826: 15 Transactions for Week 9

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up everyone, it's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 826 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. I know I talk about buys and sells on this show every week, but sometimes you might not know exactly where I'm placing these guys rest of season. Well, with the Patreon, you can get my rest of season rankings and tiers. I think there's more to it than just looking at a set of rankings, but it's at least a good starting point. There's also live Q&As, weekly rankings and tiers, and more on the Patreon. You can learn more over on lateraound.com.

Add Will Levis. So, Will Levis made his debut for the Titans on Sunday, and it went really, really well. He ended up throwing 4 touchdown passes on 29 attempts. Now, I don't do a lot of quarterback prospecting, because it's really, really hard. I don't have a model for it. I have some takes on who I think is going to be good and who I think is not going to be good, but those takes are not nearly as strong as they are running back wide receiver and even tight end.

If you talk to analysts around the draft community, the majority of analysts pre-draft did not like Will Levis. But we have to keep an open mind. We're wrong all the time. Not just me, not just other analysts, but fans are too. What if Will Levis is just a lot better than people thought? What if his physical tools really do translate? We still don't have an answer to that. We don't know for sure if Levis is going to be good. We've only seen him play in one game. And in that one game, he had a really unsustainable touchdown rate. I can guarantee you right now that he's not going to finish with a 13% or 14% touchdown rate rest of season. That's just not going to happen. And I would be pretty surprised if he ends up being this week in and week out starter for your fantasy team. Rookie quarterbacks generally aren't reaching that status. But the quarterback position is kind of rough right now in fantasy football. And Will Levis is sitting on your waiver wire. He's not costing a lot to acquire. So, why not? Why not see if there's more to this? You probably don't need to add Levis in shallower leagues, but if you're in a 12-14 team league, I think that he's worth rostering. Just to see what this is all about. And it doesn't hurt that Tennessee has the 6th best quarterback schedule from here on out according to my Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed numbers.

Hold or sell DeAndre Hopkins.

So, the biggest winner from Will Levis' big Week 8 performance? Definitely DeAndre Hopkins. He finally found the end zone for Tennessee. And he didn't do it once. He didn't do it twice. He did it three times. He had 34.8 PPR points.

That was his best outing of the year by far. But here's the thing. His target share? Just 22.2%. That was actually his second lowest target share of the season. If there's anyone in your league who right now is willing to buy into this Tennessee passing attack, I'm talking like really buy into it, then Hopkins is an obvious sell to that team.

A 22% target share in this Tennessee offense is not going to lead to a lot of opportunity. We even saw that against Atlanta. Hopkins only had six targets. This is a run heavy offense. And even though we liked what we saw out of Levis in week eight, we can't assume that the Titans are going to stray away from their ground and pound approach. They had a 47% pass rate against Atlanta. That's not high at all.

The thing is, chances are the managers in your league, they're not ready to just buy into Will Levis. They're not ready to buy into this passing attack.

That's why I think Hopkins is probably more of a hold than a sell. The Titans also have a top 10 wide receiver schedule from here on out. But just keep all of this context in mind.

Tennessee still was not pass heavy this past week. DeAndre Hopkins didn't see like a 35-40% target share. It could be an upgrade. This could be a good thing for Hopkins down the line. But let's not assume that he can be a wide receiver one from here on out.

By Brandon Iuke. The 49ers have now lost three straight games. There are some bad vibes surrounding that San Francisco passing attack. And Brandon Iuke, the team's top receiver, he's been good but not great during this time.