834: 15 Transactions for Week 11

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

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

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 834 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel.

Thanks for tuning in.

As a reminder, I do other things outside of this podcast. I mean, with fantasy football analysis. There's the Late-Round Fantasy Football Patreon, where you can get rest of season rankings and tiers, weekly rankings and tiers, data dumps, live Q&As, and more. You can use the Patreon month to month, if need be. It's $10 a month. Like I've been saying, I'm just trying to make a living here. I'm not trying to take all of your money. Check it out, though, by heading to lateround.com.

Sel Najee Harris. Now, I wouldn't doubt that if you talk to fantasy football managers, that they would think that Najee Harris is having this horrible, horrible fantasy season, because anchoring bias is a very real thing. Harris started off his season really, really bad. He averaged 6.7 PPR points per game from week one to week five. Everyone probably thinks that that's the way that his season has gone, but the Steelers had their buy in week six. And since that buy, Najee Harris hasn't been that bad in fantasy football. Over his last four outings, he scored no fewer than 10.5 PPR points. He's averaging 15.1 PPR points per game. Now, what's kind of interesting about this is that this exact same thing happened in 2022 Before Pittsburgh's buy last year, Harris had 10.9 PPR points per game. That was his average. That shot up to 15.2 after the buy. And to be clear, out of the buy week for Najee Harris, his workload has gotten better. During his bad opening stretch, he was averaging a running back rush share per game of about 65%. His target share per game was under 6%. But during his last four games, that running back rush share, it's dropped by about 5 percentage points. But what's way more important is that his target share per game during this really good stretch or this better stretch is 14.4%. So his target share has jumped by over 8 percentage points. And I'll say this, if we were guaranteed that type of target share from here on out, if we were guaranteed this workload from Najee Harris from now through the end of the season, he wouldn't be a sell candidate. I'm just not sure that this is that sustainable. According to NextGenStats data, during the first five weeks of the season, Najee Harris was seeing a target on about 13% of his routes run. That ranked in just the 14th percentile among relevant running backs. Now, over his last four games where he's had this 14.4% target share, that number shot up to 33%. Of the 50 running max with 40 or more routes run during this stretch, only Aaron Jones has seen a higher targets per route run rate. Harris has seen more targets per route run than Alvin freaking Kamara.

That, to me, everyone, is unsustainable. And we have evidence that it's not sustainable, not just because of what he did to start this season, but what he's done during his career. His targets per route run rate is 19% throughout his career before 2023 And let's not ignore his touchdown production either. He's now scored in three of his last four games. That's boosting his point totals.

Now, here's the thing. If you have Najee Harris and you're looking good for the playoffs, you might want to hold rather than sell because their playoff schedule really isn't that bad. But if you need to win right now, this might be the time to sell Najee Harris, especially because the Steelers get the Browns this week.

But again, if your league mates are sort of anchored to this idea that Harris has not been very good in fantasy football, maybe he is just more of a hold than a sell. But if they understand how he's been performing, then you might be able to sell high.

And Ty Chandler. So this is a repeat transaction from last week, but things have changed in that Minnesota backfield, so it needs to be reiterated. Ty Chandler still rostered in just 8% of Yahoo leagues. But it's important because Alexander Madison's concussed, and players who are concussed tend to sit out at least a game. And that could lead to a lot more Ty Chandler in Week 11 against the Broncos. But even before that concussion occurred for Alexander Madison, Chandler was seeing more work in that Vikings backfield, at least compared to how things looked earlier on in the season when he was the number two back. Now this is according to my friend Jim Sonnis over at FanDuel, but before Alexander Madison had that concussion, he was out snapping Ty Chandler 30 to 17 in that backfield, which is a lot closer than it was earlier this season. Both players had eight attempts on the ground. Madison had two targets, Chandler had zero. So what I'm saying here is, there's a chance that Chandler's a flex-worthy player even when Alexander Madison's healthy, and they've got a great rest of season schedule too. But with the concussion, he should see an increased workload in Week 11 He's a must-add this week.