822: 15 Transactions for Week 8

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 822 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel.

Thanks for tuning in. As a reminder, Late-Round Fantasy Football has a Patreon. With that Patreon, I provide weekly rankings and tiers, rest of season rankings and tiers, live stream Q&As and more. You can check it out and learn more by heading the lateround.com. It's a 15 Transactions Day. Let's get to it.

Add Daryl Henderson and Royce Freeman. So last week when I recorded the 15 Transactions Show, I didn't have that much information about Kyron Williams' injury. Now we have more information. And that information is that Zach Evans doesn't really matter in this backfield for fantasy purposes. The Rams went out last week, they made some moves at running back, and one of those moves that they made was adding Daryl Henderson. And what we saw in week 7 was Henderson being the 1A in that backfield. Which is totally strange to say. But Henderson has experience in this McVeigh system. He played 58% of LA's snaps on Sunday, Freeman was at 42%. Henderson scored a touchdown and he saw two targets. Freeman didn't score a touchdown, and he didn't have a single target.

So clearly between these two running Macs, Darryl Henderson is the ad this week. But if you're in a deeper format, or if you can't get Henderson, Royce Freeman is still seeing some work in this offense.

Buy Austin Ekeler. So as crazy as it sounds, it does feel like buying into Austin Ekeler right now. It's sort of a risky move. He had that high ankle sprain to start the year. Players don't always bounce back from that injury like it just never happened. Clearly though, we know that Austin Ekeler has a ceiling in fantasy football, a very good one. But let's just be truthful. Ekeler's been disappointing in the two games that he's played since coming back from that injury. He scored 10.2 and 5.6 PPR points. Now, if you want to look at this optimistically, in week six against Dallas, he had an 87.5% running back rush share, and he had a 16.7% target share. Those are incredible numbers. The problem is in week seven against Kansas City, both of those numbers dropped. Now, that could have been due to a minor injury that he suffered in the middle of that game, but that's still an issue. So again, I'm not trying to sell this as an easy transaction to make. There's no need to pay top dollar for Austin Ekeler right now, given the way that he's performed. This is a buy low situation, and only a buy low situation. Here's the thing, let's give all this a little bit of context. Back in week six, like I said, he faced Dallas. This past week, it was Kansas City. Those are two of the toughest matchups for running backs in fantasy football. Looking forward, according to my adjusted fantasy points allowed numbers, Chargers running backs get it a lot easier. They have the second best schedule over the next month, and they have the third best schedule from now through the end of the year.

And during the fantasy playoffs, the Chargers get the Raiders, Bills, and Broncos. Those are two top five matchups for running backs, and the Bills, who haven't been in the top five, they've actually been a favorable opponent for running backs. Now, if you'd rather wait for reports on Ekeler's health before trading for him, I totally understand. That's totally reasonable. But a healthy Ekeler, even a 90% Ekeler, should be better than he's been over the last two games.

Add Dalton Kincaid. Now, Kincaid might not be available in your league, but he's still out there in almost 60% of Yahoo! Leagues. He needs to be rostered. Not only has he seen a 20% target share in each of his last two healthy games played, but teammate Dawson Knox is now having wrist surgery. That means Kincaid is the unquestioned top tight end on this Buffalo Bills team. It's wheels up for Kincaid.

Sell Tua Tagovailoa. It might seem a little weird that I'm talking about Tua as a sell because this past week against Philadelphia, he wasn't that great. Usually we want to sell high. But I don't know if the market has truly realized how volatile Tua has been from a fantasy perspective this season. There's no doubt that the highs have been very, very high for Tua. He has two performances this year, or he's scored 27 or more fantasy points. The thing is, those games, they came against really easy opponents. They came against the Chargers, the top team in Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed for quarterbacks, and then the Broncos who were the third best matchup.