1143: Week 6 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 1143 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, thanks for tuning in.

I'm happy with the results of last week's Sleepers episode. Some of the really bad picks, they include Kenyon Sadik, who had that goose egg and then the concussion. Tyler Algier didn't do that much. Keaton Mitchell was iffy. TJ Hawkinson also got knocked out early. Tyson Bajent was absolutely atrocious as a deep play. Roman Wilson didn't play the role that I thought he was going to play before his injury. And then that Thursday night volatility, it really struck with the Cowboys' defense. Now, all of that sounds really bad, but actually the Cowboys' defensive streaming pick, that was the only bad one out of six. The quarterbacks outside of Bajent, they were really good too. Jordan Love, Jameis Winston, and Jacoby Berset, they had over 25 points, and Aaron Rodgers had 22 Ollie Gordon, Braylon Allen, Emanuel Wilson, and Marshawn Lloyd, they were all usable. Hunter Henry scored over 13 PPR points. Cortland Sutton even found the end zone. Kendrick Bourne scored 12 PPR points. Jalen Noll had a big day with 15 points. Darius Cooper and Dontavian Wicks, they were both decent. And then Pat Freyermuth had over 21 PPR points. So that's two good weeks in a row for this sleeper show. Let's keep things rolling into week six.

Before getting to the sleepers this week, remember to check out the Late-Round newsletter. It's 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 every Tuesday morning, an awesome match-ups column from Brandon Gidula every Wednesday. There's a wrap-up email from David Kitchen at the end of the week. It's a good newsletter. Check it out. lateround.com.

As usual, we'll kick things off with players rostered in 50 to 80 percent of Yahoo! Leagues. And I was going to talk about Jordan Love here, but he's now rostered in 81 percent of leagues. So I don't actually have a quarterback in this tier, but at running back, Blake Coram is still under 80 percent rostered. If there's a spot to play him semi-comfortably, it would be this one against the Cardinals. The Rams have an implied team total of almost 33 points. Chances are, there's going to be a positive game script for LA as 12 and a half point favorites. The Rams have led by 10 or more points on 19 percent of their offensive plays this year. And in that situation, Kyron Williams is out snapping Blake Coram just 38 to 30 It's been pretty close.

Coram has actually had a 14 percent target share when they've been up that big. So if this game goes as planned, I'd expect Coram to take advantage of a defense that really can't stop much at all.

Marshawn Lloyd is going to be a popular sleeper pick this week, and he's the Green Bay running back that I would bet on against Dallas. The Cowboys have been really bad against running backs. They've allowed the fifth most adjusted points to the position. We all saw that last week with Bucky Irving. My only hesitation with going all in on Marshawn Lloyd is that, like I said on the 10 Trends episode, his peripherals, they still weren't fantastic in Week 5 He had a 44 percent snap share and Pierre Strong played 75 percent of their third down snaps. So if this game script goes south for Green Bay, which is possible, that can happen in any game. I'm not projecting that, but it can happen. Pierre Strong would get more work than Marshawn Lloyd, at least in terms of snaps. So that brings more volatility, but the matchup is definitely there for Lloyd to have a good outing.

Woody Marks is the last one in this tier. The matchup sucks against Jacksonville for sure. The Jags have allowed by far the least amount of adjusted rushing yards to running backs per game this year. That rush defense is legit. But with David Montgomery injured last week, Marks saw every offensive snap for the Texans aside from the kneel down. Volume drives this game, so Marks can still get by this week.

A wide receiver once again, Devon Vellay, he's fine this week. He's got a 19% target share on the season, and we know New Orleans generally runs a lot of plays. One thing I'll say though is that I don't adore this matchup against the Giants. Yes, they've been below average against wide receivers this year, but they're in fourth lowest and percentage of wide receiver points allowed going to the slot, meaning a ton of the points they've allowed to wide receivers, they've gone to perimeter guys. That means Chris Salave could absolutely smash this week. Yes, but Vellay is more of like a 50-50 inside-outside guy. So it's not quite as good of a spot for him. I still think you can play him though because the Saints, they should be able to move the ball better than they did last week.