903: 10 Trends for Week 1

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

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

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 903 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. The shortest Late-Round Podcast episode of the week, it's this one, the 10 Trends episode. This is where I give you 10 data-driven nuggets that could help sway you one way or another about a particular player or a team. I won't always have a strong take about what I'm saying on this episode, but the information I provide might make you think twice about a situation in fantasy football. But yeah, it's 10 trends. It's that simple. Now, before we get to those trends this week, I wanted to let you know about something cool happening over at Underdog Fantasy. On Wednesday, September 4th, the day this episode is published, Underdog is dropping something special. If you hate when one of your entries gets ruined by a vulture stealing your running back's touchdown, then you'll love Underdog's vulture protection. If you select a designated running back to score a touchdown in your pick-em entry, and they get vultured, Underdog will rescue your entry. You can learn more about it on underdogfantasy.com. When you're there, sign up with promo code LATEROUND. Not only will you get access to these cool promotions, but you will also get a deposit bonus and free copy of the Late-Round Draft Guide. That's by signing up using promo code LATEROUND and then making a deposit. And that's all at underdogfantasy.com. Now let's get to this week's 10 trends.

The first trend this week is about the Baltimore Ravens offense. Last season, the Ravens led the NFL in plays run with a lead. That resulted in them finishing the year with the lowest pass rate in all of football. But what's wild is that their pass rate over expected actually ranked 11th in the NFL last year according to NFELO, which is a great resource, by the way, it's nfeloapp.com. And what that means is that when you give their offense a little bit of context, they were way more pass heavy than you realize. If the Ravens take a step back this year, which is almost definitely going to happen because they were so good last year, it's going to be hard to consistently be that good, they could easily see a more pass heavy approach overall. And that should honestly be the expectation.

Now, another team level trend has to do with Pittsburgh. Arthur Smith is now Offensive Coordinator for the Steelers, as we know, and his offenses typically don't feature a lot of 11 personnel. This is another poll from NFELO. But on first downs only, Smiths Falcons last year ranked 32nd in its use of 11 personnel, or three wide sets. In 2022, they were 31st. In 2021, they were also 31st. We're gonna see George Pickens on the field a lot, but it's gonna be interesting to see if a second wide receiver emerges in Pittsburgh, because that wide out has a shot to see a relatively decent target share if things hit. because fewer wide receivers on the field means there's fewer alternative options to go to when a quarterback is throwing the ball. Now, I'm not really optimistic about anyone, but it's at least something to watch. I was cool with drafting Hollywood Brown this year, along with basically any Chiefs pass catcher. But with this being a 10 Trends episode, I gotta call out a trend about Hollywood Brown. Brown has played in the NFL for 5 years. He's seen his yards per route run rate drop every single year of his career. It started at 1.81 as a rookie. It's a really good number for a rookie. Then it was 1.72, then 1.61, then 1.44, and in this past year, it was really poor at 1.25. There's a lot of volatility to Hollywood Brown's overall profile right now. Now I bought into him, Rice and Worthy, because I'm very, very bullish on this Chiefs offense this year. But there's no doubt some concern surrounding Hollywood Brown. There's been a lot of talk about Chris Godwin playing more in the slot this season, and fantasy managers, they're excited about the possibility. In his extremely, extremely small preseason sample, according to PFF, Godwin ran two-thirds of his routes out of the slot. That was more in line with what we saw from 2018 to 2022 But in 2023, last season, his slot rate fell to 37 percent. Now, if you recall last season, Chris Godwin wasn't that great of a fantasy asset. He finishes the Wide Receiver 35 in PPR points per game. During his previous four seasons, he was Wide Receiver 2, Wide Receiver 15, Wide Receiver 7, and Wide Receiver 14 But this isn't as simple as he played less in the slot last year. That's why he was bad. That's only part of it. And honestly, it's not even the biggest part of it. Last year, Godwin's yards per route run rate and his targets per route run rate, they were right in line with his career averages. He had a fine year on a per route run basis. His average at the target was 10.3. His previous two seasons were at 6 and 7.6. So it did rise. But that A-dot was no different than what we'd seen from Godwin over his first four years of his career. His target share also not that different. In fact, last year, Godwin's target share per game rate was the highest of his career. One of the issues in 2023 was his catch rate. It fell to levels that we haven't seen from him since he was a second year player. It was 10 to 15 percentage points lower than what he'd experienced with Tom Brady. And that's something where this slot alignment could help him a little bit. There's no doubt. He'll see more advantageous matchups. His catch rate might increase. And then last year, he also only scored twice. So there's some favorable regression coming his way. But him playing in the slot isn't magically going to necessarily make him a top 15 wide receiver in fantasy football like he used to be. We have to remember that he had a different quarterback. And most importantly, last year, he was playing in an offense that threw the ball a lot less. In 2023, Tampa Bay ranked 15th in pass rate. With Tom Brady, they were first, first and third. And before Tom Brady, they ranked eighth, sixth and third. In other words, last year was the first time Chris Godwin was in an offense in the NFL that ranked worse than eighth in pass rate. Now that team level information is why we shouldn't over inflate this slot stuff. Yes, him lining up in the slot, it should help. It could increase his reception total, but it's not necessarily gonna philosophically change the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as an offense. So he should be better than he was last year, but don't overstate this slot stuff, in my opinion. I talked about Samaj P. Ryan on yesterday's 15 Transactions episode, but I didn't talk that much about how P. Ryan might impact Isaiah Pacheco. And there's definitely some worry there. Pacheco was set to be a legit bell cow for the Chiefs this year before this P. Ryan signing. But if P. Ryan ends up playing the Jarek McKinnon role, that could really cap Pacheco's ceiling. McKinnon missed five regular season games last year, Pacheco was active for four of those games. And in those four contests, he finishes the RB 4, 8, 28, and 2 in weekly PPR scoring. He averaged 21.8 PPR points per game and a target share per game of 16%.