857: Week 17 Sleepers

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is the Late Round Podcast with your host, JJ.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this is episode 857 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in.

I wasn't very happy with Week 16's results. The Sleeper Show can get tougher as the season goes on, and people catch on to certain players, but that doesn't explain last week's results. They just weren't very good. The quarterback streamers were fine. I talked about Derek Carr and Joe Flacco. They had good weeks. Gardner Minchew wasn't awesome, but he also didn't have Michael Pittman, which was something that was important for his streamability. But there wasn't really anything special beyond those guys. Dontavi and Wicks found the endzone. Greg Dortch did too. Tyler Boyd was fine, but Josh Downs disappointed once again. Michael Wilson continued his streak of not catching his targets. Wondell Robinson had a serious opportunity for a decent day, but he fell short. Parker Washington was terrible. It just wasn't that great of a week.

This is the last Sleepers episode of the season. It's actually the last episode related to the 2023 fantasy season in general. Let's go out on a high note.

So as you guys know, I split up this part of the show by looking at players rostered in 10-50% of Yahoo!Leagues, and then players rostered in fewer than 10% of leagues. But this week, there are only 4 players in that latter bucket. So instead of splitting things up, I'm just going to go through a bunch of players who are rostered in 0-50% of Yahoo!Leagues, who you may consider starting this week, Championship Week. We'll kick things off with the quarterback streamers, the first one, Derek Carr. He's been a top 7 option at the position in back-to-back weeks, and he now gets a Tampa Bay secondary that's allowed the 9th most adjusted fantasy points to quarterbacks this season. New Orleans doesn't have an amazing implied team total, but there aren't many obvious streamers this week at quarterback. I have Carr at QB15, so I think he's a solid enough QB2.

The other streamer is Riskier. Kevin O'Connell came out this week. He said that he won't name a starting quarterback. Now, I'm assuming it's going to be Nick Mullens, but what this means is that, number one, it might not be Nick Mullens, but number two, he could have a short leash if he does go. But Mullens and the Vikings, they're at home, and that game has a 46.5 point over-under. Minnesota actually has one of the better implied team totals of the week, despite the injuries offensively. Green Bay has not been great defensively, that's why. They gave up a QB9 performance to Bryce Young last week, and they allowed a QB2 performance to Baker Mayfield the week before that. They've been a bottom 6 defense this season and passing EPA per drop back allowed.

I don't feel great about Mullens, but I do think he's a high-risk, high-ish reward type option.

Now, you could look at Joe Flacco this week too, but like I said in the 15 Transactions episode, I'm not nearly as bullish on Flacco as others are across the industry. Flacco gets the Jets. New York has allowed just two top 10 performances this season to quarterbacks. Those two quarterbacks were Jalen Hurts and Josh Allen. The Jets are the toughest opponent by Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed. Now, Flacco's averaged an impressive 19.5 points per game since he became starter. But we should note that three of his four opponents this season rank as top eight options for quarterbacks by Adjusted Points Allowed. The only moderately tough opponent that Flacco's faced was Chicago, and they rank as the 14th best opponent. He hasn't been tested like he's gonna be tested on Thursday night.

In a normal week, I wouldn't be talking about Flacco, but there really aren't a lot of options this week. I think Flacco's a little bit safer than Mullins, given all the additional stuff going on with the Vikings, but I feel like a lot of people were ignoring this tough matchup against the Jets. He's a QB, too, but I don't think he has the same upside as Derek Carr.

Now, moving on to running back, let's go back to Justice Hill. He played 62% of Baltimore's offensive snaps on Monday night, and he saw 53% of the team's running back rushes and a 9% target share. Those aren't bad peripherals.

Now the Ravens are in a potential high-scoring affair with the Dolphins this weekend. Miami hasn't been the easiest opponent for running backs this year. They actually ranked dead last also and adjusted target share allowed to the position. That might limit Hill's receiving upside. But Hill is the back in that backfield who's not game script dependent, and it's a good scoring environment. Volume can make him a reasonable flex option. I talked about Clyde Edwards-Helaire on the 15 Transaction show, so I won't go into a ton of detail here. Just know that if Isaiah Pacheco is out this week with his concussion, CEH to me is a fringe RB1 option. Because not only would Pacheco be out, but Jereck McKinnon's out too. He's on IR. Edwards-Helaire would be a legit bell cow for Kansas City against a beatable Cincinnati defense. I honestly think that you should feel pretty confident in CEH if Pacheco's out.