916: Week 4 Sleepers

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and this episode 916 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. When there's a waiver wire player who has a completely insane game, I really hope that I mention him on The Sleeper Show. And last week with Jawan Jennings, that was fortunately the case. He was one of the sleepers from that episode. And to be honest, I think last week's episode was the best one of the season. There were the typical misses. Greg Dortch actually had decent peripherals, but he didn't have a strong day of production. Hunter Henry really disappointed. Jordan Whittington didn't see the exact role that I thought that he would see, and Deontay Foreman wasn't used like he was in week 2 But there was a lot of good. I mentioned Jawan Jennings already. That was a big hit. But I also talked about Sam Darnold, who was a top 10 quarterback option. Chuba Hubbard had a big day. Bucky Irving was fine. Cam Akers was okay. Jalen Tolbert and Jalen Naylor both scored touchdowns. And Michael Wilson was solid too. It was an 8 out of 10 week. I'll take it. We're on to week 4 Before getting to the things, I want to remind you to check out Underdog. Underdog is a great place to play fantasy sports with so many different offerings that will definitely fit what you're looking for. Right now, if you sign up over there, you'll get a nice deposit offer, a free pick that will help you win some cash, and then you also get my rest of season rankings. Those rest of season rankings are updated every Tuesday through the end of the year. You get access to all of those updates. So make sure you take advantage of those offers. Head to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog app, and when you sign up, use promo code LATEROUND. Now let's get to this week's sleepers.

Sam Darnold is right at the fringe for this first year of players. I'm looking at guys rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo! Leagues, and Darnold is right around that 50% mark. But I actually prefer Geno Smith to Sam Darnold this week straight up. So we'll start there. Geno gets the lions here in Week 4 That game is sitting with a respectable 47.5 point total. Detroit's been pretty average for quarterbacks this year when looking at just the fantasy points allowed. But they've been good against running backs. And that's forced teams to have the sixth highest neutral script pass rate in the league against the lions. Now there's a chance that we see even more passing than usual from this Seahawks offense this week. And Seattle's already a top five team and pass rate over expected. That's going to help a player like Geno. Justin Fields is also in here this week. We haven't seen as much rushing production from him to start the year, and his yards per carry is well below his career average. There are reasons for that, but it's a number that's probably going to rise as we move forward in the season. Pittsburgh gets Indianapolis. The Colts are the 12th best matchup for quarterbacks by Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed. They also rank in the bottom 10 at generating quarterback pressure. And Fields currently has a top 10 quarterback grade over on PFF when kept clean this year. Fields has actually been a top five quarterback this season according to Next Gen Stats and completion rate overexpected. I think he's in a pretty good spot. And then the last quarterback to call out here, who's surprisingly above the 10% mark, is Andy Dalton. I just figured that people wouldn't be super aggressive with Dalton, but he balled out last week so it makes sense. Dalton gets his old team when he goes up against Cincinnati this weekend, and the Bengals have been an above average matchup for quarterbacks to start the season. Dalton's coming off a top 10 performance where he shredded the Raiders, and the Bengals-Panthers game has the second-highest game total on this week's slate. For real. Carolina's got the 13th-best implied team total. Cincinnati's been pretty below average across the board from a defensive perspective. Their bottom half in the league in pressure rate, and as a defensive unit, they've allowed the fifth-highest EPA per play. So with Dalton, you're just playing into the fact that this is an above average matchup and he looked good last week. Now moving on to running back, I think Rico Dowdle makes sense against the Giants on Thursday night. Dowdle saw an increase in running back rush share of about 20 percentage points from weeks one and two to week three. And he's now hit a double-digit percentage target share in each of his last two. The Giants have been a pretty ordinary matchup for backs this year. And Dallas is the fifth-highest team total on this week's slate. So he's not a bad flex option. Justice Hill is another interesting one. Baltimore gets Buffalo, and the Bills ranked sixth so far, and adjusted target share allowed to running back this year. Hill ranks in the top 20 in the league so far in route participation. He comes in ahead of guys like Aaron Jones and Tony Pollard. This is also a game where, hypothetically, Baltimore could trail, just given the way that Buffalo is playing. If that happens, you're going to see more Justice Hill on the field. So in PPR formats, I don't think he's a terrible play. The last running back from this tier is Braylon Allen, who's still under that 50% mark. There will be games for the Jets this year where Allen's not used nearly as much as he was last week because Gamescript just goes south, sort of like we saw in Week 1 against the 49ers. But the Jets get the Broncos this week, and they're pretty big favorites. They're favored by more than a touchdown. So if that game goes as planned, we'll probably see Allen with another 30-ish percent running back rush air. We have to be a little bit concerned about his pass catching ceiling, but he's looked great, and he's earned himself a role in that offense. It doesn't hurt that Denver's been a fine opponent for running backs thus far too.