845: 15 Transactions for Week 14

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 is episode 845 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in.

I'm gonna be away for parts of this week, so this week's Late-Round Podcast schedule, it's a little bit different. You're still getting this 15 Transactions episode, and I'll have the 10 Trends episode out tomorrow. And then the Sleeper Show, like usual, it's gonna be out on Thursday. But for this week, there won't be a Perspectives or Mailbag show. And then things will be back to normal next week. Good? Everyone good? On the same page? Great. Let's get to these Transactions.

Add Ezekiel Elliott. Now, I know that Zeke might not be available in your league, but he is available in 60% of Yahoo! leagues, and I need to talk about him because Ramandre Stevenson has an ankle sprain. Now, at the time of this recording, I don't know exactly how long Stevenson is going to be out. It doesn't look like a minor injury, though. And that means Ezekiel Elliott will step in and probably be the bell cow for that New England Patriots offense. He saw a season-high 60% route participation in Week 13, so he's an obvious add this week.

Sell the Dallas Cowboys defense. So, a lot of fantasy managers have just been riding the Cowboys defense this year, and it's generally worked out. According to most scoring systems, they've been the top-ranked defense this season. Chances are you haven't streamed a defense or put together a Frankenstein better than the Dallas Cowboys. Here's the thing, though. Dallas has beaten up on bad teams. They've played six games against top-six favorable opponents by Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed. Six easy matchups. In those games, they've averaged over 20 standard fantasy points per game. In every other game that Dallas has played in, they've averaged three points per game. That's it. Within this split, the Cowboys' defense has been higher than four standard fantasy points just once when facing a tougher opponent. Now, there's nothing wrong with this. It's nice to have that kind of predictability. When the Cowboys face a bad offense, they're going to dominate. When they face a good offense, they're pretty average. The problem is, through the rest of the fantasy season, we have four more games left. They get the Eagles, Pills, Dolphins, and Lions. Those are all bottom half matchups by adjusted points allowed. So you might have to look for streaming defenses moving forward.

By Zack Moss. So the good news for Jonathan Taylor managers, he didn't go on IR. That tells us that there's a chance that he misses fewer than four games. Now, the bad news is that this is the timetable that we're working on. Jonathan Taylor is going to be sidelined for some time. And that means a lot of Zack Moss. Now, I know that your trade deadlines have generally passed, but any buy or sell recommendation on today's show, it's really to tell you that you can have confidence or not have confidence in that particular player. And when it comes to Zack Moss, even though his week 13 wasn't amazing from a fantasy perspective, I liked what I saw from a usage standpoint. It was fantastic. He saw every Indianapolis running back rush. Now, he had a 7.3% target share. That's not great, but he ran a route on over 64% of Indies drop backs. That's a really solid number.

If Zack Moss can keep up that usage, he's going to have better outings than what we saw on week 13

Add Tajay Spears.

So it was originally reported that Derek Henry was in Concussion Protocol. And then on Monday afternoon, Mike Vrabel came out and he said that Derek Henry wasn't. So let's just do the safe thing here and add Tajay Spears. In week 13, Spears saw a season-high 16 rush attempts. And unlike Derek Henry, Spears is a pass-catching back. That's how he's deployed. His 18.2% target share against the Colts that was also a season-high. So even if Henry does play in week 14, we generally have this idea that if Henry misses time, Tajay Spears would be a bell cow back. So at the very least, he's a high-end handcuff.

So if you've been listening to this show all season, this transaction shouldn't be that big of a surprise, because I talked about it before. Sam Howell has been great in fantasy football this year, but he has a brutal playoff schedule. In weeks 15, 16, and 17, the commanders get the Rams, Jets, and 49ers. LA is an above average matchup, but New York and San Francisco, they're bottom three matchups for quarterbacks by adjusted points allowed.