1048: 10 Trends for Week 10

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 1048 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the trends this week, I just want to remind you guys to subscribe to The Late-Round Newsletter. It's absolutely free. It costs $0. All you got to do is head to lateround.com, click Newsletter, and submit your email address. That's it. You won't get these trends in that newsletter, but each week during the season, you'll get the list of 15 transactions from the 15 transactions episode, you'll get the weekly data dump that I published on Twitter and on Blue Sky, and you'll get a nice recap of everything from David Kitchen at the end of the week. Out of season, I send out studies, I do other research articles all the time. That's lateraound.com, then click newsletter. Okay, now let's get to these trends. Most quarterbacks are going to play better indoors than outdoors. Most games, they're going to see a little bit of a bump in scoring when they're in a dome. It's just a better environment when we obviously don't have to deal with outside factors like weather. I bring this up because the Lions are on the verge of playing a lot of games indoors. In fact, they only have two more outdoor games in the fantasy football season. With those games coming over the next couple of weeks. After they face the Eagles in week 11, they'll be at home against the Giants, at home against the Packers, at home against the Cowboys, in LA to face the Rams, in Detroit again against the Steelers, and then in Minnesota. All those games that I just mentioned are being played in a dome. The trend here, it's domes. It's a trend I've never talked about on this show before. But there are lots of indoor games for the Lions to finish up this fantasy football season. And that should hypothetically be a boost to that offense.

So far this season, Lamar Jackson has averaged 23.8 standard fantasy points per game. That's the QB one overall by points per game. Joe Flacco has played four games of the Bengals. In those four games, he's averaged 25 points per game. In other words, Joe Flacco as a Cincinnati Bangle has been the best fantasy football quarterback so far in 2025 And here's the kicker. Cincinnati quarterbacks have a top five rest of season and playoff schedule according to my Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed numbers. Now surely he won't keep this up, but after doing my rest of season rankings, I'm a good seven quarterback spots higher than the market with Joe Flacco. I don't see why you wouldn't be a quarterback. You should always be aggressive with that position in fantasy football.

Something else that caught my eye when doing rest of season rankings this week kind of has to do with the transaction from yesterday's show, but Aaron Jones is still being ranked below Jordan Mason consistently. I know he had that shoulder injury, but we're talking like six to ten running back spots here. But in games where Aaron Jones has been active this year, Jordan Mason has honestly been unusable. He's averaging just 5.2 PPR points per game with Aaron Jones active. He's yet to score more than 8.5 PPR points in one of those contests, and his target shares have been at or below 5% in three of those four games. That's just something to note as you potentially go out and trade for Jones this week. The Panthers backfield did indeed shift this past week big time. Rico Dowdell out snapped Chuba Hubbard 42 to 13 on Sunday against the Packers. He ran 12 routes. Hubbard ran four. That's according to PFF. Based on his usage, PFF's Expected Fantasy Points formula had Dowdell at 21.5 PPR points. He outperformed that, but a 21 point baseline is still pretty wild. Dowdell has now seen more than 60% of the team's running back rushes in three games this year. In those games, he scored 32, 34 and 28 PPR points. To put that another way, Rico Dowdell is to me in RB1 discussions rest of season.

Now, speaking of that Panthers backfield, someone in the Late-Round Discord yesterday was asking about my anti-Chuba stance over the summer. And so I went back and I looked at some of the stuff that I worked on when researching for drafts this year. One of those things being what I think is the most important research piece of my year. I'm not saying this to pat myself on the back because trust me, guys, I know I'm far from flawless. Remember Trevion Henderson? This is purely a research and process thing. It's also something that can be very helpful moving forward. But middle round running backs, which I defined as RB 19 to RB 42 by ADP, middle round running backs who have had poor previous season yards per outrun rates have historically underwhelmed the following season. So back in June, I wrote an email on that subject. Speaking of the newsletter, I also did a podcast episode, episode 996 It was called A New Way to Spot Middle Round Running Back Breakouts. That newsletter, though, it was on risky middle round running back profiles based on yards per outrun. And here's the list of the risky running backs that I talked about. Tyrone Tracy, Brian Robinson, Tony Pollard, Ramondre Stevenson, Jordan Mason and Chuba Hubbard. Hubbard's.51 yards per outrun rate was worst among all middle round running backs. Now, we have no idea what the middle rounds of drafts are going to look like next year. And we still have just a limited sample this year. But players who have been very inefficient per outrun this season according to PFF data include Tony Pollard once again, Tyrone Tracy once again, Jacori Kroski-Merrick, Kamani Vidal, Alvin Kamara, JK. Dobbins, Javante Williams, Jordan Mason again, Zach Charbonnet and Isaiah Pacheco. Those are sort of the higher end players or the usable players who just haven't looked great this year and yards per outrun. So if that continues and if we find ourselves drafting them in the middle rounds next year, we may want to think twice. And of course, I'm going to talk about this during the offseason. It was just top of mind, so I wanted to share. So I originally had a Rashid Shaheed and Chris Alave trend in the spot this week, and now the Saints with Tyler Schuck gave Shaheed a really high target share and a really high first read target share in Week 9 And then he was traded. But I still kind of want to talk about Rashid Shaheed. Now, this trend is not super takey. Don't get too excited. But the Seahawks, in my opinion, made this move for Shaheed for versatility purposes. On the season, only the Steelers have run less 11 personnel than the Seahawks have. This isn't new for Clint Kubiak. Last year with the Saints, New Orleans also ranked 31st in 11 personnel usage. That's three wide receiver sets. And you can't ignore that Kubiak, now in Seattle, probably wanted Shaheed again, because he knows how impactful he can be. The Seahawks now have Jackson Smith and Jigba, Shaheed, Tory Horton, and Cooper Cup. Maybe that Cup injury, maybe it's a little bit worse than what's being reported. But also, he's just been kind of fine this year. Now, Tory Horton, who I've been excited about, he definitely takes a hit with this trade. But with Shaheed, he's paired up with a quarterback who can hit him better down the field. Among relevant quarterbacks this year, Sam Darnold is first in the NFL in average depth of target. Shaheed had an A-dot this year of just 11.3. Last year with Kubiak, it was 18.1. So to me, this move for Shaheed, it signals flexibility for the Seahawks. They get more depth at wide receiver, they get a guy who can really stretch the field to pair him with a quarterback who can get him the ball down the field. And from a trends to look out for standpoint, maybe we see this offense run a little bit more 11 personnel. But I'd want Shaheed behind JSN in that offense from a fantasy standpoint. Tory Horton has a chance to develop into something that's better than Shaheed currently is, but there's no doubt in my mind that this is a great real life fit. Now, I don't even know if that was a trend or not, but we're just rolling with it.