927: 10 Trends for Week 7

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, 927 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Underdog is the best place to play fantasy sports. You can open up the app or go to the website to play Pick'em in Champions mode. Or if you're like me, you can join some snake drafts for each week's slate of games. During October, Underdog is running a different promo every single day with Boostober. You can take advantage of those promos by signing up today. And if you sign up now, you also get access to my rest of season rankings. Those are updated in season every tuesday. And on tuesday this week, they were updated a lot, because the NFL had a lot of wide receiver moves. All you have to do is head to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog app. Sign up and when you do, use promo code LATEROUND. That will get you access to the promos, the deposit bonus, and my rest of season rankings. Again, that's underdogfantasy.com, promo code LATEROUND. So we saw the new Jets offense in week six, and it looked a lot more competent without Nathaniel Hackett in charge. There was also a change in how they were deploying their running backs. Breece Hall in week six, he had an 86% snap share. That was a season high. He ran a route on 76% of the team's drop backs. That was also a season high. We saw a little rotation with Hall and Braylon Allen at the goal line, but this is the kind of usage that got me and a lot of others excited about Breece Hall back in week one. Now, I do think that Devontae Adams' trade could lower his target share a little bit, but that could be negated by a more potent offense. Everything got back on track for Breece Hall in week six. Let's hope this kind of usage continues. Noah Brown almost made the 15 transactions list this week. He hasn't had a monster game yet. He's yet to score 10 or more PPR points in a game, but he's been getting more and more work in this Washington offense. In weeks two and three, Brown was running a route on roughly 45% of the team's drop backs. Over his last two games, that number has been closer to 70%. He saw 24% target share in week six, which was a season high. Now, I know a player like Brown isn't all that important in a regular 12-team league, but plenty of you are in deeper formats, and in those formats, he's roster-worthy.

I talked about this in the weekly data dumb thread that I do on Twitter and through my newsletter, but I think it's worth repeating. Javonte Williams right now has a 54% running back rush share and a 14% target share per game. If we lower those parameters to a 50% running back rush share and a 13% target share, Williams is just one of seven qualified running backs to get to those numbers. Isaiah Pacheco is part of that list, but I'm not counting him as qualified. The other backs to get there are Alvin Kamara, Aaron jones, Kenneth Walker, Tony Pollard, Breece Hall, and Deandre Swift. Bijon Robinson just misses the mark in target share. But we can add him to the list if you want, sure. Kamara is averaging 22.8 PPR points per game this year. Aaron jones 15.7, Kenneth Walker 22, Tony Pollard 15.2, Breece Hall 15.6, Deandre Swift 15.1, Bijon Robinson 15.5, Javonte Williams 8.6. I went back and looked, and of all the running backs since 2011 to have gotten to those thresholds, to have had a 50% running back rush share and a 13% target share per game rate, there's been about 80 of them. None of them scored below 11 PPR points per game. Javonte Williams is under 9 points per game. Williams has been playing about 4 PPR points per game below expectation to start the year. That's based on his usage and where he's seeing his volume. He's been ineffective, but I do expect somewhat of a bounce back as long as he's able to maintain this usage. We'll see if that happens, though. Speaking of fantasy point expectation, Colt Comet is currently outpacing his expected fantasy points according to PFF by over 3 PPR points per game. That's not that much of a surprise, though. He's a top 3 tight end and cumulative fantasy points scored, but he has just 2 top 15 performances this season and just one game with a 20% target share. So he's definitely a sell candidate. I just don't know how much you're going to get for him.