1066: 15 Transactions for Week 15

**JJ Zachariason** (0:11)
What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 1066 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I'm really excited that my voice is finally back to normal. You don't have to hear me apologizing for it anymore. Though I do apologize in general, because people have let me know that my voice is kind of annoying. So I'm sorry about that. Anyway, it's week 15 The fantasy playoffs are here. And I asked Twitter over the weekend if you guys still want me to do buy and sell transactions, because trade deadlines, they're definitely passed in your redraft leagues at this point. And the majority of people told me to just do ads and drops. I've got a whole transaction for you this week too. So over the next three weeks, the three final 15 Transaction shows of the year, I'm just going to be talking ads, drops, and holds. Now let's get to these transactions.
Add Luther Burden. Now, I've talked about Luther Burden quite a bit this year, but this is the first time on this show, this 15 Transaction show, that I'm doing so with an injured Roma Dunze. Because last week when I did this episode, Roma Dunze was seemingly healthy. But he's got a stress fracture in his foot. He's going to be sidelined for not days, but weeks. He missed week 14 and Burden unsurprisingly, saw his highest target share of the season at 21 percent. He also led the Bears in receiving yards with 67 And no, I'm definitely not going to say it. I am not going to say it. But there's a very real chance that a Dunze misses more time. Some estimates out there have been three to five weeks with this injury. That'd be huge for Luther Burden. The downside here though is that Chicago doesn't have this amazing fantasy playoff schedule. They have games against Cleveland, Green Bay and San Francisco. Don't get me wrong, there are worse matchups out there. It's just that this isn't lining up absolutely perfectly for Luther Burden. Even still, I think he's a clear down the stretch breakout candidate. He should be rostered everywhere.
Add Chris Rodriguez. So Chris Rodriguez is still available in over 60% of Yahoo! Leagues. That's despite the fact that he's averaged 12 carries per game over his last three. He's been Washington's early down back. And yeah, Rodriguez is mostly a zero as a pass catcher. He's had two targets all season long. But here's the thing. Washington, they get the Giants, Eagles and Cowboys over their final three games. Maybe Philadelphia is going to be a tougher matchup, and maybe they won't see a positive or neutral game script against them. But he could be usable at least this week against New York, and maybe week 17 against Dallas. In ten team leagues, I don't think Rodriguez is that much of a necessity. In a 12 teamer or a 14 teamer, he should be rostered. He should at least be stashed. Even if you're just blocking your opponent by having him on your bench. Hold Emeka Egbuka. From Sunday afternoon through Monday morning, I had four separate messages from people about Emeka Egbuka and whether or not they should drop him. I get the idea behind that because Emeka Egbuka clearly has not been performing well. I'm just not there yet. Egbuka is at a 30% target share, a really good number, in five of his last six games. He's given managers 10 plus PPR points and just one of those outings. In other words, 20% of his 30% or better target share games have resulted in double digit PPR points. Across the entire NFL wide receiver population, that rate of getting 10 or more PPR points on a 30% or better target share is 80%. So the question is, what the heck is going on? Why is Emeka Egbuka played like this? And the simple answer to that is just conversion. Egbuka has caught 40% of his targets since week five. Just for some context for how bad that actually is, across every season since 2011 among wide receivers with 50 or more targets, and Egbuka has 72 over this time frame. We've only seen nine wide receivers with a sub 40% catch rate. Now, Egbuka likely won't finish the season with that low of a catch rate. His rate right now is 49%. It just goes to show how incredibly awful that number actually is. Now, some will see this as a sign that Egbuka is not playing very well. And that's certainly a piece of this. You probably saw his drop touchdown in week 14 But I also see this as something that will eventually more than likely regress. According to fantasy life data, pre-Monday Night Football, there have been 107 wide receivers who have run 100 or more routes since week 5 Egbuka ranks 105th among that group in catchable targets rate. Fewer than half of his looks have actually been catchable. And the wild part is that the two players ranked below him, Arian Smith and Isaiah Bond, they have average depth of targets above 20 yards. Egbuka's during this time is 12 and a half. Deeper targets are naturally going to be more inaccurate. Now, this isn't something I haven't said before. I've talked about this on 10 trends episodes in the past. Maybe you think that I'm just doubling down on a bad take, because in the past, I did say that things would regress, and things clearly have not regressed. But, really weird stretches like this can happen with players. It's been bad for 8 games. Now, a couple of those games, there was an injury involved. But me saying that things will regress eventually, that might not be reassuring. And not only that, Mike Evans could be back this week. But maybe that's exactly what Emeka Egbuka needs. Less pressure on him could lead to easier coverage. That could up his catchable targets rate. Just look at what helped him dominate the first 5 weeks of the season. Big plays and really great conversion. Egbuka's target share per game rate over his first 5 games this year was 23%. That's really good, but it's not great. It's not excellent. Through those games, no player in the NFL had more yards on deep ball targets. On 13 targets that traveled 20 or more air yards according to PFF, Egbuka caught 8 of them for 291 yards and 4 touchdowns. Since then, Egbuka has caught 1 of 7 deep ball targets for 31 yards across 3 additional games. That's absolutely insane. With games against Atlanta, Carolina, and Miami upcoming, I would be holding tight. I don't think this can go on forever. And honestly, I think the addition of Mike Evans might actually help the situation out. And that's the opposite of what I typically say. I just think right now we're seeing a player who needs some easier looks. It's almost like every time Baker Mayfield has a good target to Egbuka, he ends up dropping it. It's just been like that over and over again for the last couple of months. But the schedule is good, and hopefully those targets become more catchable over these 3 games. I honestly think that's a likely outcome. Add Blake Corum. You've heard me talk about Blake Corum for months now, but if I didn't mention him after his 26-point outing in PPR Leagues, I'd have a lot of questions to answer this week. Corum is still out there in two-thirds of Yahoo Leagues. He's been getting consistent work in this really good Rams offense. He has touched on some back-to-back games. He needs to be rostered right now. If anything were to happen to starter Kyron Williams, Corum would be a league-winning type of player. Now, to be clear here, Corum's peripherals are not like amazing right now. He's actually been below a 40% running back rush air in three straight games. And on the season, he only has 11 total targets. Corum can really feast on bad defenses and when the Rams are in these positive game scripts. And one thing to keep in mind is that over the next two games, the Rams get the Lions and the Seahawks. On the projection front, we're going to like Kyron Williams a little bit more than usual in terms of just general workload. Not necessarily fantasy production. The potential for closer games means the potential for less garbage time. And those two matchups are not a cakewalk. But I'm going to say this one more time this year. Add Blake Corum. Add Jaylen Wright. So one of the reasons I'm not a huge early season handcuffer is because we just don't know. Even late in the season, we sometimes just have no idea who the backup running back actually is. Many of you, including myself, probably thought that Oli Gordon was the RB2 of Miami. That if Devon Aitchin went down, Oli Gordon would absorb a lot of work. That was not the case in week 14 Aitchin left Miami's game early because he had a ribs injury. And it was Jaylen Wright who ended up playing over 70% of the Dolphins offensive snaps after that injury. He carried the ball 24 times and rushed for over 100 yards. Now this could just be one of those situations where they just wanted Jaylen Wright to get some run. That in any other circumstance, they would have gone to Olly Gordon. We don't know. But I think based on what we saw last week, we'd probably want Jaylen Wright if Devon Aitchin were to miss time. The good news though, it doesn't sound very serious for Devon Aitchin. So you don't have to be super aggressive and getting right off the waiver wire this week. But I would still add him just in case. Drop Troy Franklin. This has been an unbelievably weird season for Troy Franklin. At one point, he was the clear-cut top-wide receiver for the Broncos. Now he's comfortably playing behind both Courtland Sutton and rookie Pat Bryant. If you're in a deeper league, even some 12-teamers, dropping Franklin not is necessary. But if you need bench space, it's not that crazy to let him go. He has 32 yards over his last two games. He had a season-low 40% route share this past week. Are you really going to trust him in Week 15 against Green Bay? Probably not, which means you're crossing your fingers that we see a shift in usage this week. And the only reason in my eyes that that would happen is if last week's route share was basically due to injury or something. Even then, you're then dealing with a fringe roster role player with some sort of ailment. That's not very fun to have on your roster either. And then on top of all that, in Week 17 Championship Week, they get a tough matchup against Kansas City. If that Week 17 matchup looked awesome on paper, like if it was Dallas, I probably would hold tight. Maybe I'd see what Franklin can do over the next couple of weeks. But that's not an easy matchup in Week 17 At this point, I'd straight up rather have Pat Bryant. He's an ascending rookie who's getting more playing time. And by the way, that's an extra transaction for you. But again, if you're in a deeper league, Franklin can still be rostered. I just wanted to give an example of a player that I would consider dropping this time of year.