913: Mailbag 9/20/24

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason in this episode 913 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. Underdog is the best and easiest place to play fantasy sports. And right now, if you sign up with promo code LATEROUND, like I've been saying, 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 LATEROUND when you sign up. Once you make a deposit, you'll get those three things. Again, that's promo code LATEROUND. Now let's get to these questions.

The first question this week is from Patreon. It's from Matt. It says, Hi JJ, why is Tank Del ranks so high in your rest of season rankings? So I got a lot of questions about Tank Del this week. And because of that, because so many people are questioning him, and because of other reasons that I'm going to talk about right now, he's kind of an obvious buy candidate. So far this season, Tank Del has run a route on 86% of Houston's drop backs. Stefan Diggs, 87%, Nico Collins, 88%. People have this idea in their head that Tank Del is Houston's wide receiver 3, which I guess is technically true. From a real life perspective, it is true. He's played like 20 fewer snaps across two games than Nico Collins and Stefan Diggs. But that doesn't matter that much from a fantasy football perspective, because we're not playing in points per cornerback blocked leagues. We're getting points for receiving, and Del is still running routes at a similar rate as Nico Collins and Stefan Diggs. In a small sample size, we're going to see some wild fluctuations in production. Nico Collins is an Alpha who's almost definitely going to lead that team in target share. But Del currently has a 17% target share. Collins is at 28%. I don't think that's necessarily going to remain as large of a gap throughout the entire season. We didn't see nearly that kind of gap last year when Del was a rookie. Now, players develop and maybe Del's not 100% after his injury last year. But this is a high-powered offense, and Del is running a lot of routes within that offense, and he's still seeing targets down the field. According to Sports Info Solutions, Del's 13th among relevant wideouts and intended air yards per target. His average up to target is still the highest on the Texans. The NFL is filled with terrible offenses right now. I'll gladly take on a second year wide receiver who's getting a lot of run and one of the better ones. One of the few good offenses in the league. That's why Del is still ranked pretty high in my rest of season rankings.

This next question is also from Patreon. It's from David. It says, I'm sure you'll get a lot of questions about the Miami wide receivers. Your stance on them, and is there any chance we can get something out of a trade with name value? Look, regarding that last question, in situations like these, valuations are going to be all over the place. So the only thing I can say is test the market. But I'm definitely concerned about the Miami pass catchers. Tyreek Hill has been in Miami since 2022 During that 2022 season, two have missed four games. He also missed a playoff game that Skyler Thompson started in. But in those four games, Tyreek Hill averaged 15.7 PPR points per game. That's not that bad. But one of those games saw him with nearly 30 PPR points. He had 15 targets. And that game had Teddy Bridgewater throwing the ball because he came in for Thompson, who hurt his thumb. Now, Waddle had a good game that week too. But Waddle's splits are even more concerning. He averaged 10.2 PPR points per game in that four game split. Now, I'm not saying that those four games are everything. And all of a sudden, Jalen Waddle is going to be like a wide receiver five. Or that Tyreek Hill is going to average exactly 15.7 PPR points per game. My point is more so the fact that quarterback play matters. We should be concerned about Miami pass catchers seeing a dip in production. Thompson has now started three games when you include that playoff loss to the Bills. He's thrown the ball 89 times in those starts. Again, one of those starts, he got hurt. His yards per attempt rate on those 89 attempts is 5.2. Bryce Young's rookie season yards per attempt, 5.5. Tua's career yards per attempt is 7.7, and it's been 8.9 and 8.3 the last two years with Tyreek Hill. I mean, statistically, it's hard to see this as anything but a huge downgrade. The hope that you have to have for these pass catchers is that Miami just hits a lot of negative game scripts, which would increase their volume. We saw that in the playoffs against the Bills. Thompson had 45 pass attempts. The problem? He only completed 18 of them. So, my stance is that I'm incredibly nervous about both Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddle.