1062: 15 Transactions for Week 14

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 1062 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I know I sound like I just smoked eight packs of cigarettes. This is what happens when you travel for Thanksgiving, and you've got a toddler running around. So apologies for my voice being even more annoying than it usually is. I also know that a lot of trade deadlines have passed. I know that you can't totally act on all the buy and sell recommendations from the show anymore. With that being said, I do still have some buys and sells on today's episode, because they can help you with knowing how confident to feel about certain players. As we get closer to the end of the season, this show will turn into more ads and drops. The final week, week 17, it's always the quickest episode of the season because it's just filled with those ads and drops. But I did want to get that caveat out of the way before we dig into this week's list of transactions. Let's do that now. Ad Pat Bryant So the first three transactions this week, they're all Denver Broncos. Let's start with Pat Bryant. His usage has been trending up over the last handful of weeks. I've talked about him plenty on The Sleeper Show. But we saw an interesting shift in week 13 He ended up running five more routes and seeing four more targets than Troy Franklin. That's something that we hadn't seen all season long. Bryant had a 77% route share against Washington. And that was in a game that was coming out of the buy. That was a season high for him. We know that it can take some time for rookies to see more expanded roles in their offenses. This is definitely noteworthy. So look at Pat Bryant this week, off the waiver wire.

Sell Cortland Sutton. So if you have Cortland Sutton, you're probably feeling a little bit excited after what he did in week 13 He scored 17.2 PPR points against the commanders, which was his best output since week 5 The problem though, he only had a 14% target share. That was his lowest since week 6 Sutton just really hasn't been getting it done since the first month or so of the season. From week 6 onward, his last 7 games, he's averaged just 10.4 PPR points per game. He was at 16.1 PPR points per game across his first 5 A huge reason for this is competition. Other Broncos receivers, the aforementioned Pat Bryant, the aforementioned Troy Franklin, they've emerged. And as a result, since week 5, Cortland Sutton has a 17.7% target share per game rate. Before this stretch, that target share per game rate was almost 23%. Now, if the schedule looked good for Denver, it'd be one thing. But in their remaining 4 games of the fantasy season, they get the Raiders, Packers, Jags and Chiefs. He might be fighting against the Raiders, and I don't mind his perimeter matchup against the Jags. But all 3 playoff matchups, Green Bay, Jacksonville and Kansas City, they're all against bottom half opponents by Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed to wide receivers. You can usually spot a cell candidate by looking at production and then looking at the usage. And right now, the production is up for Courtland Sutton, but the usage, it was still kind of down. That's why he's a cell after that Week 13 performance.

Cell RJ Harvey. Okay, this is the last one about the Denver Broncos, I promise. And I will say, I don't think this transaction, I don't think it's one that you desperately need to act on. But it's something that we should probably talk about. RJ Harvey's usage without JK Dobbins, it's been okay. It hasn't been great. In week 13, we actually saw Harvey's usage decline versus his other game without Dobbins. He was on the field for just 47% of Denver's offensive snaps. That number was 61% in week 11 His route share was only 29% against the commanders. The last time we saw the Broncos, it was 48%. Fortunately, when he's been on the field, his workload has been okay. Harvey's been around a 65% running back rush share and a 9% target share. That can yield usable results as we saw in week 13 And hey, maybe that workload improves. The problem here, though, is twofold. Number one, he outplayed his peripherals in week 13 So naturally, he's more of a sell than a buy. But also, look at that playoff schedule. I just talked about it with Cortland Sutton. The Broncos get the Packers, Jags and Chiefs during their three playoff weeks. That gives the Broncos a bottom five schedule for running backs by adjusted points allowed in weeks 15, 16 and 17 Each of those teams in this data is pre-Monday Night Football, but each of those teams rank as bottom ten opponents for running backs according to my schedule adjusted numbers. So again, this isn't something that you absolutely need to do. RJ Harvey's a rookie. He could see more work as the season goes on. There's no doubt. But it's definitely a good thing to have in the back of your mind if you're relying on Harvey during the playoffs, which I know a lot of you probably are. Add Blake Coram. I've talked about Blake Coram so often on this show. This can be brief. We can talk about this really quickly. He's arguably the most valuable handcuff in all of fantasy football, and yet he's still rostered in just 16% of Yahoo! Leagues. And he has some standalone value too. He's averaged a 41% running back rush share per game rate over his last six. That's resulted in 10 rush attempts per game during that time frame. As I said in the 15 Transactions newsletter, tis the season to handcuff. Blake Quorum should be rostered everywhere.