922: 15 Transactions for Week 6

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason, and in this episode 922 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog, thanks for tuning in. Underdog is the best place to play fantasy sports, and during October, Underdog is running a different promo every single day with Boosttober. If you sign up now, you not only get access to those promos, but you also get a deposit bonus and a free copy of my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are updated every Tuesday through the end of the fantasy season, and with the link that Underdog provides when you sign up, you get access to those updates. All you have to do is head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up with promo code LATEROUND. Make a deposit and start playing, and you're good to go. That's promo code LATEROUND. It's a 15 Transactions Day. Let's get to it. Hold Dontayvion Wicks. So every fantasy football analyst told you to add Dontayvion Wicks last week, and what does he do? He gives you 4 PPR points. He had this great matchup against the Rams. The Rams were bad in terms of adjusted fantasy points allowed, but they were also bad to perimeter wide receivers. He had this great matchup, and he did nothing with it. He scored 4 points. And now all of you are sitting back and you're saying, why do I listen to fantasy analysts? They told me that Dontayvion Wicks was a really good play this past week. All I ask is that people don't look only in small samples, especially when it comes to production. because this past week, Dontayvion Wicks had a 28% target share that was highest on the Packers. Now he had issues with drops. He's had issues like that throughout his brief career. But the thing that we always want to lead with is usage. When a player is consistently seeing looks, better production is going to eventually come. Now you could argue that those looks aren't going to go Wicks' way anymore, because he didn't have that great of a game. But again, it's a one-game sample. We have a larger sample of Wicks being a really good wide receiver on a per-route run basis. Christian Watson is probably going to be out again in week 6 Green Bay gets Arizona. The Cardinals have been an average opponent at best against wide receivers this year, and adjusted points allowed. The production wasn't there for Dontayvion Wicks, but the peripherals were there. This is exactly why we look at things like target share and route participation. It doesn't guarantee production. Next week, we might not see a great performance from Wicks. But we're playing probability here, and math tells us that if Wicks continues to see that kind of target share, he will eventually produce.

Add Tyrone Tracy. So I didn't get to talk about Tyrone Tracy last week because we didn't have that much information about Devon Singletary's injury. But I did talk about him on the mailbag episode last week. And on that mailbag episode, I was asked which team RB2, who wasn't really part of a committee, had a chance to overtake his team's RB1 through the end of the season. And my answer to that question was Tyrone Tracy. And I think we saw why in Week 5 Devon Singletary missed Week 5 for the Giants. In turn, Tyrone Tracy, their rookie running back, he saw the majority of the backfield work. He had 129 rushing yards. Now he only saw two targets, but he ran the most routes out of the backfield for the Giants. And he was also more effective than Eric Gray was in that backfield. He finished the day with a plus 2.6 rushing yards over expected per rush rate. And Gray was at minus 1.3. And Gray had a really costly fumble at the goal line. For those of you who weren't around during the off season during prospecting season, I like Tracy as a day three prospect because in the ZAP model, one of his comps was Tony Pollard. He had a good receiving profile coming out because he played wide receiver in college, but then at the same time, he had a really good speed score, which is weight-adjusted 40-time. That was a big reason that in my draft guide, I listed Tyrone Tracy as a late-round dart throw because if you look at that backfield, you have Devon Singletary and Eric Gray. Neither player, neither running back is very explosive. Tyrone Tracy brings that element to the offense. Now, the big question moving forward is, what's this workload gonna look like after his good week five? Is he gonna take Devon Singletary's job? And my answer to that is, I don't know. We don't have to necessarily know that. What we should understand is that it's possible. What we should understand is that Tyrone Tracy looks really good in week five, regardless of matchup, regardless of circumstance. And when that's the case, if he's still on your waiver wire, you should probably be aggressive in getting him off your waiver wire this week. By the Minnesota Vikings passing attack. So week five was the first time that Sam Darnold failed to have a multi-touchdown game this season. He threw zero touchdowns against the Jets. But of course, he played the Jets. It's a really tough matchup. It's one of the toughest matchups he's going to face all year. The good news, though, is that this could present a nice buy low opportunity, not just for Sam Darnold, but the entire Minnesota offense. Minnesota has a buy this week, which means that you might be able to get these guys a little bit cheaper than usual. But out of the buy, they get the Lions, Rams, Colts, and Jacks. Over the next five weeks, according to Adjusted Fantasy Points Allowed, the Vikings have the second best quarterback schedule, the best running back schedule, and the best wide receiver schedule. And things aren't that bad long term either. So now might be the perfect time to buy those Vikings pieces.