820: Week 7 Sleepers

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

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 820 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. I was happy with last week's Sleeper Show results. On the negative side of things, Baker Mayfield and Gardner Minshew, they were not good streamers. Kenneth Gainwell didn't exactly get the game script that I was hoping for. Dawson Knox and Logan Thomas, they weren't very good streaming options either. And some of the deeper wide receiver plays, they didn't pan out. Now, with all that being said, Sam Howe was a viable option. Brandon Cooks, Josh Downs, Robert Woods, Curtis Samuels, Savon Achman, and Chuba Hubbard all scored touchdowns. And none of the defensive streamers sank you either. The Vikings in particular were a really good choice.

Overall, pretty decent week for a show like this. Hopefully, things continue this week, because it's a really rough one with so many buys. Let's get to it.

This first tier of players has rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo! leagues, so they're out there in the majority of leagues. As usual, I'm going to kick things off with some quarterback options. But I have to admit that the quarterback streamers this week, they're not great, at least on paper. I'm going to start with Josh Dobbs. Dobbs gets Seattle this week, and the Seahawks have been the 8th best matchup for quarterbacks this year in Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed. Dobbs hasn't been great over his last two, but at least in Week 6, we saw some of that rushing juice return. He's now rushed for 40 or more yards in four of his last five games. That's essentially an extra passing touchdown in fantasy production.

If we see a negative game script hit, we might get more scrambling from Josh Dobbs. And that's really what we want, because the Cardinals aren't projected for many points this week.

Now there's also Derek Carr. He's another guy who works if you're in a pinch, but I'm not overly excited about him. Carr plays on Thursday night, which probably isn't a plus, and he gets a pretty average matchup against the Jags. The over-under in that game is currently set at just 39.5 points, and Trevor Lawrence isn't 100% healthy. That gives us less of a chance of a true back-and-forth.

Even still, like I talked about in the 10 Trends episode, Carr does have some favorable regression coming his way. He's thrown about 3 fewer touchdowns this year than he should have based on his yardage total, and his 2.5% touchdown rate, that's a career low. I think he's more of a mid-range QB2 this week, but that might be good enough for you, because it's a rough week in general. Now moving on to running back, it's an absolute disaster. Honestly though, when the position is as messy as it is right now, it gives me an opportunity to pick off some potential sleepers.

One guy you might be able to lean on this week is Zach Charbonneau. He's under that 50% roster number now, because people dropped him after a pretty poor performance in Week 6 He saw just 9.5% of Seattle's running back rushes when he was closer to that 25-30% range during his two games prior. Seattle though wasn't in a positive game script. That's gonna be big for Sharps. When the Seahawks are leading, they're gonna deploy their two-headed monster more. They're gonna want to use both running backs to close out games. Like we saw in Week 3, for example.

Now they get Arizona this week. FanDuel Sportsbook has the Seahawks as a pretty big 7.5 point home favorite. Kenneth Walker is obviously the preferred choice, but Charbonnet could end up getting like 10 touches in this game.

Next on the list, Jaleel McLaughlin. We saw Denver's three-man backfield in Week 6, but Samajay Perrine really was just seeing pass-catching snaps for the Broncos. So yes, it's a three-headed monster, but Perrine had just a 17% snapshot this past week. McLaughlin was at 40%, Javante Williams 35%. McLaughlin also had the highest route participation by far on that team. And McLaughlin's been really good this year. He has by far the best expected points added per carry among Broncos' running backs, and he's the only one with a rushing yards over expected per rush that's north of zero. And it's well north of zero. He gets a Packers team this week that's been the fourth worst against running backs this year in a just a fantasy points allowed. I don't think he's a terrible flex play given the situation at running back across the league. Now, I've got to mention the San Francisco running backs here, because both those guys are still under that 50% mark. Like I said on the 15 Transaction Show, I'm only leaning Jordan Mason because he played more snaps than Elijah Mitchell last week, and that's our most recent sample. Of course, though, Elijah Mitchell was coming off an injury, so anything's possible. The reason we care about this, though, is because San Francisco has one of the most efficient offenses in football, and they could see a positive game script this week against Minnesota. So realistically, both Mason and Mitchell, they could be okay.