923: 10 Trends for Week 6

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, 923 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. If you sign up at Underdog right now, you get access to their promos for Boosttober, and you'll 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 all of those updates. All you have to do is head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up with promo code LATEROUND. Make a deposit, start playing, you're good to go. That's promo code LATEROUND. The first trend this week is that Kareem Hunt was a workhorse on Monday night. I thought they'd have more of a committee against the Saints, but it was the Kareem Hunt show. He handled 84% of the team's running back rushes against New Orleans, but he only saw a 3% target share. His route participation was around the 41% mark. That was better than week four, but that's still not an elite number. So he's not getting like elite usage, but it's very, very good usage. If that continues, he'll be someone that you're playing most weeks in your lineup.

The Falcons have looked different offensively over the last couple of weeks. From weeks one through three, Atlanta had pass rates of 56%, 53% and 55%. Over the last two games, those pass rates have shot up to 71% and 78%. Now obviously matchup can dictate some of this as can GameScript. But in neutral script environments, which I define as plays run in the first three quarters while the game is within a six point margin, in those environments, we're also seeing a pretty massive increase in pass rate. This may sound like it's a bad thing for someone like Bijon Robinson, but targets are more valuable than rush attempts. It may change how they score touchdowns to some degree, but Robinson's bread and butters is receiving work. And like I said yesterday, if they decide to start allowing him to run more routes like he did in weeks one and two, his ceiling could really hit. But this is good for the passing attack and the players in that passing attack, especially with a great upcoming schedule. It feels like the Cleveland running back usage is a mystery every single week. Let me read you Jerome Ford's running back rush share numbers by week this year. 86%, 32%, 83%, 71%, and 47%. It's hard to say this is just game script related too. Last week, the Browns trailed the commanders throughout that game, and Ford is the hypothetical player that you'd have on the field in that environment. Instead, Deontay Foreman saw as many touches on the ground, and Pierre Strong, according to Fantasy Life data, saw a nice uptick and long down and distance snaps. Ford has been the definition of fine, but this offense is a mess, and Nick Chubb, he could be back soon. That's just going to make things even messier. Jacksonville is the new Washington, at least in terms of being a great matchup for passing attacks. On the season, team-wide receivers facing Jacksonville have seen an increase of over 14 PPR points versus their season-long average. So let's say that a team scores 30 PPR points per game, their team-wide receivers. Against Jacksonville, they've seen that number increase to 44 PPR points. Play your pass catchers, your wide receivers, against the Jags.

A good example of coach-speak mattering is with Kenneth Walker. I wasn't in on Walker in the mid-July time frame. I was worried about a new coaching staff and how they might view him vs. Zach Charbonnet. And I was worried that he continued to not see a lot of receiving work. And then when training camp started, we started hearing more from their coaches. And it became clearer and clearer that they wanted to use Walker in that way. They wanted to use him as a three down back. So thankfully, I changed my tune. And thankfully, he's on a number of my rosters. Because season-long drafts mostly happened in August. Walker currently has the fifth highest target share among all running backs. He's run around on 54% of Seattle's drop backs, which is also a solid number. It kind of goes back to what I've said about pass catching at running back. I think there are some elite players at it. Alvin Kamara, Christian McCaffrey, hypothetically, Bijon Robinson and Breeze Hall. And then there are players who we know just won't be pass catchers, like Gus Edwards. And then there's a lot of players in the middle, which is where Walker's always been. Even if he's below average at it, if the team wants to use him in that way, they're going to use him in that way. And he's obviously dynamic with the ball in his hands. Now, I don't do much of the, I got this right, I got this wrong stuff while the season is going on. I don't want to waste anyone's time. And hopefully you're not taking this as a back padding moment, because that's not what this is. If anything, I'm telling you guys that I was wrong, because I initially was wrong with Kenneth Walker. But I adjusted. This is a moment of reflection and letting you guys know that ignoring how teams are talking about their players, at least talented players, that can hurt your chances in fantasy football. This game is about reacting to new information and trying to stay ahead. And while I was wrong about Walker initially, I'm glad that I was right in the way that I reacted, at least so far. But this trend overall, Kenneth Walker has been pretty much a bell cow this year. Some might think that Deandre Swift's Week 4 and Week 5 is the result of better usage. He averaged 24.8 PPR points per game over his last two. During his first three, that number was 6.5. But his running back rush year per game is identical in this split. His route participation is up by just 4 percentage points. His usage has just always been good. That was something I noted on the show earlier this season. But he was so unbelievably inefficient with his touches to start the year, and lately, he hasn't been. He still isn't the primary goal lineback, which is a problem. And the Bears are coming off games against the Rams and the Panthers. But things aren't getting a whole lot worse from a schedule perspective moving forward. So to me, DeAndre Swift is not some obvious cell candidate. He's more of a hold. Rico Dowdle is trending in the right direction, but we haven't seen a dramatic bump in his workload yet. And it feels like the narrative with Dowdle is saying the opposite. Now Dowdle hit a season high 71.4% running back rush share against Pittsburgh. His snap share was a season high as well, but not by much. His snap share is 51%. His season long average is 47%. His route participation, that was a season high 36%. His season long average is 33%. It's not like things were so dramatically different this past week, but he is trending in the right direction, and he's been better than Ezekiel Elliott on a per rush basis with in basically every single metric. He deserves a bigger workload. We just haven't seen it yet.