1137: 15 Transactions for Week 5

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason, and in this episode 1137 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. Real quick, before I get to the 15 transactions this week, I want to let you guys know about the new Data Dump Show on The Late-Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel. Every Monday morning at 11 a.m. Eastern, Brandon Gidula and David Kitchen, they're going to be live on the channel, talking about all the week's major injuries, usage trends and more. It's exclusively on YouTube, so make sure you subscribe to the channel, youtube.com/atlateroundff.

Now let's get to these transactions.

Add Emanuel Wilson. Emanuel Wilson is still out there in a little over half of Yahoo! Leagues. It's kind of a borderline call for this 15 transactions list. Usually, I'm going after guys who were rostered in fewer than 20%, 30% of leagues. But given his week 4 performance, I figured that we should talk about him. Wilson ended Sunday's game against the Chargers with a 68% rush share and a 20% target share. He scored 27 PPR points. According to Late-Round Fantasy Football's Expected Points Model, he did outperform expectation by roughly 11.5 points. But the underlying usage was still encouraging overall for Wilson. Now, I wouldn't expect a 20% target share to hold week over week. Wilson's route share was actually only 31%, which was lower than George Helani's. But in the short term, I expect Wilson to see the most touches in this backfield. Judarian Price is on IR, so we won't see him for a little bit. Zach Charbonnet is still coming off that ACL injury. Yeah, they did sign Joe Mixon, but I don't think Mixon is going to be heavily involved right away. The long-term outlook here is definitely questionable. But the short-term one, you might be able to get some more fantasy points out of Wilson before all of these running backs come back, or before Joe Mixon really gets involved in this offense if he ever does. That's why Wilson is still worthy of an ad.

Hold the New York Jets offense. Look guys, I'm with you. I started Kenyon Sadiq in a lot of leagues last week, and he gave me absolutely nothing, and it sucked. Anytime a performance like that happens, I always see people talk about what happened to this player this week. What did he do wrong? I always say the first thing you should do is look at the team level first. If the team struggled overall, then it's not just the player. You don't have to feel as bad about that player. And let me tell you, when I went back and I watched that game, and when I looked at the data, that performance from the Jets offense was truly atrocious. The offense only ran 32 plays against the Bears. That was the second lowest mark from any team dating back to at least 2016

Over the first three weeks of the season, New York was averaging over 65 offensive plays per game. They ran 32 against the Bears. No one in an offense like that is going to thrive in fantasy football. Garrett Wilson didn't do anything, Kenyon Siddique didn't do anything, and Braylon Allen didn't do anything. The Jets actually made an effort to get the ball in Siddique's hands. He tied Garrett Wilson for the team lead with four targets. He had a 27% target share. Siddique and Geno Smith, they just could not get on the same page throughout that game. But look, when play volume increases, if those rate stats remain, you're going to get more opportunities for your players, and eventually you'll get more production. And I can guarantee you, the New York Jets are not going to run 32 plays every week through the rest of the year. And the same could be said not just for Kenyon Siddique, but also Garrett Wilson and Braylon Allen. Breece Hall missed week four with a quad injury. Allen didn't do a ton for Fantasy, but he did handle every running back rush for the Jets on Sunday. He also had a 67% route share and a 13% target share. Across a normal game with 60 plays run, 65 plays run, those peripherals are going to give you way better fantasy production.

We're going to see things shift and change for this offense when guys return from injury. But after this performance, I don't think you should go out there and start dropping players like Braylon Allen and Kenyon Siddique. And I wouldn't be overly nervous about Garrett Wilson. Sometimes weird things happen in this game of football.

Add Will Shipley.

Saquon Barkley left week four's game after just playing four snaps. He has a hamstring injury. Tank Bigsby and Will Shipley, they handled that backfield from then on out. Kind of. Unfortunately, Bigsby was hurt towards the end of that game. Turns out it's a sports hernia injury. He's got to get surgery, so he's going on IR.