818: 15 Transactions for Week 7

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

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 818 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into the transactions this week, I wanted to send another reminder about The Late-Round Fantasy Football Patreon. With the Patreon, you get livestream Q&As with yours truly, weekly rankings and tiers, rest of season rankings and tiers, a great Discord community, and much more. You can learn more about it over on lateraound.com. Let's get to these transactions.

Buy Jerome Ford and add Kareem Hunt. Now, like most buy and sell transactions, there's some nuance to this one. Back when Nick Chubb suffered a season-ending injury, one of the biggest question marks about Jerome Ford was how he'd react to a really tough stretch of games. Chubb got hurt in Week 2 against Pittsburgh. From Week 3 to Week 6, the Browns would face the Titans, Ravens, and 49ers. That wasn't the easiest schedule in the world. Ford has come through with three Top 24 performances at running back during that stretch. And moving forward, Cleveland has a much easier schedule. Over their next three games, they get the Colts, Seahawks, and Cardinals. Those are three teams that rank as Top 11 favorable matchups for running backs and adjusted points allowed. From now through the end of the year, Cleveland running backs have the second best schedule according to my numbers. That's a big reason to want both Jerome Ford and Kareem Hunt on your roster right now. But I know what you're thinking. JJ, why should we be buying into Jerome Ford after what Kareem Hunt did in Week 6? And the reason I think you might be able to is because the manager, the person who has Jerome Ford, they might be a little bit worried. If you're trading for Ford at his pre-Week 6 price tag, this might be more of a hold transaction as opposed to a buy. But people with Jerome Ford might be a little bit nervous right now. Because in Week 6, Kareem Hunt had 16 PPR points. Jerome Ford had 11 And there are signs that Hunt's gonna take on a decent role in that Cleveland backfield. He saw his route participation go from about 15% pre-Week 5 buy to 33% in Week 6 And then Jerome Ford's ended up dropping from about 60% to 33%.

That's not some insignificant thing. And it makes Kareem Hunt something that you won on your roster. But Ford still ended up seeing 58.6% of the team's running back rushes in Week 6 That was his highest running back rush share of the season. And let's just try to be objective here. We're working off of a one-game sample. This trend of Kareem Hunt seeing more work through the air, seeing more work in this backfield, it's not really confirmed yet. It's only been one game. And as we know, a Kareem Hunt injury would really unleash Jerome Ford. There's contingent upside. But I do think that if you're gonna trade for Jerome Ford right now, it's not the cleanest transaction in the world. It's not some obvious screaming buy. It's one where you're buying into Cleveland's upcoming schedule. And it's one where you're buying into the potential that your league mate is nervous about Ford.

If that latter point is not true, if your league mate is not worried about Jerome Ford, then trading for Ford right now probably not worth your time.

But you can still add Kareem Hunt off waivers this week. Essentially, if you can trade some bench assets for Jerome Ford right now, I'd be all for it. I'd lean into this idea that Kareem Hunt may take over this backfield, because the schedule's good and Jerome Ford has not been bad since Nick Chubb's gone down.

Add Devin Singletary.

So Damien Pearce's rough season got even rougher in week six. He hadn't seen big target share numbers all season long, but he was at least averaging a running back rush share per game rate of about 72% from week one to week five. In week five specifically, Damien Pearce saw every single Houston Texans running back rush.

That all changed in week six. Pearce saw his percentage of running back rushes fall to just 50% against the Saints. And he didn't see a single target. His route participation was the lowest of his season. That's because Houston decided to use Devon Singletary more. Singletary hit season highs in running back rush share, snap share, target share, and route participation. That's noteworthy. And it's especially noteworthy when you consider that the Texans were in a neutral and positive game script. That type of game script historically had favored Damian Pierce, but this week it favored Devon Singletary. Now, maybe this will end up being an outlier for this backfield, but it could also be the start of Devon Singletary being a more valuable fantasy asset than Damian Pierce. Now this week, they're on a buy, but Singletary is definitely worth the ad through the buy. And it's nice that they have that buy week because you might be able to get them cheaper.