814: 15 Transactions for Week 6

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason, and this episode, 814 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel.

Thanks for tuning in.

Before getting into the transactions this week, I'm gonna do something a little bit different. If this show has helped you at all in the past, if you've gotten something from this show, do me a favor and leave a rating and review. Those can go a long way to helping the show out. I'd really, really appreciate it. But this is a 15 Transactions day. Let's get to it.

Buy CeeDee Lamb.

Look, it's been a tough start to the season for CeeDee Lamb. Before Monday Night Football, he ranks as a low-end wide receiver too in PPR points per game. He's finished in the weekly top 20 at wide receiver, just once this year. If you drafted Lamb early, you're not very happy. But Dallas has played in some really strange games. Week 1 was that blowout against the Giants. Lamb wasn't needed all that much. The Cowboys ran just 8 plays in a neutral game script.

Now, Week 2 wasn't as dramatic, but it was pretty similar. The Cowboys had a double-digit lead for a lot of that game, and even still, Lamb had a 35% target share and over 25 PPR points.

Then in Week 3, Dallas saw a negative game script and a weird one against Arizona. Lamb was a disappointment in that game. He only scored 10.2 PPR points.

After that, it was that game against New England. The Cowboys destroyed them.

That once again forced a run-heavy script. And then we saw what happened in Week 5 San Francisco destroyed Dallas.

The Cowboys couldn't get anything going offensively.

We saw backups in the fourth quarter.

None of the Cowboys' games have really been normal.

I think we should expect that to change moving forward, at least to some degree. And that's good news for CeeDee Lamb. As is the fact that according to my Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed methodology, over the next four weeks, no team has better wide receiver matchups than the Dallas Cowboys. And the Cowboys have the second best schedule from now through the end of the year. Up until this point, the schedule has been below average according to Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed. So it's been tough. I totally understand. I have CeeDee Lamb myself. It has not been a good experience, but I do think that things are going to get better.

Add Roshan Johnson and Deontay Foreman.

This is not the first time that I've talked about Roshan Johnson on this show. I've talked about him quite a bit. But this transaction needs to be repeated because Khalil Herbert has a high ankle sprain. He could miss basically the rest of October. And a lot of times with those high ankle sprains with running backs, when those backs come back, they're not as productive. So that's really bad news for Khalil Herbert, but it could be good news for Roshan Johnson. The thing is Johnson himself was concussed on Thursday. Fortunately, he has more time to get healthy, but even still, he's at risk of missing week 6 If he's not able to go in week 6, because I think if he is active, he's going to get a lot of work. If he's unable to go in week 6, we're going to see a lot of Deontay Foreman. Foreman hasn't been dressing for the Bears because he doesn't play special teams. That's been Travis Homer. But in this case, if Khalil Herbert and Roshan Johnson are out, Deontay Foreman is going to see a lot of the early-down work for Chicago. But if Roshan Johnson goes, I think that he's easily the top play in that backfield.

Sell George Kittle.

This is what we get with George Kittle. We get these monster games like we saw in Week 5 He caught 3 of 4 targets for 67 yards and 3 touchdowns. But we also see a lot of down games from him. On the season, he has a 17% target share. That's not bad. That's just not elite. And oftentimes, across fantasy football, a lot of people look at George Kittle as being a very, very good fantasy tight end.

But get this, Brock Purdy took over the 49ers in Week 13 last year. Including the playoffs, Purdy's thrown 20 or more passes in 13 games. So we have 13 games of Brock Purdy. In those 13 games, George Kittle has more than 30 receiving yards and 4 of them. That includes Week 5 This San Francisco offense is clearly great. It's way better than I thought it would be. But the up and down nature of Kittle's production is super, super frustrating. It's great from a best ball perspective. Because you're going to have that back up tight end fill in when George Kittle doesn't have great production. But from a season long perspective, it's going to be frustrating. He's going to have these weeks. This is not the last time that George Kittle will finish as a top 3 tight end in weekly scoring. It's just that he's also going to have some valleys. He's not a bad fantasy asset to have. Having that ceiling is obviously valuable.