1049: Week 10 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 1049 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I've been coming on this Sleepers episode over the last month, and I've opened it up the exact same way, basically saying it was another pretty good week for The Sleeper Show, but it's been good for the last like four weeks or so. I told everyone I'd be transparent at the top of every show a few years ago, and I'm being transparent. It's been a good month of this show. Sometimes there are bad stretches, sometimes there are good ones. It's been one of the good ones. Last week's disappointments were mostly tier three players. Breshard Smith had an awful game, Samaj P. Ryan got hurt, Jeremy McNichols literally did nothing, and the Jacksville defense, they were pretty mid. The worst pick out of the top two tiers was maybe Aaron Rodgers. He scored just 12 standard points. And Bam Knight, he didn't get the workload that many expected. Though I did say on the show, I thought he was more volatile than people realized. But there were just way more hits than misses last week. And by hits, I mean just generally usable performances. At quarterback, Jackson Dart, Joe Flacco, Trevor Lawrence, Sam Darnold, they all had good weeks. Jawan Jennings scored 14 PPR points. Wondell Robinson had about the same. Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely were both usable. Theo Johnson was fine. Alec Pierce had a nice day. Kyle Monunguy dominated. Kareem Hunt had a reasonable 12.5 PPR points. Colston Loveland went nuts. Parker Washington scored 17 PPR points. The Baltimore defense was great. I mean, even Michael Wilson scored 9 PPR points. That was his highest tally of the season. This recent heater has been fun. But things won't go this way all year long. And honestly, week 10? Pretty difficult week. I think we might see a little regression. But I'll do my best, so let's do it.

We'll kick things off as usual with players rostered in 50-80% of Yahoo! Leagues who you might want to consider starting. I've got a couple of quarterbacks for you in this tier. Jackson Dart is one of them. He gets a Chicago defense that's allowed the third most adjusted points to quarterbacks this year. And that game has a reasonably high total. It also has a pretty decent pace score. That's my way of looking at how fast a game might play, given how quickly each opponent runs their plays. Dart has been great in fantasy. We know this. He scored at least 15 points in all six of his starts. He's been over 19.4 standard fantasy points in five of them. He's averaging over 22 points per game since becoming the starter. It's a great spot for him. Actually, I'd argue it's a smash spot for him. Sam Darnold is another one that you could look at. He's been running hot. He scored top nine quarterback numbers in three of his last four games and four of his last six. Seattle has a 26-point implied team total this week, and Arizona, their opponent, they're totally averaged for quarterbacks by adjusted fantasy points allowed. Teams are also throwing the ball against the Cardinals more than their season-long averages. Their pass rate tends to rise by almost six percentage points when facing Arizona. So that gives Darnold a ton of potential.

Running back is pretty brutal across the board this week. At the time of this recording, Aaron Jones is still rostered in 80% of leagues, so technically, he qualifies for this tier. As long as he plays, which is not a guarantee right now, I think he could be usable. The Ravens are playing better defensively, but they've still allowed the fifth most adjusted points to running backs this year. They've also given up the eleventh highest adjusted target share, which is big for Jones. He's the pass catcher out of that backfield. As I talked about in the 15 Transaction Show, Jones was trending towards seeing really good backfield share numbers in week 9 before that injury. He's an OK player to use, and at least he's not super game script dependent like Jordan Mason is. Next on the list, Kyle Monungay. I currently don't know if Deandre Swift is going to play this week or not, but Monungay, he probably won himself some more work with his performance last week against Cincinnati, even if it was against a really bad Bengals team. This week, the Bears get the Giants. New York is the second best match up in adjusted points allowed to running backs. And they've given up 33 rushing yards to running backs per game this year, over expected. That's by far the worst number in the league, or the best if you have Kyle Monungay. So even if Deandre Swift goes, Monungay has a real shot to be usable. Moving on to wide receiver, I've got two of them for you in this tier, and they're my two staples in this tier. Romeo Dobbs and Wondell Robinson. The Packers are banged up. Tucker Kraft is out for the year. Matthew Golden's hurt. We know Jaden Reid's hurt. There's a chance we see a lot of Romeo Dobbs against the Eagles. Dobbs had a 93% route participation rate in week nine. That was just the second time he's been over the 90% mark this season. He's now averaged a target share per game rate of 26% over his last six games. I bet that's higher than you expected. The Eagles have actually been a top half match up for wide receivers this year by Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed. And they've actually allowed an above average number of fantasy points per game to perimeter receivers. So I like Dobbs. Wanda Robinson had a great slot match up last week. I think that Reed was correct. He ended the day with a 34% target share. That was the second highest of his season. He just couldn't get a lot going on with his 4.4 average at the target. So he went 9 for 46