957: 15 Transactions for Week 15

JJ Zachariason (0:11)

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 957 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog, thanks for tuning in. Now that we're in the fantasy playoffs, this podcast episode, the 15 Transactions episode, it's going to change. There's no more buys. There's no more sells. We're just going to talk ads, drops and holds. And honestly, it's mostly about ads, since that's the thing that's sort of usable for everyone. So I'll try to cover a wide range of ads each week on the show through week 17 So you've got three more of these before the season ends. Let's get some championships. Now, before getting to those Transactions this week, I want to remind you to check out Underdog. Over on Underdog right now, you can check out Snake Drafts for this week's Lata Games, but there's also tournaments for the NFL Playoffs. Tournaments you can enter and draft in right now. Just head to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog app. If you're new to Underdog, make sure you use promo code LATEROUND when you sign up, you get a nice deposit offer as well as my rest of season rankings. But that's underdogfantasy.com, promo code LATEROUND. And Isaiah Davis. So, I didn't really get to talk about this Jets backfield on last week's 15 Transactions show. Because at that time, we didn't know that Brice Hall was going to miss week 14 With that being said, I did talk about it on Late-Round Perspectives with Matt Schaaf. It was more of a hypothetical then though. We didn't know for sure at the time of that recording that Brice Hall was going to be out. We talked about Isaiah Davis' workload in week 13, and how he was getting more work specifically as a receiver than we expected him to get. And that made us question whether or not Braylon Allen was as good of a handcuff as we once thought. And unfortunately, at least for people who are stashing Braylon Allen, the backfield for the Jets in week 14 was basically a complete 50-50 split. Allen ran the ball 11 times, Davis ran it 10 times. Allen played just one more snap. Allen ran 22 routes, Davis ran 20 Like, you can't get more 50-50 than that. And I don't really think the Jets are doing the wrong thing here. Isaiah Davis was a good prospect. At least relatively speaking, both him and Braylon Allen looked pretty good in the Zap model. And actually, for any of you guys who follow me on Twitter, back in April, you might remember a tweet where I sarcastically talked about the Jets ruining both of their fantasy values. Because I honestly was upset. I wanted both Braylon Allen and Isaiah Davis to get their own standalone opportunity. But instead, the Jets drafted both of them, and it was in a backfield with Breece Hall. It's not that the Jets did the wrong thing necessarily. It's more so that I wanted those guys to get some opportunity. And now we're sitting here with a split backfield, as long as Breece Hall is sidelined. That's not a great thing in fantasy football. So right now, I'm just assuming that Braylon Allen is not on your waiver wire, because most people added him last week. But if he is, yeah, you should go out and add him. But Isaiah Davis has just as much value right now as Allen does. And as a reminder, I've been talking about this for some time now. But as a reminder, according to Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed, the Jets have the best playoff schedule for running backs. So both of these guys can be viable. It's just that moving forward, as long as Breece Hall is out, I think we're looking at a split backfield.

Add Sincere McCormick. So I say this all the time, but the hardest part about running back evaluation in fantasy football at least, is that a player's workload comes down to a coach's decision. And the Raiders this season have been all over the place with how they're deploying their running backs. Now with Alexander Madison's Amir White still sidelined, Sincere McCormick saw a good bit of work on Sunday against the Buccaneers. Now full disclosure, I thought Alexander Madison was going to play this past week. When things started trending the other direction, I started talking about Sincere McCormick more and more on this podcast, or at least tried to, to give you guys some perspective. But McCormick handled 15 of a possible 16 running back rushes while playing 62% of the team snaps on Sunday. The one piece that's still kind of missing for McCormick is his pass catching. His route participation was just 24%. But the ground game work is definitely there. My fear with McCormick is we could face a predictability problem. Not only could the other backs in the Vegas roster return from injury, which will make things difficult to forecast, but McCormick hasn't been the team's pass catching back. Not yet. Amir Abdullah still ran more routes than McCormick did this past weekend. And with questionable quarterback play, the Raiders might find themselves in a negative game script a lot, down the stretch. And that would not benefit Sincere McCormick. Now, one thing that could help the negative game script problem is that Vegas gets the Falcons, the Jags, and the Saints over their three playoff matchups. So there's a chance here that we're projecting McCormick to be sort of a high-end RB3, but then he has some upside if he's able to find the end zone. But if you're relying on McCormick, you need to hope that the Raiders want to give him the rock instead of Alexander Madison or Zemira White if and when they return. Hold Justin Herbert. So it's been back to back bad weeks for Justin Herbert. He posted 8 fantasy points a couple of weeks ago against the Falcons, which was a plus matchup. He followed that up with 13.7 points against the Chiefs. But I would still hold tight. Herbert's going to rank fairly well this week, because the Chargers get the Buccaneers. Tampa Bay's second best matchup for quarterbacks by adjusted points allowed. The Chargers have an early team total around 24.5 points. Maybe you're going to have a better option. That's fine. But you may not want your opponents to have Justin Herbert in that spot.