1070: 15 Transactions for Week 16

**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, 1070 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. Just a reminder, but with it being week 16, this 15 Transactions episode, it's very, very focused on wave or wire ads only. It's essentially just a giant wave or wire column for you. There aren't any buys and sells as we've established in the past. Another thing to point out though is that I don't have a ton of drop transactions. I actually have gotten some emails from people where they're like, hey, all of these ads, they're great, but what about 15 drops that I can make? I get that, but my response is, the process for creating content around drop candidates, it's a lot different than ad candidates. You see, with ad recommendations, I'm giving you a rundown on the up-to-date landscape in fantasy football. Injuries happen, players emerge, they become talking points. They become guys that we won on our rosters. With drops, we're talking about hundreds of potential players. The consideration set is really, really big. But for ads, we may only care about 10 to 15 players each week, because not many low rostered players have a chance to truly help our fantasy rosters. That's why there's always going to be far more ads than drops, and that's the case once again this week. Now let's get these rosters of the fantasy championship.
Ad Michael Carter. So how fitting is it that with two weeks to go, we're still talking about this Arizona Cardinals backfield? It feels like we've been doing this every single week since late September. We've seen a rotation of running backs in Arizona all year, but here's where it currently stands. It's Michael Carter and Amari DiMarcato. James Connor's been done for the season for a while now. Trey Benson wasn't able to get off IR. And then Bam Knight hurt his ankle in week 15 He was carted off, and now his injury is being reported as a bad sprain. So hypothetically, if this is the Carter DiMarcato show from here on out, Michael Carter should be in store for some fantasy production. You might remember this, but we saw sort of the same scenario in week five. That was before Bam Knight kind of emerged as a relevant piece in this offense. In that week five matchup against Tennessee, Carter had a solid 59% snapshot. He saw 72% of the team's running back rushes. This past week in a negative game script against Houston, Carter had a 78% running back rush share and an 80% snapshot. Now those numbers are really high. I don't think they're going to be that high over the next couple of weeks, because Amari DiMarcato in week 15 was his first game back from injury. That bam night sprained ankle, it occurred mid-game. So I don't know if we're going to see Michael Carter as like a true bell cow in this Cardinals offense over the next two weeks. But like a 70% running back rush share in a few targets per game? That's definitely in his range of outcomes over these next two. And Arizona gets Atlanta and Cincinnati to close out the fantasy season. Those are two great matchups for running backs. So Michael Carter, in my opinion, he's the top waiver wire ad. He should be rostered everywhere. Add Jayden Reed. So hopefully you already have Jayden Reed because I talked about him on this show over the last few weeks. But if not, you should really consider adding him this week. He's not running a crazy number of routes. We know that's going to be the case in this Green Bay offense. But his target shares have been okay over the last two games, his two games since returning from injury. He's had a 19% and 17% target share. That's resulted in 10 total targets. He's caught 9 of those for 86 yards. Now, the Packers get the Bears and the Ravens to close out the fantasy season. The Bears are first in the NFL and adjusted fantasy points allowed to slot receivers this year. And Baltimore has been a top half matchup for slot wide outs too. And then all the while, Christian Watson's banged up. So Jayden Reed could be startable over the next couple of weeks. And in deeper formats, because of that Watson injury, you could look at Romeo Dobbs too. Hold or drop Stefon Diggs? I'm very concerned about Stefon Diggs in fantasy football. It's been a really bad three weeks for him. Diggs has seen weaker route shares for most of the season, but three of his five lowest route participation rates have come over the last three games. And naturally, he hasn't seen high target shares as a result. He's had target shares of 9%, 13% and 18% over his last three. That comes after two games where his shares were 28% and 33%. And honestly, those two games, that's what's keeping the hold within this transaction. Otherwise he'd be a drop. Because look, what if the Patriots just decide to use Diggs more in this offense? We have no real reason as to why his route share has been below 60% over his last three games. But what if they use him more? Then there could obviously be some usability. You just right now can't confidently play him this week against Baltimore. They do get the Jets next week though. So if we do see that uptick in route share, maybe you can use them in week 17 With all that being said though, I do think this is a potential drop situation. This could be a sabotage drop situation. That's if you want to play this a little bit riskier. You send Stefon Diggs to the waiver wire and you hope that someone in your league picks him up and starts him based on name value, not realizing that he's had horrible usage over his last three games. But look, I said this in the newsletter, I'll say it here. I'm just the deliverer of information here. And that information is that Stefon Diggs, at the very least, he's going to be very hard to plug into your lineup here in week 16