853: 10 Trends for Week 16

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 853 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in.

With The Holidays, The Late-Round Podcast schedule, it's gonna look different next week. I'm gonna be doing the 15 Transactions Show on Tuesday, but it's gonna drop later on the day Tuesday. I won't be working on Christmas. But then rather than this 10 Trends episode, I'll be skipping it and working on the Sleepers episode for Thursday morning.

Those are the two episodes that are dropping next week for Championship Week. I don't podcast for Week 18 because the vast majority of leagues are done by then. But that makes this the last 10 Trends episode of the season. I'll do my best to make it a good one.

D'Andre Swift has scored single-digit PPR points in four straight games. I've talked about him a bit over the last month and a half, and he's definitely disappointed. Now the reason to have been bullish on Swift was the playoff schedule. He unfortunately didn't come through with a big outing in Week 15 He scored 9.5 PPR points, but he was close to a totally fine day. He fell just short of the end zone. The good news is that his running back rush air in that game against Seattle was 75%. That's his highest in 3 weeks. His target share, it was solid enough at 10%. And his route participation, it was its highest that it's been since Week 7

I still like Swift more than the consensus over the next 2 weeks, because the peripherals aren't as bad as the numbers suggest.

It feels like not enough people are talking about Isaiah likely. Over his last 3 games, he's seen target shares of 20%, 17.5% and 26%. His route participation over his last 4, that's without Mark Andrews for the most part, it's been elite. According to Fantasy Life's utilization report, likely has seen route rates of 88%, 83%, 91% and 88% during this time. To me, even though the schedule could be better, he's a tight end 1 in Week 16 and 17

James Cook is cooking. And you might be wondering, has anything actually changed? Is he just getting lucky?

Well, one thing that's happening is that since Joe Brady took over as offensive coordinator, Cook has been used more as a receiver. With Ken Dorsey, Cook's target share per game rate was 8.2%. Without him, it's 16.3%. He's not really running more routes. He's just been targeted at a much higher rate. Clearly, the Bills are making a point to get him the ball. And there's also this from my friend, Jim Saanis from Fandle. Jim tweeted earlier this week that Cook's snap rate inside the 12 yard line with Ken Dorsey was 29%. With Joe Brady, it's 55%. So it's still not perfect, but Cook is getting more of those higher leverage looks. That's why he's become such a league-winning type player.

Now speaking of the Bills without Ken Dorsey, how about Gabe Davis? During the four games that Davis has played with Joe Brady as offensive coordinator, he scored a grand total of 22.5 PPR points. All of those points came in one game. That's right, he scored zero points in three of his last four. His route participation really hasn't shifted that much. His target share has. He's seen a 9.4% target share per game rate during this time. That number was over 16% before the coordinator switch. You absolutely cannot trust Gabe Davis in the fantasy playoffs. Of course, he's capable of a big play, maybe even a monster week, but it's so risky at this point.

If Devon Aitchin is going to get back to his early season production, he's going to need to see more work on the ground. In weeks 14 and 15, he saw running back rush shares of 25% and 35%. Earlier in the season, that number was closer to 50%. Now, maybe this has to do with his injury, but there is some good news regardless. His route participation over his last three has been pretty good. The Dolphins seem to be focusing his workload through pass catching, that side of things. And with tough matchups against Dallas and Baltimore to close out the fantasy season, that might not be a bad thing for Aitchin. If Miami hits a negative game script, we might see more of him.

I've mentioned it before, but I love Justin Fields in the fantasy football playoffs, mostly because he's been running the ball a lot, and he also had a great week 16 and week 17 schedule. And I still believe that to be true. He had a tough game against Cleveland this past week, and we all knew that was coming. I had talked about that on the show. But in week 16 and week 17, he gets Arizona and Atlanta. Those are two favorable opponents. Fields has played five matchups this season against defenses that rank as bottom half opponents by adjusted points allowed. In those games against tougher opponents, he's averaged 10.1 standard fantasy points per game. That's pretty horrific. In his five plus matchups though, that average goes from 10.1 to 24.3. Justin Fields has a chance to really help fantasy managers over the next two weeks.