958: 10 Trends for Week 15

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 958 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast sponsored by Underdog. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting to the trends this week, I want to just remind you that even though you drafted your fantasy teams all the way back in August, you can still do snake drafts right now over on Underdog. Just head to underdogfantasy.com or download the Underdog app. In the draft sections, click NFL, you'll see tons of drafts that you can participate in right now. And 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 if you're still needing those. That's underdogfantasy.com. You can also download the app promo code LATEROUND. The first trend this week is about Tyrone Tracy. He saw a nice uptick in usage in week 14 Tracy played 83% of New York's offensive snaps, which was the second time this year that he's been above the 80% mark. He ran a route on 71% of the Giants' drop backs. That was a season high. His 21.7% target share, a season high. And his 89% running back rush share was the second highest of his season. The Giants are a dumpster fire, but they're at least feeding Tyrone Tracy.

With Derek Carr's health up in the air, I figured this next trend might be useful. Carr missed weeks 6, 7 and 8 earlier this year. Alvin Kamara averaged 14.7 PPR points per game in those three contests. And that includes his only PPR performance this year, with fewer than 10 points. That average is lower than his season long average outside of those games, which is over 20 The thing is though, Kamara has already been trending in the wrong direction. He's averaging just 14.4 PPR points per game over his last four. And now Kendre Miller is back. And in week 14, Kamara had a 57% running back rush here. That was his third lowest mark of the year. Basically, I think we all need to accept that Alvin Kamara is not going to likely perform like he did earlier this season down the stretch, which is unfortunate because it's the most important part of the fantasy season. The Eagles have been running the ball a lot. I've talked about it before on this 10 Trends episode, but it's really starting to hurt AJ Brown. First though, Jalen Hurts, he averaged 33 pass attempts from weeks 1 to 4 Since then, he's been at 21.4. He hasn't had 30 pass attempts in a game since that four-week stretch ended. AJ Brown, during his first three games this year, remember he did miss some time earlier this season, but during his first three games, he was averaging 22.1 PPR points per game. Since then, he's been at 12.7. It's pretty wild because I thought the Eagles might go in the other direction this year with Kellen Moore. Huge miss by me. But this is their identity and it's ruined their pass catchers for fantasy purposes. David Njoku has been bawling out. He has target shares of 30% and 35% over his last two games. He scored 26 and 17 PPR points in those contests. Since Amari Cooper left town and Njoku has averaged almost a 24% target share per game rate. And since Jameis Winston took over and Njoku is averaging over 15 PPR points per game. He's a full blown higher end tight end one right now. The Rams haven't had Pukunakua and Cooper Cup all season as we know. Even still, as it stands today, their wide receiver target share is almost 77%. Meaning 77% of their total targets have gone to wide outs. Going back to 2011, that's the highest of any team. It's higher than the 2015 Jets who had Eric Decker and Brandon Marshall combined for over 300 targets. Sean McVeigh's offenses just don't target running backs at a very high rate. And the tight ends, they're not good enough to command high target shares. That's what creates a situation like this. And it's great for Pukunakua and Cooper Cup.

The Arizona Cardinals defense has been low-key good against quarterback since the early parts of the season. It's not to say the Cardinals defense is awesome, but they've definitely limited quarterbacks. To start the year across their first six games, they allowed three top-five performances. Josh Allen, Jaden Daniels and Jordan Love, they all got there against Arizona. Since then, not a single quarterback has finished higher than QB12. They're now, according to Adjusted Fantasy Points allowed, they're a fringe bottom-five match-up. Only one quarterback during this stretch has thrown more than one touchdown against them. It's pretty wild since I think a lot of people may not see it this way. But props to the Cardinals.