1130: 10 Trends for Week 3

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 1130 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. Before we get to the trends this week, I want to send another reminder to check out The Late-Round Newsletter. The newsletter is absolutely free. Just head to lateround.com and sign up. You get the data dump in your inbox every Monday morning, the 15 transactions list on Tuesday morning, an awesome match-ups column from Brandon Gadula, there's a wrap-up email from David Kitchen at the end of each week. I think it's a great newsletter, but I'm obviously biased. But check it out, it's free, lateround.com.

The question that every fantasy manager is wondering right now is, what the heck is going on with the Chicago Bears pass catchers? So let's try to simplify this as much as we can. First, I think like anything this time of year, let's remember that we're working off of very small sample sizes. I know it seems like I'm saying that a lot, but it's because it's true. You know how many people were coming after me last week about Jalen Waddle? Now, I have no idea how Waddle is going to end his season, but I know that one game is not going to make or break the way that I view a player. We've got to relax and let things play out at least to some degree. Also, something helpful to look at when you're analyzing an individual players and see what's going on with the rest of the team. Luther Burden has not lived up to expectation this year. That's an L for me so far, without a doubt. But there's some comfort in knowing that neither is Colston Loveland, neither is Roma Dunzey. This isn't necessarily a Luther Burden problem in the Bears offense. If those two were thriving while Burden was getting destroyed, especially over a three, four game sample, there would be a lot more worry then. Now going back to that Waddle example, in week one, the Denver Broncos just sucked entirely as a team. They couldn't do anything offensively. Waddle's stat line was egregious, but so was the entire Broncos offense. That's going to happen sometimes. Teams have bad games. With Chicago, we've got this two game sample, wherein one of them, they dominated offensively, they leaned in their run game, and so many secondary players ended up working out in the red zone. In game two, they faced a really good defense within their division and it was in a game with bad weather. If I were to point to one single problem with what's happening with the trio of pass catchers right now, strictly from a usage standpoint, it would be Caliph Raymond, which is insane to say because he's a 32 year old veteran wide receiver who hasn't been super productive throughout his career, but that's where we're at right now.

The logic with the Bears pass catchers entering the year would be that targets would funnel their three main players. I legitimately thought that those three guys could combine for like a 70% target share this year. So far through two games, they have a combined 43% target share. I mean, I couldn't have been more off about those three players. Loveland's in a 9% share, Adunze 12.5% and Burden 21%.

Then there's Khalif freaking Raymond with a 25% target share. While it is kind of fluky, he's not going to maintain a targets per route run rate of 26%.

It's not totally fluky because Raymond right now is fourth on the team with a 67% route share. No player on the team right now, today, has an 80% route share or better. And this is not just like an 11 personnel thing right now. In 12 personnel this year, Adunze has a 70% route share, Burden 52%, Raymond 44%.

In week two, Raymond ran more routes than Burden out of 12 personnel. Adunze actually had a 92% route share out of 12 personnel.

But that's a big area where we need to see improvement with Luther Burden. Now, I'm throwing all of this at you just to say that it's been really, really chaotic for Chicago this year. Like never in a million years did I think Caliph Raymond would make this big of an impact after two weeks. Sometimes you get things right, sometimes you get things wrong. But I do deep down still think that this is not going to last forever. Remember, Adunze was banged up entering the season. There's a chance that Luther Burden's conditioning just isn't there right now. He missed a ton of camp.

That seems logical enough to me, as to why the Bears might be using Raymond as much as they're using him. If things don't change though, then there's almost no chance that these pass catchers are going to live up to expectation. And I will say, based on what I just talked about, I think Khalif Raymond is going to have a bigger impact on Roman Adunze and Luther Burden than Colston Loveland. Loveland's been getting a lot of run. He leads that team in route share. It's just that things haven't converted, they haven't clicked. Better days should be ahead for Colston Loveland, but because there's not this direct positional reason for lack of production, I am slightly more concerned about him becoming that beast that you drafted him to be. And look, let's be honest, that's always the risk you run into when you take a tight end early in your draft.