931: 10 Trends for Week 8

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 931 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. I know all of you are football fans, but I also know a lot of you are basketball fans, too. And the NBA is back. To celebrate, Underdog is offering a boost on all NBA-only Pick'em entries through October 27th. That's on top of the Boosttober promotion that's been running throughout the month. You guys should check it out. And if you're on the site and you're ready to join, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND when you're signing up. That'll get you a nice deposit bonus, and you'll also get access to my rest of season rankings. They're emailed to you after you sign up, deposit, and play. That's on underdogfantasy.com or through the Underdog app, and that's promo code LATEROUND when you sign up. Now let's get to these 10 Trends. It's been a pretty disappointing start to Marvin Harrison Jr.'s career. When you look at his peripherals, it's tough to really understand why he's been so bad. He's got a 26% target share per game rate. He's been targeted on 23% of his routes run. That's a top 30 number at wide receiver. Those are both pretty strong numbers. His average at the target is over 14 yards. Again, really solid. The problem has really just been conversion. According to PFF data, only 55% of his targets have been catchable this year. That's right in line with Calvin Ridley. It's one of the lowest rates that you're going to find. There's a little bit of noise of that kind of data, but it does paint some picture that this is kind of situation related. He's played slightly below expectation in PPR points per game as a result. Now, I wouldn't actively be buying Marvin Harrison because Arizona's schedule is pretty tough. It's not great for wide receivers, but I don't think I'd be actively selling either because there could be some regression heading his way. Right now, Marvin Harrison Jr. just a hold. A player on the Cardinals who I think is actually a buy right now though is Trey McBride. His short-term schedule isn't fantastic, but the long-term one doesn't look that bad. And he's been underperforming versus expectation, playing a couple of points per game below what we would have expected given his usage. His usage though has been low-key great. In completed games this year, McBride hasn't seen a target share lower than 25 percent. That's basically impossible to find a tight end, unless you're Brock Bowers. I'm way more on the buy side with McBride than to sell one.

The Buccaneers said they were going to have this three-headed monster in their backfield in Week 7, and that kind of happened, but it kind of also didn't. It just depends on what your expectation was. Rashad White played 47 percent of the team snaps. Bucky Irving, he was at 36 percent. Sean Tucker was at 19 percent. Now it was a negative game script against the Ravens, so they probably felt most comfortable with Rashad White. He ran the most routes, but it wasn't a ton more than Bucky Irving. It does seem like Sean Tucker, though, is the clear RB3. And I think that was kind of the expectation, but now we have a game with more concrete evidence of that. Anthony Richardson has been a problem for Josh Downs. In three games this season where Joe Flacco has thrown the ball 25 or more times, Josh Downs is averaging 19.2 PPR points per game. He has a 28 percent target share per game in those games. In two games with Anthony Richardson, he's averaging 3.3 PPR points per game. His target share goes from 28 percent to 21 percent. Now, obviously, the Colts are a totally different offense with Anthony Richardson under center, and matchups are going to dictate some of this too. But even the secondary numbers, the non-production numbers, they've been far worse with Anthony Richardson, and that's a big concern. Jordan Whittington was a popular sleeper last week. Even on My Sleeper Show, he was featured alongside Tutu Atwell. In his two games before the Rams' bye, he had a 97% and 85% route participation. He was being used pretty heavily in that Rams' offense. And then in week 7, he did nothing. He didn't run a single route. Everyone's been wondering what happened with Jordan Whittington, and it sounds like that his shoulder injury was more of a hindrance than we realized. That's what Sean McVay said post week 7 It would have been nice to know, but at least we know that it wasn't due to performance. I still think that Whittington should be rostered in most leagues, or at least a lot of leagues, even with Cooper Cup potentially coming back, just because things were trending well before the buy, and Whittington is a promising rookie. Something else kind of interesting with the Rams, but also not that interesting, given what we've seen from them in recent years, is the fact that they continue to not target their running backs, or I guess in this case, just Kyren Williams. Rams running backs have an 8.8% target share this year. The average across the league, just for context, is 18%. And the team with the second lowest running back target share this year is at 12.8%. So the Rams are in last in running back target share by a significant margin. This isn't anything new though. Over the last five years, the Rams have ranked 32nd, 30th, 32nd, 31st, and 32nd in running back target share. But to be fair, they've never had a target share this low. This is part of the reason why Kyren Williams is such an enigma. The Rams continue to rush for so many of their touchdowns. They have by far the lowest pass to rush touchdown ratio in the league. But it's tough to just call Kyren Williams a regression candidate in a cell. Because number one, the offense should be getting better with their wide receiver pieces getting healthier. And then number two, their schedule for running backs, it looks great. Everything else though does point to some regression happening with Kyren Williams. And the receiving work just hasn't been there all season long. Something we saw from Russell Wilson in his first start was downfield throwing. His average of the target was 8.6, that's according to PFF. Justin Fields had only gotten to that number in two of his six starts. And keep in mind, Russ wasn't facing the easiest opponent. That's going to help george Pickens dramatically. Pickens saw his highest area yards per target rate against the Jets, and even though his catchable target rate wasn't significantly different, the fact that he may see more down the field targets is going to play directly into his skill set. This is why the Steelers made that quarterback move.