He's been playing mostly as a full time wide receiver. That resulted in a 28% target share in week seven. That's his highest since week one. Now the Jags are on their buy this week, but out of that buy, there's a chance that we're trusting Travis Hunter a lot more than we expected just a couple of weeks ago, especially if that Brian Thomas injury is something that we also have to deal with.