1057: Week 12 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 1057 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. And my hot streak with this Sleepers episode mostly ended in week 11 Mostly. It actually wasn't like a horrific week, but there were some spots that were pretty bad. Like at quarterback. It was easily the worst quarterback week of the season. Joe Flacco, JJ McCarthy, Aaron Rodgers, and Tua-Tung Violoa were all pretty bad. I did talk about Jacoby Brissette. That was good. And Marcus Mariota was at least usable. But it was a rough week at quarterback. Running back was actually okay. I'd actually call it pretty good. The biggest miss was Woody Marks, who couldn't take advantage of a good matchup and a good workload. But I did talk about Bam Knight. Sean Tucker went off. Chris Rodriguez was fine. Emmanuel Wilson, he got more work too. That was pretty lucky, though. And then Jaleel McLaughlin found the end zone. Also kind of lucky. And then at wide receiver, it was just fine this past week. Wanda Robinson and Quentin Johnston were really bad calls in that top tier. Tez Johnston didn't do a thing. But I did call out Trey Tucker, Christian Watson, Jaden Higgins almost scored double-digit PPR points, Matt Collins was at 10.4, and then Greg Dortch and Michael Wilson absolutely crushed it. Tight end, very rough. None of the tight end streamers scored more than Zach Ertz's 8.2 PPR points. And Ertz was a top-tier player. He wasn't even much of a streamer. And the defensive streamers, they weren't very good either. So basically, the streaming positions, they were terrible last week, but at least running back and wide receiver was decent. Overall, it was like a 3 to 4 out of 10 kind of week. Before, I had been hitting like 8s and 9s consistently. I'm hoping I can bounce back here in week 12

We'll start with a tier of players who are rostered in 50 to 80% of Yahoo! leagues, and we'll kick things off with a couple of quarterbacks. One of them is Brock Purdy. The 49ers have an implied team total over 27 points this week, and they get more of a neutral to slightly below average matchup against the Panthers. I think there's some concern here for maybe a lack of passing volume for the 49ers, but the San Francisco Defense is not playing well at all right now. They rank bottom 10 in the league in yards per game allowed and EPA per play allowed. So it may keep the volume up for the offense. Regardless, though, as we saw in week 11, Purdy can get it done with the weapons that he's got. Sam Darnold is kind of in a similar spot. They get Tennessee, they're big favorites, so you've got to worry a little bit about the passing volume. And we've seen Darnold hit just 12 pass attempts a couple of weeks ago against Arizona. But Seattle has a 27-point implied team total. If they do score three or four offensive touchdowns, a couple of those should, from a projection standpoint, come through the air. And that means Sam Darnold can be startable this week. Now, moving on to running back, Woody Marks was in a good spot last week, yes. But he's in a great spot this week. Buffalo has been awful against running backs this year, ranking as the third best opponent for running backs by adjusted points allowed. We saw what Sean Tucker did to them last week. Marks has now seen a 74% and 86% running back rush share over his last two games. And even if this game script goes south for Houston, which is possible, Marks is the one who would likely find the field in that negative game script. So I think he makes a lot of sense this week. If Ramon Tre Stevenson is back, I don't think he's that bad of a play. Like I said on yesterday's 10 Trends episode, I do think Trevion Henderson has earned his spot as the 1A in that backfield. But we also have no idea at this point. Stevenson is probably going to get some goal line looks too. And they get the best matchup on paper, Cincinnati. The Bengals not only have allowed the most adjusted fantasy points to running max, but teams against Cincinnati have seen their running backs rush for 42 yards above their season-long averages. That's also worse than the league. As long as Josh Jacobs is out this week, Emmanuel Wilson, he's a reasonable RB to play. He saw every running back rush after Jacob's injury last week, and he had a 60% route share. The matchup against Minnesota, it's not ideal. They rank as a bottom-ten opponent for running max by adjusted points allowed. But volume should be there for Emmanuel Wilson, as long as Josh Jacobs is sidelined. If Isaiah Pacheco is out again, then Kareem Hunt is definitely someone to look at. The Chiefs have a 26.5-point implied team total. They get an average, maybe slightly below average matchup this week against the Colts. But Hunt's coming off a game where he saw every single running-back rush for Kansas City, he had a season-high 61% route share. For as much as I want Prashard Smith to be more involved, and I think he should be, we can't deny that usage. I definitely didn't expect the Giants to keep it as close as they did last week with the Packers. But it's going to be harder for them this week as they go to Detroit. That means Wondell Robinson is definitely in play. He's had a 31% target share better in three straight games and in four of his last five. He's averaging almost 10 targets per game over his last five games. Now, Detroit's not necessarily an amazing matchup for a slot receiver. It's more neutral to above average. But you can't ignore that type of volume. Now this next one's a little bit more out there. I'm going to say Rashid Shahid. Mostly because I think there's a chance for a big play. We may not see that much volume through the air for Seattle this week like I just talked about with Sam Darnold. But Tennessee is bad against perimeter-wide receivers. And Shahid saw 25% slot rate last week. He mostly played on the outside. And we know that he's a big play threat. And the Titans have allowed the highest completion percentage on deep ball throws this year. I think there's a risk for very, very few points for Rashid Shahid. There's no doubt about it. But there's also some big play potential. Michael Wilson's a very obvious choice in this tier this week. The Cardinals threw the ball a lot last week, yes, but he still had a 32% target share. And now Arizona gets a Jacksonville team that's been much worse against perimeter wide receivers than slot ones. They've actually allowed bottom five numbers to slot wide receivers this year, including the fewest adjusted points. That's why I'm not quite as high on Greg Dorch this week. But Wilson, he only ran 15% of his routes out of the slot last week. With Marvin Harrison Jr. out once again, Wilson's a very solid play.