836: Week 11 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 in this episode 836 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. Lastly, Sleeper Show was better than the one before that, so that's good. On the bad end of things, I was wrong about Taylor Heinecke and Will Leves as streamers. Josh Reynolds had another bad day. Nick Westbrook Akine wasn't a very good deep sleeper, and pretty much all of the tight end picks were bad. Not everything was Butterflies and Rainbows last week. That's what's gonna happen with a sleeper show like this. With that being said, I was really pleased with the Rico Dowdell pick. Josh Dobbs was awesome. Devin Singletary finally came through for me. Jaden Reid scored over 19 PPR points. Noah Brown was great, and even Quentin Johnson scored.

So there were the every week misses in there, but there were also some really good hits. I'll take it. Let's keep things moving into week 11

Now as usual, let's kick things off with a bunch of players you might be able to start who are rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo! Leagues and will begin with Jordan Love. Love gets the Chargers this week, and as I noted on the 50 Transactions episode, the Chargers are the best matchup for quarterbacks by adjusted fantasy points allowed. Quarterbacks against LA have scored 4.4 more points per game than their season-long averages.

Love has surprisingly provided an okay enough floor this season in fantasy, despite his struggles. There's more potential for a sealing game this week against LA.

Russell Wilson at the time of this recording is also rostered in fewer than 50% of Yahoo! Leagues. The Broncos are still massive regression candidates when it comes to how they're scoring their touchdowns, because on the season, they scored 19 offensive touchdowns, and just one of those touchdowns have come on the ground. With that being said, Russell Wilson himself has not been bad this year in fantasy, all things considered. When you adjust his performance for strength of opponent, he's around the QB 11 in points per game. Denver's had one of the toughest schedules to start the year. Now, Minnesota's not the easiest matchup in the world, but there aren't many options at quarterback this week, so I do think that Russ is fine.

Now, moving on to running back, I'm going to start with Ty Chandler. He's likely going to see most of the backfield work from Minnesota this week, as long as Alexander Madison's out. Denver's the best opponent by adjusted fantasy points allowed this season to running backs. And while a lot of that has to do with how they performed against Miami earlier this year, they're second to last in success rate allowed on the ground. That's more of a binary way of looking at how well they've stopped the run. They have not been good against the run. I'll have more on this backfield a little bit later, but Chandler makes for a potential RB2 play this week.

Tajay Spears is still rostered in just 39% of leagues. I know his stand-alone value isn't amazing, but he's usable at times, and he has upside if Derrick Henry gets hurt. So you should roster him if he's on your waiver wire. But yeah, this is a sleeper show. This isn't a 15-transaction show. I do think that there's some usability this week, though. Jacksonville, their opponent, ranks second in adjusted target share allowed to running backs, meaning teams are targeting their running backs at a higher rate than normal when they face the Jacks. Over Tajay Spears' last three games, all three with Will Levis, he's seen target shares of 14.8%, 16.7%, and 13.2%. Those are all really good marks.

So I think that Spears makes a lot of sense for people who are struggling at running back this week. There's also Daryl Henderson. Kyron Williams is not back yet. We get another week of Daryl Henderson as sort of the 1A in this Rams backfield. Henderson's been averaging a running back rush share per game of 54%, a target share per game of 8.1% over his three games with LA. The Rams get the Seahawks this week. That's a team that's given up the third most adjusted fantasy points to running backs this year. It's hard to be totally in love with a play like this, but Henderson's fine. And then lastly, a running back in this tier is Rico Dowdell. This could be yet another game for Dallas, where they have a weird game script. They're 10.5 point favorites against the Panthers this weekend, according to Fandl's sportsbook. Carolina is the second best matchup for running backs by Justice Fantasy Points Allowed. And as we saw last week, Dowdell not only looks pretty good, but he saw a season-high 43% running back rush air. You're really crossing your fingers for a touchdown with Rico Dowdell. Let's just be honest here, because he's not heavily involved as a receiver. But the matchup, the game situation, it's there for him this week.