932: Week 8 Sleepers

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 932 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Last week's Sleeper episode was probably the worst one of the season. It was a lower scoring week across the league, and that definitely had an impact on the picks. But the picks were bad. Drake May was a good streamer, Romeo Dobbs had a good game, and the tight end streamers were actually solid across the board. But there wasn't a whole lot of good. Meanwhile, pretty much every deep sleeper flopped. Matthew Stafford was a huge disappointment. Jordan Whittington didn't run a single route. Christian Watson had a 6% target share. It was a really bad week. I'm hoping it's going to be the worst week of the season. Now, before we go and turn things around this week, look, I know that a lot 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. Go 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.

As usual, we'll kick things off with players rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo leagues, and we'll go with the one quarterback that I have in this tier this week. That's Bo Nix. Like I said in the 50 Transactions episode this week, Nix gets the Panthers, and the Panthers have been a plus matchup this year. They rank as the 2nd best matchup for quarterbacks by adjusted points allowed. Nix is average over 19 points per game over his last 3, and that's driven largely by the fact that he's given fantasy managers over 6 points per game this season with his legs. The Broncos have an implied total over 25 points this week. That's something that we're not going to see very often. That should make us feel even more confident about Bo Nix. Running back is kind of tough this week, but I've got a couple of options for you in this tier. I'll stick with that Broncos offense. I'll go with Jaleel mclaughlin. He's only been playing about a quarter of Denver Snaps of late, but this could be a game script that they don't typically see. Carolina is the best matchup for running backs by Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed. And get this, Carolina has played 7 games this year, and 4 of those 7 games, we're talking about more than half of their opponents, and 4 of those 7 games, we saw multiple running backs score 10 plus PPR points against them. So backup running backs are consistently putting up decent fantasy days. Maybe this week, it's going to be Javante Williams and Jaleel mclaughlin. The Saints have struggled a lot against the run recently. They've seen running backs against them in each of the last 3 weeks rank as top 5 running backs in fantasy scoring. And that's also been the case in 4 of their last 5 That's resulted in New Orleans ranking as the 6th best opponent for running backs by Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed. The Chargers get them this week, so of course, you're going to fire up JK Dobbins. But there's some chance that we see a little bit of Kamani Vidal too. Vidal saw a week-over-week rise from week 6 to week 7 in snap share, backfield touches, and route participation. The Chargers are currently 7.5 point home favorites, so if this game script favors them, maybe Vidal gets a little bit of a bump in terms of touches. It's not easy to find backs who have locked in workloads in this tier, but I do think that Vidal can work in deeper formats. You just have to hope that game script goes the way that we think that it will. And then speaking of game script, there's some chance that the Jets face a positive game script this week because they get New England, and they're 7 point favorites. New England's been the third most advantageous matchup for running backs this year, putting Braylon Allen out there as a desperation play. I know his usage has dropped with the coaching changes that we've seen in New York, but the Jets also haven't seen great game scripts with this new coaching staff, or without Robert Sala, I should say. That could change this week, and that's why Braylon Allen, once again, is kind of a desperation play. Moving on to wide receiver, I know I talked a little bit about Jalen McMillan on the 15 Transaction show, but he's still well under that 50% rostered mark. I think he's interesting this week against Atlanta, because obviously Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, they're sidelined. And there's Sterling Shepard too. Shepard is technically a deep sleeper, but since we're talking Buccaneers wide receivers right now, let's just address him. I'm not sure how exactly the Bucs are going to deploy these wide receivers, and it's important. It's important to know that information, because right now, when you look at this trio of wide receivers in Sterling Shepard, Jalen McMillan, and Trey Palmer, all of them are probably going to thrive the most out of the slot. And we've seen that role be really valuable this year. Chris Godwin was basically having a career year.