1131: Week 3 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 1131 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. I looked over last week's picks from this show, and the results actually weren't that bad. There were definitely some bad selections in there, though. None of the deep running back sleepers did anything, and really, running back in the middle tier was bad, too. The quarterback streamers, they haven't been that good to start this season either, and last week was no different with the picks overall. Baker wasn't good. Jordan Love wasn't very good. Malik Willis barely was usable. It was not great. With that being said, we had some hits this past week. Rashad White scored 14 PPR points. Jake Ferguson scored over 20 Dontavian Wicks, Devon Bailey, Adonai Mitchell, and Rashad Bateman were all good plays. Jalen Coker was usable, and Xavier Worthy scored 13.5 points. Not terrible. I don't think it was a good week, but it was better than I remembered. With more data, with more information, hopefully the weeks just get better and better. We're on to week three. Before we get to those sleepers, I do want to send another reminder about the Late-Round newsletter. The newsletter is absolutely free. Just hit the 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, and there's a wrap-up email from David Kitchen at the end of every week. You can sign up again for free by going to lateround.com.

As usual, this first tier of players consists of guys rostered in 50-80% of Yahoo! Leagues, and we'll start at quarterback. And we'll start with a guy who's been slinging it for fantasy purposes, and that's Tyler Shuck. I wasn't bullish enough on Shuck last week because of how he played in the first half against the Lions, but things were good in week two. He's just 19th in fantasy points per drop back, which is somewhat of a problem, but the Saints pushed the pace. They're second in seconds per play in neutral situations. They get the Raiders this week, it's in a domed environment, and while Vegas hasn't been a great matchup so far for quarterbacks, with our adjustments, the matchup is more neutral. The Saints also have an applied team total over 23 points, so I think Tyler Shuck can be okay. I like Jordan Love a lot this week. The Falcons are a more neutral matchup on paper according to our numbers, but they're also dealing with injuries in their secondary. So far this year, the Packers are the fourth highest average up the target, and Atlanta has given up the second highest mark in the league. Green Bay also hasn't gotten that much from their running backs, who rank bottom three in the league in EPA per play right now. So it won't surprise me if the Packers offense is able to generate some big plays on Thursday Night Football.

I'm a little hesitant to throw Kyler Murray out there coming off that concussion, but the matchup is pretty nice against the Bucs. Tampa Bay has faced the highest pass rate over expected in the league this year, and they've generated a bottom ten pressure rate. Our adjusted points allowed numbers have this matchup as the fifth best one for quarterbacks. So with Kyler's weapons, the environment, his rushing, I think it could do worse, but there's obviously some volatility there.

At running back in this tier, I'm going to go back to Woody Marks. Marks has seen just over 49% of Houston's early down snaps this year, and he's run the same number of routes as David Montgomery. He's got a 34% rush share and an 8% target share. Those peripherals, they're very usable on a sleeper show like this.

The Texans get the Colts. India has been terrible defensively this year. Their fourth worst in success rate allowed to opposing offenses, and their second worst in opposing team rushing yards per game. To be fair, they face the Ravens and the Chiefs, but there's nothing pointed to them being a great defensive unit. Our adjusted points allowed numbers to running backs, it shows that they're an average opponent overall. With the Texans having a pretty healthy 23-point total in this game, and with Mark's peripherals, he might work.

I'll go back to Kalon Black here too. The 49ers are 8.5 point home favorites, and we've now seen it in back to back games where Black can get some work in this offense. Now, in week one, I do think part of what we saw was CMC resting because he had cramps. Because CMC's snap share in the first half, week over week, rose by like 25 percentage points. With that being said, a positive game script could lead to more Kalon Black. We saw that just last week in the second half against the Dolphins, Black played just as many snaps as Christian McCaffrey did. That was more of an 80-20 split in the first half. So if game script goes the way that we think it will, Black could get some touches. And that's all we can ask for at running back on this Sleeper Show.