824: Week 8 Sleepers

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is the Late Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zacharissa.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this episode, 824 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. It was not a good sleeper show last week. In fact, it was one of the worst ones of the season. Calling out Josh Downs in his slot matchup, that was a big win. Taysom Hill was a good one, too. But mostly everything else kind of fell flat. Derek Carr was okay enough as a streamer, I guess, but Jahlil McLaughlin, Latavious Murray, Curtis Samuel, Wondell Robinson, not great. I've got to be better than that each week.

I'm ready to turn things around here in week 8

I've only got one quarterback play for you this week, and it's a repeat of last week's in Derek Carr. He's still rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo! Leagues, which is the range that I look for with this tier of players. Carr gets Indianapolis. The Colts' defense this season ranks fifth in offensive touchdowns allowed, and their top half in the league and air yards per attempt allowed. They also are bottom half in the league in pressure rate, and the Colts have also given up the tenth most adjusted fantasy points to quarterbacks this year. According to Fandel's Sports Book, New Orleans has a completely average team total on the week, so the matchup is a favorable one for Carr, and his team total is average, so he could give you some decent production this week.

Let's move on to Running Mac and talk about Devin Singletary. At the time of this recording, his percent roster number is up to 18%, so it's starting to climb, but it's still not nearly high enough.

Post-buy, we might see Houston just go right back to how they split that backfield to start the year. It's very possible. But I'll state just one more time that in their game before the buy, we saw Houston's backfield shift. Devin Singletary saw 46% running back rush air. That was a season high. He had an 8.3% target share, another season high. He played 54% of Houston snaps. That was a season high. If that trend continues, then Singletary is going to be usable in fantasy football. And this week, Houston gets Carolina. Only the Broncos have been worse against running backs and adjusted fantasy points allowed this year than the Carolina Panthers. And that's largely because of how bad Denver was against Miami earlier this year. So Singletary makes plenty of sense off the waiver wire this week. It sounds like Roshan Johnson could be back in week 8, and if he plays, he's also in play. He'd be an easier player to start had Deontay Foreman not gone off last week, but there's still some intrigue here. The Bears get the Chargers. They're 8.5 point underdogs. A negative game script, that potential, that could get Roshan Johnson on the field more than Deontay Foreman. Now, Foreman had a healthy target share this past week. It was 18%. But he actually didn't have the best route participation. In fact, Derrenton Evans ran more routes than Deontay Foreman last week.

Johnson had played that role before his injury, before the concussion. So if he grabs hold of it again this week, and what could be a negative game script and really a decent matchup for running backs in general. But if he has that pass catching role, he could come through with a decent week.

You could also look at Amari Demarcato. The matchup against Baltimore is actually not that bad on paper. The Ravens rank is the 14th best matchup for running backs in JJP Allowed. Now, my fear with Demarcato is that last week's usage just won't happen again this week. That's very possible, because last week, he saw 93% of the team's running back rushes in a 15% target share. He was a bell cow back. Now again, they're facing Baltimore. At the very least, Demarcato is likely to be the pass catcher out of that backfield, because he's done that in each of Arizona's last three games. He's had route participation of 56% or better in each of those contests. So if that negative game script hits, Demarcato should be on the field. But then there's the upside of him seeing 93% of the backfield rushes.

That would really make him viable.

And then the last running back in this tier is Darryl Henderson. It's a tougher matchup this week against a Dallas team that ranks 10th best against running backs in Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed. But Henderson saw the most work for LA last week in that backfield. He ran the ball 18 times. Now, I do think it's a little bit premature to say that he's some sort of bell cow, but there's always the chance that they give him more work this week as he gets reacclimated to the NFL. So he's a fine RB3 type.