908: Week 2 Sleepers

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 908 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy, thanks for tuning in. At the start of every sleeper show, I recap what happened during the previous week. I want to hold myself accountable. But also, when I go back and look at what happened the previous week, it sometimes uncovers things that I just blatantly did incorrectly from a process standpoint. So with that in mind, here goes. Last week was understandably hit or miss. It was week one. We don't have that much information to work off of. On the bad side, Luke mccaffrey, Andre Josivache, they weren't very usable. Neither was Samajay Peerine, Hunter Henry, Antonio Gibson, Dontavian Wicks, and Ray Davis. Definitely some L's in there. But there was some good on last week's show. Some very good. Sam Darnold wasn't a bad call out as a deep sleeper. I got the Jamal Williams call correct. Jalen McMillan scored. Geno Smith was absolutely fine. But Baker Mayfield was the QB2 on the week. And JK. Dobbins, he got a shout out. He ended up crushing the Raiders. And the defensive streamers did their part too. So overall, not a terrible week. There were a lot of things that I learned, and hopefully those things are gonna help me out here in week two. Now before getting to the sleepers this week, if you missed the announcement yesterday, then you're not aware of a brand new underdog offer that I have for you. As you know, during the summer, I was giving away a free late-round draft guide to any new underdog user who signed up with promo code LATEROUND. Now that we're in season, that draft guide doesn't matter that much. But my rest of season rankings do. If you head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up with promo code LATEROUND, not only will you get a deposit bonus, but you'll also get a link to my rest of season rankings. They're updated every Tuesday, and you'll get them all season long. Just head to underdogfantasy.com, sign up, and when you do, use promo code LATEROUND. Once you deposit, you'll get an email to your inbox with a link to the rankings and tiers. Now that that's out of the way, let's get to week 2's sleepers.

We'll start things with players rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo! Leagues. Now, I can't go back to Baker Mayfield this week, because he's now rostered in way too many leagues. And that's unfortunate, because he's the most obvious play at quarterback versus other guys who are on the waiver wire. So I'll kick things off with Justin Fields, who at this moment is available in 86% of Yahoo! Leagues. I told you on the 15 Transaction Show how week 1 wasn't really the norm for Fields, at least for Fields, when he has that many rush attempts. He finished the day with 14 Denver's defense isn't necessarily some cake matchup. But if the Steelers run Fields once again, then he should be able to produce more. Like I said, in his previous nine games, where he hit more than 10 rush attempts, he posted a top eight quarterback performance in eight of them. He's averaged over 25 points per game in those contests. Now, I don't think he's going to be that high, but as long as Fields goes, he's in that high-end QB2 range. Now, that's all I've got a quarterback in this tier. I've got one more for you guys in the deep sleeper section. Let's go to running backs where I've got Rico Dowdle. Now, the Cowboys are six and a half point favorites against the Saints, and they have the fourth highest implied team total on the week. Ezekiel Elliott was the backfield favorite in week one. But keep in mind that Zeke didn't play significantly more snaps than Rico Dowdle did, and he ran a similar number of routes while seeing ten rushes to Dowdle's eight. Zeke won out, don't get me wrong, but he didn't win out by that much. So while the fantasy totals look the way that they do, and I'd still play Zeke over Dowdle this week, don't be totally discouraged here with Rico Dowdle. He's still seeing work, and he's seeing work in an offense that's projected to score a lot of points here in week two. Next is the Miami backfield, Jeff Wilson and Jaylen Wright. Here's what I told late-round fantasy football patrons on Tuesday night's live stream Q&A, and any of you can be part of that Patreon community by heading to lateround.com. But like I told them on Tuesday night, I wouldn't be surprised if Jeff Wilson gets more work than Jaylen Wright here in week two, with Raheem Mostert sidelined. With that being said, thinking more long-term, I think you've got to want Wright on your roster more. He was a good prospect, and he really fits this run scheme well. It's not hard to imagine a scenario where Wilson has the better week two, but Wright is the better player rest of season. But you may want to just go with Wright over Wilson this week anyway. There's plenty of variance with how the Dolphins might deploy their backfield. And for the record, this is assuming Devon Aitchand plays. If Aitchand's out, I might just prefer Wright straight up to Jeff Wilson in week two, because he'd be guaranteed some of that run in the backfield. But we know it's a good offense, and they've got a top-six implied team total on the week. And for what it's worth, Buffalo was also ninth worst in rushing EPA allowed in week one. And then lastly, there's Alexander Madison. I talked about this on the 15 Transaction Show, but if the usage in that Raiders backfield remains the exact same week in and week out as what we saw in week one, then we're going to prefer Alexander Madison over Zameer White rest of season. Antonio Pierce also came out this week talking about using a hot hand approach in that backfield.