940: Week 10 Sleepers

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 940 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. The best part about last week's sleeper show is probably me calling out Ray Davis, who scored 17 PPR points. There were a lot of just OK performances, but not great ones aside from that. Like Noah Brown was a good deep sleeper, we had Sterling Shepard get about 11 PPR points, Xavier LeGette scored 14, and Bo Nix was fine at 18 But the other two quarterback streamers in Derek Carr and Joe Flacco didn't really cut it. Zach Ertz got owned in a tough matchup, Trey Tucker got a lot of cardio, and Xavier Hutchinson did absolutely nothing. It was a hard week. I talked about that on the show. But I feel like the last few sleeper shows have been kind of underperformers. I'll do my best to turn things around this week. Now before getting to those sleepers, I want to remind you that even though you drafted your fantasy teams back in August, you can still do snake drafts right now over on Underdog. Just head to underdogfantasy.com or download the app. In the draft section, click NFL, you'll see tons and tons of drafts that you can participate in right now. If you're new to Underdog, make sure you sign up with promo code LATEROUND. That'll get you a nice deposit bonus, as well as my rest of season rankings. Those rankings are updated for you each Tuesday once you get the link to them. But to get them, you have to sign up, use promo code LATEROUND, make a deposit, and start playing.

We'll kick things off with players rostered in 10% to 50% of Yahoo leagues, and we'll go to quarterback and start with Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers gets the Cardinals this week in a game where the Jets have a respectable 22.5 point team total. Arizona is the 11th best matchup for quarterbacks by adjusted points allowed. And this is the one game this week with the best pressure rate advantage. The Jets have been pretty good at limiting pressures this year. The Cardinals have been a bottom five team at generating pressure. That could give Aaron Rodgers a whole lot of time to beat this defense. He's averaged over 17 points per game over his last four. I think he can get over that again this week. Now, I talked about how people have sort of had this anchoring bias with the Washington defense this year. That secondary has been much better versus how they started the year. It's a pretty average matchup now in total. But I should say, quarterbacks against Washington are throwing for 36 more yards than their average. I do think Russell Wilson can still work. Before the Steelers buy, Wilson had scored 25 and 14 points in his two starts. He's been pushing the ball down the field more than Justin Fields was. That's led to an A-dot that's over two yards higher. Washington has been pretty average at defending those throws this year, those deeper throws. It's an average to above average matchup, but the game has an okay enough total, so I think that Russ can work. Now, there's an easier matchups argument to be made with Daniel Jones. Dimes gets Carolina, a team that really doesn't get to the quarterback that much. And it's one that's allowed the third most fantasy points per game to quarterbacks adjusted for strength of opponent. Jones has the ability to give us 50 yards rushing in a game. And the Giants actually have a team total over 23 points. So he's a good streamer. Now, moving on to running back, I'm going to go back to that Pittsburgh matchup and talk about Jalen Warren. Najee Harris has taken over this backfielder he had before the buy. But Warren has seen back-to-back games with at least a 32% running back rush share. And he's hit target shares of 13%, 11%, and 11% over his last three. They're using him. They're just using Najee Harris more.

Washington's an average matchup on paper, and they do tend to limit targets to running backs. But Warren is seeing more work, and he could see more if this game script goes south for Pittsburgh. That's always possible. So he's an okay sleeper. And I'm going to go back to Tyler Algier. I feel like I talk about Algier every single week. He and the Falcons get the Saints, and New Orleans has been a top 10 matchup for running backs this year by adjusted points allowed. Algier, as we know, he's seeing between 25% and 50% of the team's running back rushes most weeks. And this week, the Falcons have a legit shot to face a positive game script, given all of the Saints' issues. So Algier is a fine option. I'm going to go back to Ray Davis this week too. He keeps seeing backfield chairs in that like 23 to 30% range, which isn't super high, but as he proved last week once again, he can generate some big plays. Buffalo faces Indianapolis, and India not only is a top half matchup for running backs, but they've allowed a running back rushing yard margin of plus 18 yards this year, meaning team running backs are rushing for 18 more yards against them than they are an average opponent. That's a higher than normal rate. So if Buffalo hits a positive game script, definitely possible in this matchup. There's a chance that Ray Davis would benefit. Now moving on to wide receiver, the 49ers are back from their buy, which means you could look at Ricky Pearson this week. I know he hasn't been amazing in his two games without Brandon Iuke this year, and Joann Jennings should be back this week too. But Pearsall should have a role that sees him get maybe 70%, 80% of the team's routes run. And he's seen target shares of 16% over his two games. The 49ers get the Bucs. Tampa Bay has been a top six matchup for wide receivers this year by adjusted points allowed. And San Francisco is projected to score a lot of points this week. And the Bucs rank first in neutral script pass rate against. So I think he's in a decent spot. Xavier Liguette is once again a worthwhile sleeper. The Panthers face the Giants, kind of a below average matchup across the board, but it's okay enough. The thing is though, Liguette has target shares of 21% and 25% over his last two. He hasn't fallen below 11 PPR points and three of his last four. Just based on usage, he's not a bad look.