1133: 15 Transactions for Week 4

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 1133 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the transactions this week, if you'd also like this list directly to your email inbox, there is a solution for that, the Late-Round Newsletter. The newsletter is absolutely free, just head to lateraound.com and sign up. You get the data dump in your inbox every Monday morning, this transactions list every Tuesday morning, an awesome match-ups column from Brandon Gidula, there's a wrap-up email from David Kitchen at the end of every week. It's a great newsletter. Check it out, lateraound.com.

Add Braylon Allen.

So, Breece Hall suffered a quad injury in week 3 That's obviously some big news for fantasy football purposes. It sounds like he avoided a serious injury, but he is week to week now.

After Breece Hall left that game, New York leaned heavily on Braylon Allen. He played all 17 of the team's offensive snaps from that point forward. He had 3 targets and a 64% route share. That pass game involvement is not totally new for Allen this year. He played 61% of New York's third down snaps over the first 2 weeks of the season. The Jets were already trusting him in those situations before this Hall injury. But without Breece Hall, we're probably going to see a little bit more Isaiah Davis. I like Isaiah Davis as a talent. I actually think he's pretty good. So if you want to spend very little fab on him, feel free. But Braylon Allen, he's your priority ad. He seems to be the guy that the Jets want to lean on most. And they have pretty reasonable matchups upcoming against the Bears and the Browns. So Allen could be plenty usable.

Add Ollie Gordon and Jalen Wright. So chances are someone in your fantasy league is gonna like Ollie Gordon more than I do. Straight up. Look, his week 3 workload was awesome. After Devon Aitchin left Sunday's game in the first quarter with that knee injury, now we know it's season ending, Gordon played every single running back snap for the Dolphins. He carried the ball 17 times, he scored a touchdown, he got 3 passes for 14 yards. Gordon seems like an easy go-to pick up. The problem is, he was the only other running back that was dressed in that game. Jalen Wright was out with a stinger. It's not a lock that Ollie Gordon is going to be the team's RB1. And that's really, really important here, because it's not like this situation in Miami is all that appealing. Miami just lost its best playmaker by far. Devon Aitchin is one of the best running backs in the entire NFL. Despite seeing an elite workload in this offense, Aitchin was still just an RB2 in fantasy football. So what are we going to expect from his backups who are inferior talents and who might be in a backfield split? That's why I don't think you should be going crazy for Jalen Wright and Ollie Gordon. And honestly, keep an eye on Jarquez Hunter too from the practice squad. We don't know how this backfield is going to be divvied up, so don't spend your free agent dollars as if we do.

By Chase Brown.

Chase Brown has not been amazing this year, but the Bengals have also faced the Bucks, Texans and Steelers to start the season. According to Late-Round Fantasy Football's Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed numbers, those are all bottom 12 matchups for running backs right now. I mean, look what Houston just did to Jonathan Taylor. But yeah, right now, Chase Brown is like a mid-range, low-end RB too. But from a peripherals perspective, everything is absolutely fine. He ranks 3rd among running backs in rush share this year. He's 8th in route share. And because I was curious, I looked at some statistical comps for players who have had similar starts as Chase Brown. I used comparable snap shares, route shares, target shares and rush shares through three games. And his top three comps since 2016 were 2018 David Johnson, 2022 Joe Mixon, and 2017 Melvin Gordon. From week four onward, those three running max, they averaged 16.2, 18.2 and 18 PPR points per game.

Now, I didn't use fantasy production when I was looking at those comps. If you layer on fantasy production, those comps don't get any worse. In fact, they're just as stable.

David Johnson and Joe Mixon, they remain as top two comps. And then on top of that, you get 2021 David Montgomery, 2025 Josh Jacobs and 2023 Josh Jacobs. And again, that's just looking at usage and looking at fantasy points scored through three weeks. From week four onward, every single one of those running max average at least 15 PPR points per game. Like I said, Brown's fantasy production has not been fantastic. But nothing about his usage says that we should be panicking. Oh, and by the way, Cincinnati has scored 86% of their touchdowns this year through the air. That's not going to maintain throughout the entirety of the season.