846: 10 Trends for Week 14

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 846 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in.

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Entering week 13, Joe Mixon's lowest running back rush year of the season came all the way back in week one, where he saw 76.5% of Cincinnati's running back rushes. Against the Jags on Monday night though, that number fell to 67.9%. His average entering that game was 91.5%. But the Bengals started using rookie Chase Brown more. Brown had a season high 32% running back rush share. Now it's good that the Bengals offense looks strong in Jacksonville because it's gonna give Joe Mixon more scoring opportunities. But between the tough fantasy playoff schedule and this Chase Brown usage, Mixon to me is still more of a sell than a buy.

Another backfield shift this week came for Carolina. And I think that's noteworthy because it was the Panthers first game without Frank Reich this season. Chuba Hubbard ended up seeing 73.5% of the Panthers running back rushes against the Bucs. During his two previous games, that number was about 48%.

So the Panthers used Hubbard more on the ground. And that's great, but he didn't see a single target and he ran a route on about 34% of Carolina's drop backs. Now to be fair, that route participation, it was pretty consistent with what he's been seeing with Miles Sanders in the lineup. So we should expect at least a slight bump in target share moving forward. Hubbard was productive last week. I'd expect him to continue being the 1A in that backfield with that new coaching staff. He was a weak 13 winner.

Mitch Trebesky is now starting for the Steelers. That might not be a bad thing for Deontay Johnson. Trebesky started five games for Pittsburgh last season. In those games, Johnson averaged a target share per game rate of 32.2%. His PPR points per game output was 13.4. Out of that split, so without Mitch Trebesky, Johnson's target share went from 32% to 25.5%. His points per game went from 13.4 to 9.5.

That's something to keep at least an eye on as Kenny Pickett heals.

Austin Ekeler has not been good in fantasy football. He scored seven 9.4 and 4.7 PPR points over his last three. His lowest PPR total last season, it was nine. And that happened in week 18 when fantasy football didn't even matter. So what's going on? How concerned should Austin Ekeler managers be? Well, we know that players coming off high ankle sprains, they'll often see a dip in production rest of season. And I do think that Ekeler's looked a little bit worse this season than last, just when you watch him. But it's not like every performance has been like this in 2023 He had a three game stretch from week eight through week 10 where he scored 23, 21 and 22 PPR points.

His peripherals really haven't been dramatically different of late. They were a little bit worse in week 13 because of the weird game script they played and his route participation was at a season low 43%, but I'm not overly concerned about his usage. I really think that when you look at recent performance, some of this has to do with the fact that they faced Baltimore, that was a tough opponent, and then like I said, they had a weird game against New England. The offense didn't really have to do that much.

I'm still more on the buy side than the sell side with Austin Ekeler. To close out the season, they get Denver, Vegas, Buffalo, and then Denver again. Those are some nice matchups overall. He may not have the same burst, but he can still be viable in fantasy football.

Travis Kelsey has been fine when compared to other tight ends this season, but he hasn't been his usual dominant self. He hasn't hit 16 PPR points in a game since week seven. That's five straight games maxing out at about 15 PPR points.

Kelsey's averaging too fewer PPR points per game year over year. We knew that some regression was going to come, so it's not that big of a surprise. But I think the tough part right now is that Kelsey's production has just been trending downward. It's not like we've seen the elite Kelsey every other week. We've just seen this mid-range tight end one week in and week out.