918: 15 Transactions for Week 5

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and in this episode 918 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog, thanks for tuning in. If you haven't done it yet, you should check out what's going on over at Underdog. Fantasy football draft season may be over, but it's not over on Underdog. You can draft teams each week over there based on the slate of games, and those drafts are for all sorts of price points in all different sizes. There's also Pick'em and Champions mode that you can dig into as well. If you want to get in on the action, just head to underdogfantasy.com and go sign up, and when you sign up, use promo code LATEROUND. That'll get you a free pick, a nice deposit offer, and you'll also get my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are emailed to you from Underdog after you sign up, and they're updated every Tuesday. You get those updates every single week through the end of the season. That's underdogfantasy.com promo code LATEROUND. Now let's get to these transactions.

Add Dontavian Wicks. You know, over the off season during the summer, you heard myself and other analysts talk about contingent upside. Most players in fantasy football just have one, maybe two teammates who offer injury upside. If the teammate gets hurt, that player gets a bump in work. But in Green Bay, all of the wide receivers had multiple injury outs. If one player got hurt, the other guys would be more full-time players in that offense. And that's what we're seeing right now at Dontavian Wicks. Christian Watson unfortunately suffered an ankle injury. He could miss several weeks. And Watson's injury allowed Wicks to up his row participation to 80% after seeing rates around 45% in weeks one through three. That led to more production. He had a 24% target share on Sunday. He had 24.8 PPR points. Dontavian Wicks had a really good rookie season. His yards per route run was above two. That's a number that was hit by just 26 qualified rookie wide receivers since 2011 Many of those year one wide outs who got to that number were very successful in the NFL throughout their career. So Dontavian Wicks is gonna have a bigger role in this offense with Christian Watson sidelined. And the Packers have a great schedule upcoming. They have matchups against the Rams, Cardinals, Texans, Jags and Lions over their next five. At this moment in time, all of those teams rank in the top 13 in adjusted fantasy points allowed to wide receivers favorably. It wouldn't be surprising if Wicks performs well. And given his age, his early career numbers, he could just carve out a bigger role in this offense, even when Christian Watson returns. And then obviously this Watson injury, also good news for people who have Jaden Reid and Romeo Dobbs.

Add Tucker Craft. So another Packer who absolutely needs to be rostered right now in the majority of leagues is Tucker Craft. It's tough at tight end right now. It's tough to find a tight end with Tucker Craft's peripherals. He's now hit a 15% target share in three consecutive games. And his Rao participation saw a spike in Week 4 It was around that 60%-70% range the first three weeks of the year. It was 86% in Week 4 He is Green Bay's tight end one. And that matters because Jordan Love is back under center. Add Emanuel Wilson. So apparently this week's 15 Transactions episode is sponsored by the Green Bay Packers. But for real, Emanuel Wilson, he deserves a shout this week. I talked about him a bit on last week's 10 Trends episode. So this is a little promotion to tell you to listen to that episode as well, not just the 15 Transactions one. But I noted that he was digging into Josh Jacobs' role a little bit more than we expected. And that continued in Week 4, even with Jordan Love back. Wilson has seen running back rush shares of 41% and 47% over his last two games. And it got me thinking, everyone's really excited about Bucky Irving right now and his usage, which you should be. But Emmanuel Wilson's usage hasn't been that much different than Bucky Irving's. It's just that Irving's competition is easier to overcome. Josh Jacobs is better than Rashad White. But strictly from a current usage standpoint, like what we've seen over the last couple of weeks, Wilson's backfield share numbers haven't been that far off from Bucky Irving's. And why have we been targeting Bucky Irving? Because he can be a flex play, but he also has that contingent upside. Wilson is the Packers' number two running back right now, with Marshawn Lloyd on IR. If Josh Jacobs were to go down, Emanuel Wilson would become Green Bay's top running back. They'd probably make some moves and do a little bit more to that backfield, but he would be the RB1. Again, he's not as intriguing as someone like Bucky Irving, because a backfield takeover is almost definitely not gonna happen in Wilson's case, that could happen in Irving's case. But Wilson's a backup running back who's getting work, and that makes him roster worthy. Drop Mark Andrews. Now look, I said this at the beginning of the season, but I don't like taking wins and losses as the season's going forward. Like it's only week four, we're only going into week five. We don't know if things are right or wrong just yet, but also, who cares right now? We have all off season to talk about what went right and what went wrong. I'll do podcasts on both of those things because I care about my process and how I got to the conclusions that I got to. With that being said, Mark Andrews, he's an L. A massive, massive L. It's probably going to go down as my biggest miss of the season because I thought Mark Andrews, where he was being drafted, was a pretty good draft pick. And that was entirely wrong. There was some hope after week one. The Ravens had a game plan where they took what they were given. They targeted their running backs at a really high rate, and Isaiah Likely was the one who benefited most from their two tight end sets. But Andrews' peripherals in that game, I talked about that on the show, I sent an email about this. His overall usage in that game still looked better than Isaiah Likely's, aside from targets. And because Baltimore lacks depth of pass catcher, it was reasonable to think that they were going to run a lot of 12 personnel this year. That would make both of those tight ends viable in fantasy football. Even that was wrong. I've gotten to the point where I just cannot predict this Todd Monk in offense. It's very, very difficult to do. Andrews has seen pathetic Rao participation over his last two games. He's been under the 50% mark in both of those outings. He's only fallen below that mark throughout his career when he's been injured. Now, here's the thing. GameScript has definitely played a role here. Look at their last two games. The Ravens faced the Cowboys in week three, and they were up 21-3 in the second quarter. The Cowboys have also been beatable on the ground. Baltimore went with a run-heavy approach. Then look at what happened on Sunday night. It was the exact same story. Second quarter, Baltimore's up 21-3. Buffalo is another team that you can run on. They're the third worst team in expected points added per rush allowed. So it was another Derek Henry focused plan. That meant less Mark Andrews. So because of that, because of the game script stuff and deeper formats, I do think that Andrews is still someone that you want on your bench. Because the tight end landscape is really bad. I think that there are going to be games where Mark Andrews is fine. It's just a matter of predictability. We're not going to know when Baltimore is going to blow out their opponent. We're not going to know when a game is going to be close. We can predict it or we can try to predict it, but it's not going to be easy. And that's a huge, huge problem for both Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely, and Zay Flowers for that matter. Because it's clear that this monk in offense is not going to be very predictable week over week. I mean, Justice Hill was on my sleeper show last week. I mentioned him as a sleeper. I didn't think he was going to see a 33% target share. That's crazy. But in a 10-team league, some 12-team leagues, I do think at this point, you can drop Mark Andrews because he's basically a streamer.