1044: 10 Trends for Week 9

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 1044 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 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 1-100-GAMBLER. In New York, call 877-8-HOPE-NY. In 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 episode, let's get to it. I was pretty close to making Kayshon Boutte a sell candidate on this week's 15 Trends Action Show. He's ranked as a wide receiver for 24 and 12 over the last three weeks. He scored 26, 14 and 17 PPR points. That's after having four straight games with fewer than nine PPR points. According to PFF's Expected Fantasy Points formula, based on Boutte's usage and where he's seeing his targets, no player in fantasy football has outpaced his expected points per game more than Boutte over the last three weeks. He's averaging 18.8 points per game when he was expected to score 7.5. I just couldn't make him a sell because who's actually buying? And Drake May is playing out of his mind. Even though Boutte is connecting on some of those big plays, he's doing so with arguably the league's MVP. Boutte also hit a season-high 91% route participation rate in week 8 If you can actually sell high, I mean, go for it. Otherwise, I think you just enjoy the ride because my guess is that no one's willing to pay wide receiver 3 plus prices for Kayshon Boutte right now, despite his recent performance.

The Buccaneers are clearly banged up at wide receiver, and that's part of the reason that Baker Mayfield has really struggled in fantasy football. Over the last two weeks, Mayfield has scored 11.1 and 4.1 standard fantasy points. In week 8, Mayfield failed to throw or rush for a touchdown for the first time since the final week of the 2023 season. Mayfield has one touchdown over his last two games, but he's also not running as much. After averaging 3.7 rush attempts per game over his first six and 2.8 scrambles per game during that stretch, he has zero rush attempts and zero scrambles since then. Now, I don't know the exact reason for this, but Mayfield was on the injury report this past week with knee and oblique injuries. He's been beat up this year, so that could be playing a role, but it's definitely something to monitor with him. Jake Ferguson has seen sub 10% target shares in two of his last three games. Across his first five games this season, he never fell below an 18% target share. His per game rate was nearly 25%. This clearly is going to have something to do with CD Lamb returning over the last two weeks, even if one of those games saw Ferguson with a healthy target share. When there's an elite player added to an offense, the previous players will likely see a dip in target share. I really wish that I could say this is opponent based. The Cowboys faced the Panthers, Commanders and Broncos in those three recent games, and only the Broncos are a bottom 10 team in the league in adjusted tight end target share allowed, among those three. And unfortunately, not that tight end schedule is everything, but Dallas does have a bottom 10 tight end schedule according to my rest of season numbers. I don't think it means Ferguson is a sell because this offensive environment is just great, but I do think we're past the days of him being a top three lock at the position.

I talked about Caleb Williams on the 15 Transaction Show yesterday, and something I didn't get to is the Bears' pass rate tendencies. Chicago's played three games since their buy. In those games, they've had a 54% pass rate on drop backs, and their drop backs over expected rate, according to Fantasy Life data, is minus 6%. They've been a pretty run heavy team of late. That pass rate, it's 27th in the NFL during that time frame. Their drop backs over expected rank is 26th. Pre-buy week, so before week five, Chicago's drop back over expected was plus 1%. That was top 10 in the league. Their pass rate was 63% ranking 12th. So the Bears have indeed become a more run heavy team over the last few weeks. And that's another reason we haven't seen as much consistency from the passing attack.