1122: 10 Trends for Week 1

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 1122 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. This 10 Trends episode is going to be the shortest one that you get all week, but it's still packed full of information. As the title suggests, I go through 10 different trends that should help you out with your roster management. A lot of times, the things I talk about on here, they're not immediately actionable like the 15 transactions list, but they're things that you may want to keep an eye on because they might become super actionable if the trends continue. Now, before we get into that first trend this week, I do want to remind you guys to check out lateround.com at some point this week before the games really get going. We've got brand new offerings this year for members, a much better interface for the weekly and rest of season rankings, new metrics in the data dump, and so much more. You can learn more about what it means to be a Late-Round Fantasy Football member by just going to lateround.com. Now, let's get to trend number one.

I'm really interested to see what happens with the Rams backfield split this year. Kyron Williams ended up seeing about 56 percent of the Rams rushes last year, which was down from the 74 percent mark that he saw in 2024 In 2024, his snap share was almost 87 percent. Last year, 68 percent, and his PPR points per game fell from 17 to 15.5. He was still good last year, but not nearly as dominant. As we know, a lot of that extra work went to Blake Corum. Corum saw his snap share rise to about 29 percent across the entirety of the season, with his rush share going from 13 percent in 2024 to 33 percent in 2025

A split like this is not uncommon in today's NFL. But what I'm interested to see is if the Rams lean into Corum even more this year than they did last year. I think it's very possible because last year, Corum had an adjusted yards after contact per rush of 4.1. Williams was at 3.9.

We saw Corum hit a 10 plus yard run at a 16 percent rate, Kyron Williams at a 10 percent rate, and Corum outperformed him in 20 plus yard run rate as well.

Corum played really well in the ground last year. Now, we should have a little bit of context here and understand that he didn't have quite the same workload as Kyron Williams, so maybe General Rest had something to do with that. But it's interesting nonetheless. Where I do think Kyron will still win out is through the air. Even last year, we're talking about a 53 percent route share for Williams versus 17 percent route share for Corum. And Corum had a pretty pathetic 0.34 yards per out run. Kyron Williams 0.84. This is all to say that yes, Kyron Williams did indeed see a dip in production last year, with Corum digging into his workload more. And given Blake Corum's ground game work, I do wonder if he sees even more work this year than he did last year. One area where Williams is probably safe though is as a receiver. The problem is that this McVeigh offense has traditionally not been friendly for running back targets. So that may or may not be that big of a boost for Williams as it would be in another offense. I'm not moving either player right now. If I have one of them, I'm just holding. This is not a transaction. I'm just really anxious to see how this Rams backfield ends up being split. Because things have been trending away from Kyron Williams.

Sticking with the Rams, one of the weirder things about fantasy football last year was that Puka Nakua dominated. He was the wide receiver one, but he wasn't really used that close to the end zone. Nakua ranked behind players like Malik Washington and Sterling Shepard last year and Green Zone Routeshare, which is Routeshare on drop backs within the opponent's 10-yard line. The Rams use a lot of heavy personnel, and Devante Adams, he was their main go-to wide receiver at the goal line last year, which is why he finished with 28 end zone targets to Nakua's six.

Adams had 14 touchdowns on targets that came to him while in the end zone. Nakua had only three. Now, this is partially a load management thing for Puka, because he's borderline reckless with his body when he's playing. But even a small shift in that ratio between himself and Devante Adams can go a seriously long way for Nakua being even more dominant in fantasy football year over year, which is crazy to even imagine.