843: Week 13 Sleepers

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This is The Late-Round Podcast, with your host, JJ Zachariason.

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this episode, 843 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel.

Thanks for tuning in.

Last week's sleeper picks, they got off to a fire start. Jordan Love and Jayden Reed had a great outing against the Lions on Thanksgiving, and then Curtis Samo got a ton of volume against the Cowboys. Thanksgiving was great. I also called out Roshan Johnson last week. He had a decent game. Jeff Wilson wasn't that bad either. Greg Dortch scored 12 PPR points, and the defensive streamers, they were solid. But Week 12's show was not as good as Week 11's. The non-Jordan Love quarterback streamers, they were very average. The Ravens passing attack was not nearly as good as I thought it was going to be against the Chargers. Cade Otton was a disappointment, and most of the running max were pretty mediocre. Overall, there were definitely some good hits last week, but there were more misses than the week prior. It wasn't great, but it wasn't that bad either. We're on to Week 13

It's a really, really weird week. We've got some good teams on buy, and I have almost as many picks in the second tier of players this week than the first. That never happens. But we'll start off today's show as we usually do, and that's by looking at players rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo! Leagues, who you might be able to play this week. If Chris Alave doesn't go in Week 13, which is honestly the expectation right now as I'm recording this, then I don't think I'd play Derek Carr very confidently. If Alave's in though, Detroit's a pretty good matchup. The Lions have faced a top 10 pass rate on defense this year, and they're the fifth best matchup for quarterbacks when looking at JJP allowed. They've been specifically bad of Late too. They've given up four top eight performances over their last five games. The only quarterback that didn't get there was Jimmy Garoppolo. He's not even starting for his team anymore.

It's just that given all the injuries in New Orleans, it'd be hard to trust Carr as more than a mid to lower end QB2 if Chris Alave's out, but if Alave plays, he's more of a high end QB2 this week. Now if you'd rather play it safe, Gardner-Minshew makes sense. Tennessee is the third worst team this year in EPA per drop back allowed, but they've been fairly average as an opponent for QBs because teams just aren't in a hurry to throw the ball against them. With that being said, the Colts have a decent implied team total, and as I talked about in the 10 Trends episode yesterday, they're regression candidates. More passing touchdowns should be coming. And without Jonathan Taylor in the mix, we might see a slightly more pass-friendly approach close to the goal line for this Colts offense.

And then the last QB in this tier, it's kind of a surprising one. It's Kenny Pickett. I'm high on Kenny Pickett this week, at least relative to how he's been performing. I know that he's thrown more than one touchdown pass in just one game throughout his entire career, but I'm calling it right now. I'm getting bold. Kenny Pickett has his best fantasy outing of the season this week. Arizona's a top-seven matchup for quarterbacks by adjusted fantasy points allowed. Pittsburgh has a top-seven implied team total this week, according to Vandal Sportsbook. And the offense looks so much better, so much more competent last week, without Matt Canada. It's a rough week across the board with so many buys, but I think that Kenny Pickett's an OK streamer, and I think that he's going to throw more than one touchdown pass. Now moving on to running max, I'm going to go back to Ezekiel Elliott, mostly because there aren't many running max seeing volume who are rostered in fewer than half of Yahoo leagues. Zeke did see a drop in route participation last week. That's a little bit scary for a potential negative game script against the Chargers here in Week 13

But he's been in that 30% to 45% running back rush-share range over the last month, giving him 7 to 13 attempts per game. LA is a good matchup too, at least on paper. They've allowed the 10th most adjusted points to the running back position this year.

Next on the list is Samajay Perrine. There's really a lot of volatility with the two Denver running max not named Javante Williams. But in Week 12, we did see a little bit more ground game work for Perrine. He carried the ball seven times, he had 55 yards in the score. He hit a 26% running back rush share.