1050: Mailbag - Rome Odunze's Struggles, Stashing Defenses, and More

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, 1050 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the mailbag questions this week, I just want to remind you guys to subscribe to The Late-Round Newsletter. It's absolutely free. All you got to do is head to lateround.com, click Newsletter, and submit your email address. That's it. In that newsletter during the season, you get the 15 transactions email, you'll get the weekly data dump that I published on Twitter and 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 that I send out in that newsletter all the time. That's lateround.com and then click Newsletter. Okay, now let's get to these mailbag questions.

The first question this week is from Carter on Patreon. It says, I saw you still have Odunze ranked as a wide receiver one this week. Feels tough to just send him back out there after a bagel against Cincinnati's defense. It feels like he just hasn't been a priority for that offense since the buy, but I would love to believe he's coming back. What's giving you that confidence to keep him ranked up there? There's actually a lot to unpack here. Let's first just start with Odunze and what's been going on with him. The Bears had a week 5 buy, so they played weeks 1-4, they had a buy, and then they played since then. That gives us a really nice and clean 4-game split. 4-games pre-buy, 4-games post-buy. In the pre-buy games, Odunze was averaging a 27% target share per game rate and 19.9 PPR points per game. Post-buy, those numbers have fallen to 20% and 7.2. That's a pretty dramatic shift. Now, it should be noted that Odunze has been playing through a heel injury. I don't want to completely dismiss that. But there are some secondary numbers here that don't paint the most favorable picture. For one, I've talked about this before, but he's seen a 57% catchable targets rate over his last four. That was 67% during his first four. But also fantasy points data, it shows that Odunze's first read target share, it's fallen from 32% to just 18% in these four game splits. And on top of that, the Bears have just been more run heavy. From weeks one to four, they rank 10th in drop backs over expected rate. They've been 27th over their last four. Now to be fair, last week, Odunze had a first read target share of just 10.5%. That's bringing down these numbers quite a bit. Now they're still lower than the first four weeks, but maybe not quite as low as they initially sound. Like in week eight, his first read target share was still a solid 28%. But people keep talking about that Cincinnati matchup like he should have gone off. And yes, he should have had a much, much better game. I'm not really defending his poor performance, which included a pair of drops. But DJ Turner has been really good for Cincinnati this year. I talked about that in the 50 Transaction show earlier this week. It's not as good of a matchup, especially in hindsight, as people generally think. But look, this is all not really that good for Rome Odunze, but I'm willing to guess that the truth, it lies somewhere in the middle. That the first four weeks, they were a little bit flukey, even though I do think he's a good player. And in the last four, they just really had some lows that are going to be tough to repeat. I have Odunze right in line with consensus this week at wide receiver 11, but I could rank them all the way down to like wide receiver 13 to like the wide receiver 15 range, just given the way my tiers are set up. It's really just the fact that we've got teams on bye, teams with really good wide receivers, and the Bears have a good matchup. They have a really good team total too. But yeah, these are all things to be concerned about with Rome Odunze right now. And remember, Luther Burden was sideline last week with a concussion. I still think there's a legitimate chance that we see him gain a larger role as the season goes on. That's going to hurt Olamide Zaccheaus most, but any talented player seeing more work will impact everyone else in that offense. So the trend is concerning, but I don't think week 9 is a lock to happen every single week. It was a tough matchup, and just the week prior, things looked fine for Rome Odunze. I just think we're staring at more volatility now than we were at the beginning of the year. Because the offense is just prioritizing other players more. And it also doesn't help that they've leaned more on the run. This next question is also from Patreon, it's from Andre. It says, Hey JJ, for those of us likely to make the playoffs, is it too early to stash defenses? If not, are there any you would recommend? Thanks. So I answer a question like this one once a year, and this is my once per year time answering it. My stance is that I believe people overrate the whole stashing defenses thing for a few reasons. Number one, defenses are volatile. Not only could that defense just not be in as good of a spot once the playoffs actually hit, but the way defenses score, they're not amazingly predictable. You can stream and you can come away with a really strong defensive performance in fantasy through streaming. I'm talking like defense two and points per game, defense three and points per game. We do that every year over on Living the Stream. That's not what I'm talking about here. Part of the reason you can do that is because even good defenses have bad fantasy performances. So it's not that hard to just make up for that by using defenses against bad offenses. And there's obviously some luck involved here. Like a defense gets an interception, they just happen to return that for a touchdown. That's a huge turnaround for your fantasy team. Or a special teams unit returning a kick. There's luck involved with turnovers in general. We know that defensive performances can be volatile. So even if you love the matchup, it's not like it's a guarantee that that defense is going to score a ton of points. Number two, there's a cost in holding that defense on your bench. If you're stashing a random defense, that means you're not stashing something else, like a running back handcuff. And the upside of that handcuff far outweighs the upside of that defense in a given week. And then number three, don't underestimate your ability to find a defense on the waiver wire, maybe just like a week before the playoffs, or even during the playoffs. Remember that things change in the NFL, and what looks like a mediocre matchup right now could actually be a good matchup later in the season, like if there's a quarterback injury. And also don't forget that in most leagues, when the playoffs hit, you're competing with fewer teams in your league on the waiver wire. That makes it easier to get a streaming defense. So I think week 10 is way, way too early to stash a defense. Week 13, week 14, fine. But we've got a long way to go still, and I'd rather use that bench spot on a more valuable position with a whole lot more upside.