912: Week 3 Sleepers

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 912 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by underdog Fantasy, thanks for tuning in. I want to be better than I was last week on The Sleeper Show because I had some bad picks. Justin Fields still hasn't given us that elite fantasy performance this year. Brandon Cooks was overshadowed by Jalen Tolbert. Aidy Mitchell was overshadowed by Alec Pierce. The Miami backfield was a mess outside of Devon Aitchan. Zemir White ended up getting more receiving work, hurting alexander Madison. Jalen McMillan, Tyler Johnson, they didn't do much. It was not a great week, but not everything was terrible. I talked about Quentin Johnston. He had a multi-touchdown day. wondell Robinson found the end zone too. Daniel Jones was usable. Andrei Iosivash scored twice. And yeah, I know I'm talking about bottom of the barrel players, but I want a better hit rate than that. With more data and with more information, I'm expecting that hit rate to be better moving forward. Now, before we get into the Sleepers this week, I want to remind you to check out underdog Fantasy. underdog is the best and easiest place to play fantasy sports. And right now, like I told you yesterday, if you sign up with promo code Late-round, you get three things. You get a deposit bonus, you get a free pick, and you get a copy of my rest-of-season rankings. Those rankings are emailed to you after you sign up, and they're updated every Tuesday. All you have to do is head to underdogfantasy.com and use promo code Late-round when you sign up. Once you make a deposit, you'll get those offers. Again, promo code Late-round.

We'll kick things off as we usually do with players rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo leagues, and we'll start with quarterbacks. I'll be honest, I don't love the quarterbacks this week, but we're going to begin with Geno Smith. I do think there's some concern here that the Seahawks just don't have to keep pace with the Tuatunga Waialoa-list Miami Dolphins offense. That was pretty hard to say, but I got on my first try. But at the end of the day, we know that Seattle's at least projected to score points, and if they're projected to score points, the quarterback will usually have something to do with that. Seattle has the 12th best implied team total in this week's slate, and while Miami might look okay in fantasy points against, they've been 4th worst in EPA per drop back allowed to start the season. Geno Smith has been a top 10 passer according to that metric, and the nice part about Seattle is that thus far, they've been one of the pass friendlier teams in the league. They have the 4th highest pass rate over expected so far this season, and their 9th in neutral script rate. I'm not sure Smith's ceiling is absurd in this game. Like if Derek Carr is out there, I'd much rather play Derek Carr, but I think you could do worse with a quarterback streamer. But maybe you'd rather go with someone like Sam Darnold, as long as Justin Jefferson is active. Darnold and the Vikings rank 3rd in pass rate over expected to start the season, and they get a Houston defense that's been the 3rd best one for quarterbacks thus far in adjusted points allowed. It's still really early, so that number has a ton of volatility, but Houston got Anthony Richardson in Week 1, and he was much better against them than he was against the Packers. And then technically, Caleb Williams was a little bit better against them than he was against the Titans. But that Houston Minnesota game has a healthy 46-point total, and there's a chance that we see Minnesota needing to keep pace with Houston. I don't think it's some like ideal matchup. Houston's seen pretty average numbers in terms of neutral script pass rate against, and this game projects to be pretty average from a pace perspective. But there's not a lot going on at quarterback right now. Now moving on to running back, Chuba Hubbard is still under that 50% mark. He works now that Carolina made that switch to Andy Dalton. We may see a bad offense for Carolina still, but they're facing a Vegas rush defense that's allowed 267 rushing yards to running backs in two games. Hubbard saw his running back rush share increase by 19% points from week one to week two. And his target share last week was 19%. If that usage continues, he should be fine as a flex player in RB3 play this week. The Buccaneers are one of the biggest favorites on this week's slate because they get the Broncos. A potential positive game script means more potential runs. And that's pretty important for a team like Tampa Bay because they've been the 6th most pass heavy team over expected this year. Rashad White is the team's RB1, but like I said earlier this week, he's been pretty rough on the ground. And while he's back at practice, he is dealing with a groin issue. So that makes Bucky Irving a sleeper. He saw 41% of the team's running back rushes last week. So if this ends up being a favorable game script for the Buccaneers, he could hit double digit touches. Now people are gonna roll their eyes at this next one, but it's Jaleel McLaughlin. It's been a weird season for the Broncos' running backs. I thought their target share was gonna be higher than where it's at right now. Right now, they're just a little bit above average. And in week one, we saw Jaleel McLaughlin kind of be the starter or be the main guy in that backfield. And then week two, Javontae Williams was a workhorse. So it's been a weird season so far for this offense and how they're deploying their backs. The thing is though, they might go with a run-heavy approach against Tampa Bay. The Bucs are dealing with defensive line issues, and they've been a bottom half team to start the year, and yards over expected allowed on the ground along with EPA per rush allowed. There aren't many waiver wire players getting volume, so McLaughlin might be able to work as a desperation flex. And then the last running back in this tier, I'm going to go over to Justice Hill. The Ravens get the Cowboys this week, and when you've got a good opponent like that, there's always the chance for a negative game script. At the very least, it's a game with a high total. Hill unsurprisingly saw his target share drop from 20% in week 1 to 6.5% in week 2, but his route participation was still 46%. That was a drop by about 8% points, not as drastic. And so far this year, the Cowboys have been 9th in adjusted target share allowed to running backs. So Hill kind of works this week, but only in PPR formats. He's kind of in that RB4 range. Now, wide receiver Demarcus Robinson is just barely under that 50% mark, so I'll give him a shout. I've got another Rams wide receiver to talk about later, but Robinson is the safest of the bunch. That bunch being without Cooper Cup and Pukunakua. Robinson is the only Rams wide receiver this year to hit an 80% Rao participation rate in each of their first two games. He's turned that into 11 targets and a 15% target share. Now, I don't think he's an absolute smash. The 49ers have struggled against wide receivers in the early parts of the season when adjusting for strength of opponent. But you have to have some concern that the 49ers are going to be able to pressure this Ram's offense and how depleted they are. Robinson is more of a, he should be the stable piece in this offense kind of play. But he does have some volatility. He just deserves a shout. And as I said, I have another Ram's wide receiver that I'm going to get to later, who I think actually has the better matchup in this game. Next is a pair of wide receivers and that's Greg Dortch and Michael Wilson. But I will say, I think I'm leaning Greg Dortch this week. I like his matchup better against the Lions because the Lions have struggled a lot against slot receivers to start the year. They faced the Rams and the Buccaneers, and they've seen the fifth highest percentage of wide receiver targets against them go to the slot. And according to PFF data, they've allowed the second most receptions and the most total targets to slot receivers. That's Greg Dortch land. He didn't get a lot done in week two, but the Cardinals didn't have a back and forth game script. He's an 11 personnel guy. And you could go Michael Wilson as well because this Cardinals Lions game, it projects to be a shootout, or at least a high scoring one. With Deebo Samuel out, Brandon Iyuk and George Kittle might end up seeing half of San Francisco's targets, but Jawan Jennings is now going to be a full-time player. I'm interested to see how they deploy him, because there's some other guys in this offense like Jacob Cowing, who belong in the slot, and that's where Jennings usually plays. But there's no doubt that his route participation is going to rise without Deebo Samuel in that lineup. And in an offense that we know can put up points and put up lots of yards, that's intriguing. Now the last wide out in this tier that I'm going to shout out, it's Jahan Dotson. Now hear me out. Clearly I don't feel great about this, given how Jahan Dotson performed on Monday Night Football. AJ Brown was out, and he still saw just a single target. But the good news is that he ran a route on over 85% of Philly's drop backs, and their game against New Orleans this weekend has a nice 49 point over under. This is really about getting a player who's part of a high scoring game who should be running a lot of routes. Those routes might just turn into cardio, who knows? But it's the right environment to get a piece of. I don't think he's a top 50 wide receiver, but I do think he is technically a sleeper. The obvious tight end in this tier is Hunter Henry. He's coming off a game where he saw a 50% target share. That's absurd. He now ranks seventh in round participation across the league at tight end. Now, the match up this week is not great. The Jets so far this season are second best against tight ends and adjusted fantasy points allowed. With that being said, they rank pretty average and adjusted target share a lot of the position. There's not a lot out there at tight end, so the fact that Hunter Henry is getting a lot of run, that's huge. Mike Gysicki saw 26.5% target share last week. He was productive. But as I talked about in the 10 Trends show, his round participation is still pretty mid. He ranks outside the top 30 at the position in round participation. With that being said, the Bengals may just want to use him more. Maybe that happens this week. But regardless, Cincinnati has a juicy matchup against Washington. This could be the game we see the Bengals finally break out and post a lot of points. So that's why I'm calling out Gysicki.