947: 10 Trends for Week 12

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason in this episode 947 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Before I get to the trends this week, I want to remind you to check out Underdog. Right now over on Underdog, you can draft teams for playoff contests. That's right, it's November, so you may feel like it's a little bit early for this, but you can get ahead of the field if you have a good grasp on which teams are going to make the playoffs and which teams won't make the playoffs. To check those contests out, along with a ton of other variations, head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up with promo code LATEROUND. That will get you a nice deposit offer and it will also get you a link to my rest of season rankings. That's if you sign up with promo code LATEROUND, make a deposit, and start playing. Now let's get to these trends.

Remember when the Jets were a really tough matchup for quarterbacks? Well, that hasn't been the case for some time. From week 1 to week 5, the highest quarterback finish from a quarterback facing the Jets was QB21. They didn't face the most amazing quarterback lineup, but none of those quarterbacks scored higher than their season-long averages against the Jets. Since then, the Jets have given up 4 top 5 performances. All but one quarterback, that one being CJ Stroud, has scored above their season-long average when facing the Jets. The Jets may look a little scary on paper, but it's really not that tough of a matchup anymore.

The Eagles have gone in the complete opposite direction as the Jets. They started the season off as a moderately beatable defense, but things have changed. Philly now ranks as the second toughest matchup against quarterbacks, as by Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed. They're the sixth toughest matchup against running backs. They're the toughest matchup against wide receivers, and they're the fourth toughest matchup against tight ends. They've been unreal against wide receivers of late. Since week four, they've allowed one single wide receiver to rank higher than wide receiver 40 in weekly scoring. Just one. And that was Jamar Chase, who's beating everyone right now. That's it. We saw them hold Terry McLaurin just last week. CD. Lamb was wide receiver 40 a couple of weeks ago. Brian Thomas did nothing. Malik Neighbors back in week seven, he did very little. The list goes on and on. The Eagles defense in total is probably the toughest defense in fantasy right now.

So Shane Waldron was out as offensive coordinator in week 11, and I talked about how that shifted the Bears backfield a little bit on the 15 Transactions episode. But what it also did was get Gerald Everett out of the picture, because Waldron seemed to have some infatuation with him. Cole Comet, though, ended up running a route on 95% of Chicago's drop backs against the Packers. That was the first time all season where he was above the 90% mark. I think Shane Waldron was the only person on earth who thought it was a good idea to let Gerald Everett get run over Cole Comet. But it looks like rational thought has finally prevailed. Let's do a little Mark Andrews update. In week 10, Andrews played without Isaiah Likely. That led to his best usage of the season. He ran a route on 94% of Baltimore's drop backs that week. That was by far a season high. It was the only game of his season where he reached a 20% target share. The big question after week 10 was would that continue? I had him as a sell on the 15 Transaction Show because I was nervous that it wouldn't continue. All while recognizing that if it did continue, then we would be looking at old Mark Andrews, like elite production from Mark Andrews. Well, unfortunately, the Ravens did what they've been doing all season long in week 11 Andrews ran a route on 58% of Baltimore's drop backs. He had a 9.7% target share. That was his lowest mark since week 4 It's beyond frustrating. Trust me, I'm with you. But this is how the Ravens are operating after 11 weeks of football. We have to accept it. The Broncos are truly going with a hot hand approach at running back. That's what it looks like. Everyone, including myself, thought that things were about to change in that backfield after Audrick Estimé handled 82% of the team's running back rushes in week 10 And then the Broncos went back to Gervonta Williams. Estimé had a running back rush share of 29% in week 11 Gervonta Williams played 32 snaps, Estimé 14 This is the definition of better and best ball. This backfield looks like it's going to be completely unpredictable week to week for the rest of the year. Kenneth Walker had been seeing great pass catching usage for most of the season, but over the last handful of games, things have slowed down a little bit. He's now seen single digit percentage target shares in three of his last four games. He's averaging a 10% target share per game rate over this time. That number was 15% during his first four games this season. But I would not be concerned, at all. Walker actually saw a 66% route participation rate in week 11 That was the highest of his season, by a relatively decent margin. What that tells us is that he just wasn't targeted at that high of a rate in week 11 That's going to happen in some games. I would anticipate things normalizing, especially if he keeps up that type of route rate. On Thursday last week, Mike McCarthy said that Rico Dowdle is the lead back and then he followed that up by saying, Rico needs to touch the ball. Well, guess what? Nothing really changed. Now, game script and performance can obviously play a role here. But Dowdle played 49% of Dallas' snaps on Monday night. That was barely above his season long average. It was lower than what he had seen in Week 9 and Week 10 Dowdle was at a 67% running back rush share. That was right in line with where he's been at. His 9.4% target share was actually a four week low. And his 39% route participation, that was right at his season long average. Dowdle is probably the most talented back in that backfield, but I'm not sure it matters at this point.