948: Week 12 Sleepers

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 948 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog, thanks for tuning in. Last week's Sleeper's episode was pretty good. Now, Russell Wilson, he was a pretty big disappointment. Audrick Estimé and Gus Edwards didn't do that much at Running Back. I thought K. Shambuti would get some production, but he just did a lot of cardio. Same deal with Noah Brown. But there were some good plays in there. Bo Nix did his thing. Drake May was usable. Hunter Henry was a top-10 tight end. Will Disley had a big day. The Browns wide receivers got it done. Quentin Johnson scored. And even Nick Westbrook Aquine, he had a big touchdown. So it was a pretty good week. I'm hoping for more of that in the final weeks of the season. Now, before we get to the Sleepers this week, I wanted 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 ones won't. To check those contests out along with a ton of other variations, head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up with promo code LATEROUND. That'll get you a nice deposit offer. You'll also get a link to my rest of season rankings. That's if you sign up with promo code LATEROUND, make it a deposit, and start playing.

Now before I start talking about all these sleepers, I have to say, it's a very, very rough week. Probably the hardest week in this show's history. With all the buys that we have, not only are players rostered at a higher rate than usual, because teams are going after them more aggressively this week, but we just have fewer guys to choose from. So I would not anticipate this week going like last week, but I'll do my best. Now as usual, we'll start with players rostered in 10-50% of Yahoo! Leagues. We'll kick things off with probably the safest quarterback streamer of the week, and that's Drake May. Now, most weeks, he'd probably be a fringe callout on this show, but it's a tough week. He gets the Dolphins. They're a bottom five opponent for quarterbacks by Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed. New England's team total is under 20 points. It's not great on paper. May's got some rushing upside, though. That can keep his floor elevated. He's now averaged over 40 rushing yards per game in his starts this season. So maybe we get something there. And Miami's been slightly worse against quarterbacks in games that Tua started this year. Without Tua, teams averaged 28 pass attempts per game against Miami. With him, that number shoots up to 34 That's because they need to keep pace a little bit more. Again, it's tough to love this spot, but there aren't many viable quarterbacks available. You just have to kind of cross your fingers that May can get over 15 points, likely due to his rushing. Now Will Levis is also in this tier. He's actually now rostered in 10% of leagues. And it's likely because things are so dire at quarterback this week, so people added him off the waiver wire. Now Levis has a better matchup than May, but Levis is obviously worse as a fantasy asset. This is purely a matchup based thing. The Titans get the Texans. I'm really really nervous about the amount of pressure that Houston might be able to generate in this game. That's definitely going to impact Levis. But the Texans are a plus matchup in adjusted points allowed. And for what it's worth, Levis is coming off back to back 15 plus point games. So he's at least in the discussion during this bi-pocalypse.

Moving on to running back, I think that you can look at Roshan Johnson this week. Deandre Swift didn't practice on Wednesday, so it would be really big if he's unable to go, at least for Roshan Johnson. But even if he does play, maybe he's not 100%.

Now the match against the Vikings is not fantastic. In fact, it's the opposite of fantastic. The Vikings are limiting opposing team running max to 34 rushing yards below their season long averages. But Johnson got more work in week 11 He had a season high 42% running back rush air. And he was their short yardage player. You're probably hoping for a touchdown here, but he at least could be playing that role. Now as I said in the 10 Trends episode, we're likely going to see a roller coaster with the Denver Broncos running backs. Which means when I say that Audrick Estimé is a sleeper this week, I mean that with a ton of volatility. Will he see the 82% running back rush air from a couple of weeks ago? Or the 29% one that he saw last week? Only Sean Payton knows that answer. But Estimé did still see a 9% target share last week. It wasn't on a high route participation, but they're likely trying to get him some reps as a pass catcher. All of that could come in handy in a super plus matchup against the Raiders. They've allowed the fourth most adjusted points to running backs this year. Justice Hill is coming off a game where he hit a season high 64% route participation rate. The Ravens split their backfield in terms of snaps last week. Partially, due to how that game ended up going down against Pittsburgh. But I'm kind of intrigued by Hill this week too. The Chargers are not a great matchup for running backs when you look at adjusted points allowed. But they do rank third in adjusted target share allowed to the position. I think there's at least a chance that we see some dump offs to Justice Hill this week. And it's in a game with a nice total. So I think you can do worse in PPR formats. The Steelers-Browns game is supposed to be horrible from a weather perspective. So, I'm expecting a decent number of running back touches on both sides. If Pittsburgh does take the lead against the Browns if they force a negative game script, that could force Nick Chubb off the field and Jerome Ford onto it, similar to what we saw last week. Ford has consistently seen route shares above 50% this season, and while Pittsburgh is not the easiest opponent, they do rank just barely below average in adjusted fantasy points allowed to running backs. And they've allowed the 7th highest adjusted target share to the position. That's why Jerome Ford makes some sense. Now moving on to wide receiver, I think both Quentin Johnston and even Josh Palmer are in play for the Chargers. Now Baltimore secondary was better in week 11, but they've still been torched for most of the season. No team has allowed more passing yards over expected than Baltimore, and no team has allowed more adjusted points to wide receivers. That can benefit Palmer and Johnston. Palmer actually hit an 81% route participation rate against Cincinnati. That was significantly higher than his two previous games played. Johnston's was just as high, and he had a 24% target share. That was the second highest of the season. Now I would prefer Johnston to Palmer given how they've produced this year, but it wouldn't surprise me if one of these two wide receivers were okay in this matchup. And on the opposite side of the field is Rashad Bateman. Bateman's run 91% of his routes from the perimeter this year. The Chargers, who have actually allowed below average numbers to wide receivers this season, the Chargers have seen their targets allowed to wide outs go to the perimeter more than the slot. It's not dramatic, but it's something. Bateman's getting route participation rates above 80% consistently. He's seen target shares of 21%, 25%, and 16% over his last three. Remember, that's with Deontay Johnson. I don't think he's like a smash, but he's definitely not in a terrible spot in what could be a higher scoring game. The Colts are 7.5 point underdogs against the Lions. Detroit has faced a top 10 pass rate against them in neutral game scripts this year. In other words, Indianapolis may be forced to throw the ball in this game. And if that's the case, maybe Alec Pearce comes away with one of his big plays. He's seen target shares of 20% and 14% over his last two. He's hit receiving yard totals of 81 and 74 He's been running ahead of Adonai Mitchell by a wide margin. So if you need some volatility in your lineup, then Pearce could work against a team that's been much worse against wide receivers than they have the run game. I talked about Jaylen McMillan on the 15 Transactions episode. I want to shout him out today. The Bucs get the Giants this week. The Giants have been a below average matchup for wide receivers this year, but not by much. Tampa Bay also has a healthy implied team total that's above 23 points. The last two games for McMillan have seen target shares of 17% and 15%. But the last time that we saw him pre-hamstring injury, he had a 90% row participation rate. I think there's at least some chance that Mike Evans helps McMillan in this offense. There's also a chance that this goes completely south. You need to ask yourself if you're willing to take that on, or if you'd rather go with a higher floor play. But I still think McMillan is worth using on deeper rosters. And then another risky play that you can make this week is Adam Thielen. He's expected to be back for Carolina. This is kind of risky for multiple reasons. First, we don't know exactly the kind of role that we're going to get from Thielen. I'm personally anticipating that he plays the slot like he's done for Carolina. But Jalen Cokers emerged as that player, so maybe they don't want to go in that direction. It's also risky because Thielen hasn't played for some time. You have to take that into consideration. But in a world where Thielen plays his normal number of snaps, and in a world where he's primarily their slot guy, this is not a bad spot against Kansas City. Carolina will likely see a negative game script. That means more passing. And the Chiefs have been amazing against running backs versus being just pretty good against wide receivers this year. That's according to Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed. They also rank fourth in adjusted slot target share allowed to wide outs, meaning teams are targeting the slot when they face the Chiefs. And that could benefit Adam Thielen. Moving on to tight end, Zach Ertz just keeps getting it done, at least from like a floor perspective. I feel like I've talked about him like a thousand times this year, but he's still under that 50% mark. That's despite having a 21% target share per game rate over his last seven games. The Commanders get kind of a poor matchup on paper for tight ends this week when they face Dallas, but Ertz is heavily involved in this offense. And the Commanders, they're projected to score almost 28 points at a lot of books. I'm gonna go back to Hunter Henry too. Henry has a 22% target share per game rate over his last five. He's hit double digit PPR points in four of his last six. He gets the Dolphins this week, and Miami ranks as a totally average opponent for tight ends. They've been better against wide receivers than they have tight ends. So I think Henry's a decent enough play. And then finally in this tier, let's go back to Will Disley. Disley is gonna be part of that Chargers Ravens game that has a chance to be higher scoring. And while Baltimore has been really good against tight ends this year by adjusted points allowed, they're still facing a super high pass rate against. And if the Chargers are passing more, which they've been doing anyway of late, then Disley could benefit, because he's seen a target share per game rate of 23% over his last five. He's been good this year. His yards per out run even shows that. So I think that he's a good play.