815: 10 Trends for Week 6

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

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What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this episode, 815 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into the trends this week, I just want to remind you guys about The Late-Round Fantasy Football Patreon. The Patreon has livestream Q&As with yours truly, weekly rankings and tiers, rest of season rankings and tiers, and so much more. You can learn more about it over on lateraound.com.

Trend 1 this week is about Rhamondre Stevenson. I thought he was a bycandidate a couple of weeks ago when Ezekiel Elliott started stealing more work from him, because Stevenson's general snap-share and workload didn't really suffer that much. But clearly that was wrong advice. Give me the L. Now, I wasn't overly high or low on Stevenson entering the year, but I definitely didn't expect this. And it's not just an Ezekiel Elliott thing. His targets per out run rate has been cut by about 40%. His rate of giving us explosive plays has dropped. His target share per game rate was over 17% last year. It's only 10% this year.

Now, if you want some hope, New England's faced a pretty rough schedule to start the year. From here on out, according to my Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed numbers, Patriot running backs have a top 10 schedule. So hopefully I can get Stevenson back on track. Though I don't expect him to come close to his 2022 numbers, especially as a receiver. Which is really why you drafted Stevenson in the first place.

According to fantasylife.com, the Chicago Bears this year have a drop back over expected rate of 0%. Which means they've thrown the ball from a volume perspective, at expectation. They're also 19th in neutral script pass rate, or their rate of throwing the ball when games are within 6 points. This has led to more passing volume in the offense. Last season, Chicago was dead last in neutral script pass rate. They averaged just a little over 22 pass attempts per game. This year, that number is over 8 pass attempts higher. One of the strangest things this season, at least from the standpoint of what we expected entering the year to what's actually happening, one of the strangest things is that Chicago currently has 11 passing touchdowns to 2 rushing touchdowns.

They have the 7th highest pass to rush touchdown rate in football. Now, their pass rate may be higher than last year, but that pass to rush touchdown rate, that's bound to regress, which could mean good things for someone like Roshan Johnson moving forward. But it's been a wild ride this year for that offense.

Christian Watson was so close to a big game in Week 5 His box score looked okay enough because he did make one big play, but Watson finished the week with a 24% target share and the second most air yards in the NFL behind only George Pickens.

The Packers still lead the NFL in air yards per attempt too. So better days should be ahead for him. I'd consider him more of a buy than a sell.

The New York Giants offense is such a dumpster. They rank 31st in air yards per attempt. They're tied for last in total touchdowns this year with just five. And as I said in the 15 Transaction Show, they haven't scored an offensive touchdown in three of five games. They rank 31st in pressure rate allowed. They're 32nd in sack rate allowed. They're 27th in rushing yards over expected per rush.

This is your friendly reminder to stream defenses against the New York Giants.

Things continue to trend in the wrong direction for Alexander Madison. He's still been productive enough in fantasy. Last week, he scored through the air. But he saw his snap share drop to just 51% this past week. From weeks one to three, he averaged about a 75% snap rate. Over the last two weeks with the Vikings using more cam-acres, that snap share has gone down to 69% and then 51% this week. This might be what we see moving forward. More of a 50% to 60% snap share. But I still think throwing a dart at cam-acres, using a bench player to get cam-acres, it's not the worst idea in the world.

It's a trend show, so I've got to bring up Breece Hall after his Week 5 performance. Yes, I know, it was the Broncos. But Hall saw his highest snap share of the season at 52%. He saw by far his highest running back rush share of 76%. He had a season-high 11.5% target share too. Robert Salas said that Hall wouldn't be limited, and while they're still using more Michael Carter than I'd like, we saw how effective Hall can be in a plus matchup. He's just a great running back.