The Show: Joe Flacco's Bengals, Bold Predictions, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

You're about to listen to The Late-Round Fantasy Football Show, which originally aired yesterday on YouTube. If you'd like to catch it live, you can find it on The Late-Round Fantasy Football YouTube channel at 1 p.m. Eastern every Friday during this 2025 season. That's on youtube.com/atlate-roundff. So without further ado, here's this week's episode.

SPEAKER_2 (0:36)

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the show. JJ, how are you?

JJ Zachariason (0:41)

Good, you know, faced Jamar Chase in a couple of leagues. That wasn't fun, but from an analysis standpoint, I feel good about last night's game. Had Rogers, Flacco, and Noah Fant on the Sleeper Show, so I was glad to see all three of them come through.

SPEAKER_2 (0:54)

Yeah, I also saw that you had like any time touchdown with Noah Fant.

JJ Zachariason (1:01)

Yeah, I had a plus 425 Noah Fant any time touchdown last night, which was pretty sweet to hit.

SPEAKER_2 (1:08)

I mean, the move was to just put all the tight ends on there.

JJ Zachariason (1:13)

Apparently.

SPEAKER_2 (1:14)

We should have known with Arthur Smith being there.

JJ Zachariason (1:18)

By the way, shout out Michael Florio of NFL Network, who went on TV, and one of his bold takes was that all three Steelers' tight ends were going to score a touchdown in that game, which I think he then looked up, and it's only happened one other time in NFL history, and he called it. Like the odds of that happening are like astronomically small, so I got to give him props. Great dude, too. So I got to give my friend some love.

SPEAKER_2 (1:47)

All right. We have some bold predictions ourselves to talk about later. We're going to get more into this Thursday Night Football game. We do want to say this is an interactive show. So listen, get in here, give us your takes, give us your comments, let us know your thoughts. If you're listening to this, while doing your honeydew list on a Saturday morning, then just be like, hey, you can respond later. You have something to say, respond later, either on Shopify or go to YouTube.

JJ Zachariason (2:25)

Spotify. Spotify, that is.

SPEAKER_2 (2:27)

That's what I said. Yeah.

JJ Zachariason (2:29)

Right.

SPEAKER_2 (2:29)

That's what I meant.

Again, shout out to DraftKings. You can use that QR code in the lower right corner. Get their week 7 deposit bonus offer there. And JJ, are you ready to start this week? Because we have plenty to talk about. And for some people, it's like do or die week.

JJ Zachariason (2:50)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_2 (2:51)

Yeah.

JJ Zachariason (2:51)

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_2 (2:52)

In fact, there's already something I need to put on the news list. So I'll do that after we get to it. Today's fantasy news.

Okay. We're going to start with the Unc Bowl, but I forgot to put the Rashi Rice stuff on here. That's a big.

JJ Zachariason (3:13)

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_2 (3:14)

Big miss. So we are not cooked with rice. Let's start. Let's talk about the Unc Bowl though. Last night, Thursday night football game, tons of points.

I mean, what were your thoughts in general? Yeah, I was your Steelers fan too.

JJ Zachariason (3:31)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, fan in quotes. It's not really the same as it used to be. My reaction to this game is to chill a little bit. Like this is my I've come to the realization that my reaction to any big like monster insane outing by a player or an offense or anything. Like my, my reaction is generally like frustration because I wish that people wouldn't get so extreme with their takes after something like that happens. But I also recognize that that's the fun of this and that's why people enjoy just going to the extreme and saying, I mean, in my mentions right now, you guys, I have people saying that Joe Flacco is better than Joe Burrow, like legitimately in my mentions right now.

SPEAKER_2 (4:13)

Is Joe Burrow a system quarterback?

JJ Zachariason (4:15)

Right, right. So I want to just like talk about a few things because I think that last night was really interesting and there's a lot of data that sort of backs up why I think it's so interesting.

First off, if you guys remember, a couple of weeks ago, I called Jamar Chase a cell that was with Jake Browning, and then I talked to the mailbag last week saying that I was probably still below consensus because consensus had him as a top eight overall player, and I went back and looked, I think I had him at like 12th overall. So I was technically lower than consensus. That was the wrong take. He should have been in the top eight based on what we saw last night. With that being said, I don't think that Jamar Chase is, I talked to people on Discord about this today. I don't think that he's in the Puka-Nakua level right now, assuming that Nakua is healthy. Obviously, he's not playing this weekend, but if you were to trade straight up one for the other, that would happen after this week anyways. Then Nakua has the buy, and then I would rather have Puka over Jamar Chase rest of season. I think I'd rather have Jackson Smith and Jigba over Jamar Chase rest of season, but probably in the same tier, and then maybe you could throw an Amon Ra after that or close to that, whatever. So it was a really, really good outing for Jamar Chase and his rest of season outlook. And I also, when I do rest of season stuff, the market sentiment matters too, because you want good value for that player. The thing that I'll say though is that, I don't think that this is a situation where we can just automatically say, Joe Flacco is better than Joe Burrow for Jamar Chase and all this kind of stuff. Jamar Chase had a 51% target share last night, which is just not sustainable whatsoever. And last night's game, it reminds me a little bit of what we saw Thursday night the last two weeks, where San Francisco plays the Rams, and the Rams defense plays absolutely atrocious against the 49ers. Last week, the Eagles, they were down Jalen Carter, but they played horrifically against the Giants. And then the Steelers, they're not adjusting at all to what they're doing with Jamar Chase. I mean, the defensive performance was a joke by Pittsburgh last night. And then, you know, you look at the history of like Mike Tomlin on the road on Thursday night, has only won two games, like two and eight or two and ten, one of the two. Like there's a lot going on, like from that perspective. And I also like the way that I approach the game is that in singular games, like stuff happens. I talked about this with Michael Pennings after he had that crazy, awful game against Carolina. And everyone's just like, you know, oh, Michael Pennings is terrible. Like we don't want anything to do with Drake London. But in those instances, there are by moments in fantasy football, because the general idea and feeling about these players is so, so negative. It's so, so extreme that we can use that to our advantage. And that's what we did with Drake London. And that's what we've done with that Falcons passing attack. And obviously, you know, that helped because Drake London dominated last week. So if you look at the numbers, though, that's like the negative side, if you will, with like the Cincinnati offense is that like, I don't think we should expect what we saw on Thursday night every single week. And I think most rational people would agree with that. I think that where like, there's some intrigue is what I did talk about on the mailbag last week, is I think that we're seeing like a 90th, 95th percentile outcome kind of start to hit and come together for Flacco in this offense if this were to maintain. Because the big thing for me is that you can look at the numbers all day long. And I joked about that EPA per drop back thing with Jake Browning versus Joe Flacco, whatever they traded for Flacco. You can look at these numbers all day long. And it'll say Joe Flacco did this in this environment, Jake Browning did this in this environment. Clearly, Cincinnati is a different environment than Cleveland because they have better pass catchers. So EPA is not going to capture all of that stuff. The thing that is being captured though, is how Joe Flacco performs in a clean pocket, and how he performs under pressure. And he hasn't been that great under pressure. The thing is though, and this is what I was talking about in the mailbag episode just to bring that up for the third time, is that Flacco, to me, versus a Jake Browning, the main difference is that he can be just a deliverer of the football, and do things at the line of scrimmage that Jake Browning wouldn't be able to do. And so I don't think Flacco, like, I think he played well.