1142: 10 Trends for Week 6

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 1142 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in. You should become a Late-Round Fantasy Football member. As a member, you get weekly rankings, which include my Top 100 Flex Rankings. There's a live stream Q&A with yours truly for over an hour every Tuesday night. There's rest of season rankings, monthly dynasty rankings updates, an incredibly awesome and active Discord community, and more. To learn more about becoming a Late-Round member, just head to lateround.com.

I mentioned on yesterday's 15 Transactions episode that I would talk about the Cardinals offense. Let's talk about the Cardinals offense. Marvin Harrison Jr, as we know, he's no longer on the team. And we saw what that offense looked like without him in Week 5, and it was different. They didn't simply replace Marvin Harrison Jr with another wide receiver and just move on. The Cardinals ran 35% of their offensive plays in Week 5 out of 13 personnel. Those are three tight end sets. From Weeks 1 through 4, Arizona ran 13 personnel on fewer than 20% of their offensive plays. That had an impact on the wide receivers, unfortunately. This is why I didn't think Kendrick Bourne was like an obvious ad this week. If you want to add him, sure, go for it. He'll probably get you some usable weeks. But the interesting thing here is that Bourne's route share was just 60% in that game. Before Week 5, his route share was 74%.

Because Kendrick Bourne, friend of the show, he's a slot guy. He's not going to be on the field in 13 personnel. The only non-Michael Wilson wide receiver who did run a route out of 13 personnel was Jalen Brooks, who's an outside receiver.

Meanwhile, with Kendrick Bourne, the Lions are bad against a slot. It's why even before this news broke about Marvin Harrison Jr, I had called out Kendrick Bourne on the Sleepers episode because of the matchup. So Kendrick Bourne's usage didn't really increase without Marvin Harrison Jr. His route share actually decreased. And then we go to Michael Wilson. I would imagine that Wilson's target share increases in other matchups, but I do think there is some fear here, that teams aren't going to take the other threats seriously in this offense, and they're going to double Michael Wilson. Michael LaFleur actually talked about that on Monday, and Wilson, he saw a decline in route share too, because of that 13-personnel usage. But this is why we saw those random touchdowns this past week from Tegan Quattoriano. He hadn't run a route all year long, but he had a 32% route share in week five, due to the 13-personnel use. Elijah Higgins, their backup tight end, he had a 41.5% route share. His season-long average was 15%.

Now, I don't know if this is going to continue, but I do think that a lot of this data suggests that existing players in this offense post-trade, they're going to move more laterally than upward. And we'll see what happens at the quarterback position.

Marchand Lloyd had a good outing in week five. He found the end zone twice. And the Packers, they have a good matchup in week six against the Cowboys. But I do think it's really important to note that without Chris Brooks, the Packers basically just use Pierre Strong as their Chris Brooks. Marchand Lloyd had a 44% snap share against the Bears. Strong was at a 41% share. Strong played 75% of Green Bay's third down snaps, and he ran 4 more routes than Marchand Lloyd. Now, it's good that Lloyd saw his rush share jump a little bit compared to Week 4, but his rush share was still only 42% in that game. And unlike his Week 4 outing when Brooks was hurt, Lloyd's route share dropped by about 20 percentage points. So it's good he found the end zone, it's good they have a good matchup coming up. But this usage is still pretty rough for Marchand Lloyd. Even with the goal line rush and the overall workload, Lloyd's expected PPR point total, it was just 10 on Sunday.

What Josh Allen is doing right now in fantasy football is absolutely insane. On the season, he's averaging 28.6 fantasy points per game. That's trending to be historic. But he's doing it in a way that we've literally never seen before. We've actually seen this type of overall performance through five weeks before. Allen's 28.6 standard fantasy points per game, it's the third highest mark since 2016

He trails Russell Wilson in 2020 and he trails himself in 2022

It's just how he's doing it that's crazy. Allen's currently giving fantasy managers 14.4 points per game via rushing alone. No quarterback through five weeks since 2016 has even been at 13 points per game via rushing. And no quarterback has finished the season since 2016 with at least 11 points per game on the ground. Justin Fields leads that group in 2022, he had 10.8.