1127: Week 2 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 1127 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. For anyone who's new to the podcast, first off, welcome. But second, on this sleeper show every week, I do a quick recap at the top of the show on how things went down the previous week. It's like 30 seconds long, but it's a way to hold myself accountable and to be transparent with how my picks went the previous week.

As I've said, I won't hit on a ton of these sleepers. They're sleepers for a reason. But I do think it's helpful to have a quick rundown of what just happened before we look forward.

Week 1 is always a tough one because we know so little about usage. But there were some good picks in there. Jalen Coker was the best shout of all of them. He scored almost 34 PPR points. Matthew Golden had a good day. Tyler Schuck fortunately came through. Devon Vellay, Dontavian Wicks, they were good dart throws. And Deebo Samuel, he scored 18 points. Jawan Johnson found the end zone and he scored over 14 points too. But yeah, like most week 1s, there were some mega misses. Baker Mayfield and Kenneth Gainwell, they were both pretty bad. Chris Rodriguez didn't see the workload that was possible in that matchup against the Browns. Keaton Mitchell stunk. Terrence Ferguson dropped a big old goose egg. Trey Tucker, Taje Spears, they weren't very good either. I'm not totally upset with that week 1 performance, but it'll hopefully go down as one of the worst ones of the season. We're on to week 2

Before getting to the Sleepers this week though, did you guys know that we send content via the Late-Round newsletter? It's true and it's free. You can get the 15 transactions column directly to your inbox every Tuesday morning. We'll have some matchup stuff for you from Branding Adula, and there's a wrap-up email that Kitchen puts together every single week directly to your email inbox, and it's all for free. Learn more and subscribe to that newsletter by heading to lateraound.com.

We'll kick things off as we always do with players rostered in 50% to 80% of Yahoo leagues. The two quarterbacks in this tier, I like them, but I definitely don't love them. They're actually ranked as QB2s in my rankings this week. There's a lot of great matchups for quarterbacks in week 2, just in general. The first guy, though, is Jordan Love. The Packers had a middle-of-the-road pass right over expected in week 1, which isn't always the norm for them under this coaching staff. The score makes it seem like the game script was terrible, but Green Bay only ran 19% of their plays this past week while trailing by a touchdown or more. And just 24% of them were run while trailing in general. Those are more or less average numbers across the league. We're expecting a favorable script for the Packers against the Jets, but they're not massive favorites given they're on the road. But they do have a healthy 24.5 point total, so I think Love could be okay in this matchup. Baker Mayfield was not great in week one. I was a little bit worried about that because I'm more bullish on the Cincinnati defense than the consensus this year. But even still, I didn't necessarily expect just 11 standard points. You might look at this Cleveland matchup and you want to stay away because there won't be enough passing volume. But just remember, if you're searching for garbage time at quarterback, it usually takes a garbage performance to create that garbage time. If the Bucks are ahead in the game, there's a good chance that Baker has something to do with it.

Tampa Bay has a 25 point total. We saw what Trevor Lawrence did at his defense last week. I think Baker is a firm QB too.

Shifting to running back, Jordan Mason is now on IR. That makes Aaron Jones a very obvious play from this group. Jones had an OK enough 43 percent snap share in week one. He handled 39 percent of Minnesota's rushes. That was the 33rd ranked share among all running backs in week one. His route share was a little bit weak at just 23 percent. That's definitely a concern. The Vikings just didn't use their running backs that much as receivers this past week. Jordan Mason had just a 16 percent route share. Only Jacksonville had fewer running back routes in week one. I can't imagine it's going to be that low this week. And with Mason out, Jones definitely is going to get more run as a receiver. Even with the lack of receiving work last week, the two combined for about 21 expected PPR points. And they get the Bears this week. Chicago is great offensively. That's going to force the Vikings to have to keep pace. But their defense is not that strong. Chuba Hubbard had a very usable performance against the Bears last week. So Aaron Jones is a really solid option.