1056: 10 Trends for Week 12

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1056 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 once again to check out the Late-Round Newsletter. In that newsletter, you get my written content. You get the 15 transactions list to your email inbox every week. You get the data dump. And then at the end of every week, David Kitchen, my COO, sends a recap of everything Late-Round Fantasy Football did that week. And then during the off season, there's tons of research articles that I send you guys via that newsletter. It takes two seconds to sign up. Just head to lateround.com and click newsletter. That's lateround.com. Now let's get to this week's trends.

Let's kick off today's episode by looking at Trevion Henderson and Ramondre Stevenson. Because let's be honest, this is probably the biggest storyline in fantasy football entering week 12, assuming Stevenson is able to play. No one outside the Patriots knows exactly how they're going to divvy up this backfield. Running back can be frustrating because we can do all of this analysis. We can really like a player, but if a coaching staff wants to do things a certain way, that analysis doesn't matter. I mean, just look at how long it took the Buccaneers to give Sean Tucker more work. What I can tell you is that Trevion Henderson has better metrics than Ramondre Stevenson across the board, and in my opinion, he passes the eye test too. But Trevion Henderson has a rushing yards over expected per rush this year, according to NextGen stats, of plus 0.6. Stevenson is plus 0.2. Henderson has an EPA per rush of plus 0.02. Thanks to fumbles, Stevenson is minus 0.35. Henderson has gained 10 or more yards on 9% of his rush attempts. Stevenson has done it at a 7% rate. And you might sit there and you're thinking, Henderson's just putting up better per rush numbers because of some big plays, some chunk plays. But check out success rate. Success rate is a binary yes or no. It doesn't care how successful that run was, just if it was successful. And on the season, Henderson has a 40% success rate. Stevenson is at 32.5%. Just based on the eye test, the way things are trending and these numbers, I think we've got a 1A, 1B situation where Henderson is the 1A. And I said this before and I'll say it again. New England has a great running back schedule rest of season. Both running backs can be fine. I'm actually well ahead of the market with Ramandre Stevenson because of that fact. But I do think Henderson deserves that 1A job at this point, just based on the numbers and based on recent trends.

Literally last week on this show, I talked about Carolina's drop back over expected rate, and I mentioned how Tedaro and McMillan would be smashing this year if not for such a run heavy philosophy. According to Fantasy Life's drop backs over expected formula, the Panthers entering week 11 had just one game this year with a drop backs over expected rate above 0%, meaning in just one game, they were more pass heavy than expected. And it happened all the way back in week 2 And from week 4 through week 10, their drop backs over expected rate was minus 12%. That was by far the lowest in football. In week 11 though, the Panthers had a drop backs over expected rate of plus 8%. That was by far their highest of the season. And not only did their offense get a score on half of their drives, but Teterow and Macmillan's peripherals finally gave us that ceiling game that we've been hoping for. You always need to give an offense context. But when you see things like target share and how a team is deploying a player, when that offense's context changes, this is a really good example of how it can impact that individual player. Let's just hope that this becomes a legitimate trend.

Ricky Pearson was back for the 49ers in week 11 Now, we have to take all of this with a grain of salt because Pearson was coming off of an injury. The 49ers probably didn't want him super involved to begin with, let alone in a blowout. But Pearson ran around on 82% of San Francisco's drop backs. Not bad at all. But he also only had an 11.5% target share and he scored one PPR point. Now I dug into this with fantasy points data because I was curious if the team was trying to get him the ball or not. Turns out, Pearsall had a 0% first read target share against Arizona. George Kittle and Juwan Jennings were at 31%. Now I'm not saying this is a sign of things to come. I'm just saying it's probably not a bad idea to check in on this after another game or two to see if Pearsall clearly isn't a top option for them. Or maybe this was them just trying to get them up to speed after missing some time. It's a different team than it was earlier this season when Pearsall was seeing 29% target shares. So this is a story that we have to follow.