1126: 10 Trends for Week 2

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You stay in control, reviewing the work, and choosing the final result. Put chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at chatgbt.com by selecting Work Mode, available on plus and pro plans. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is the lay-round podcast with your host, JJ Zacharyse. JJ Zacharyse. What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zacharyse, and in this episode, 11.26 of the lay-round fantasy football podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Did you guys know that we send content via the lay-round newsletter? It's true. And it's free. You get the 15 transactions column directly to your inbox every Tuesday morning. We'll have some match-up stuff for you from Brennan-Gadula. There's a wrap-up email that kitchen puts together every week. All of that is free with the lay-round newsletter. You can learn more and subscribe to that newsletter by heading to lay-round.com. Now, let's get to this week's 10 trends. We finally got to see what this Miami Dolphins offense is going to look like with Malik Willis under center. And I would say that overall, it wasn't great, which was kind of predictable. Devon H. In is the only significant player in that offense from a fantasy perspective. Everyone else was a lay-round dart throw in drafts. And I'd say week one was not the best for H. In. He had pretty good peripherals to be fair. His 88% snap share was better than the 75% snap share that he had last year. He ran a route on 73% of Miami's Dropax. That was 72% last year. His rush share was 61% on Sunday. It was 56% last season. But he wasn't targeted at the same rate. 24% of his routes run resulted in a target last year. That was 18.5% in week one. That's still good, but it's not as elite as last season. He also didn't create explosive runs at nearly the same rate. Though that could just be a small sample size thing. Regardless, in the end, H. In finished with just 12.1 expected PPR points against the Raiders. And what was considered a pretty good matchup. Last year, his expected PPR points per game average was 15.5%. So we're talking like three and a half more points in expected points per game. He's not like a sell for me right now, but the Dolphins ranking bottom five in EPA per play after a game against the Raiders, it's not making me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside. They've got time, though, to turn things around. It's a new offense, it's a new system, and patience is key when that's the case. We've got to talk about Kenneth Walker's usage on Monday night. And for purposes of this discussion, I'm going to take out the final drive of that game that was just pure garbage time. That happened with about four and a half minutes left. Up until that point, Walker had a 72% snap share, a 74% rush share, and a 46% route share. He had six targets. He had a target on 40% of his route's run. So again, he had a 72% snap share. And his four seasons in Seattle, those numbers were 49%, 65%, 57% and 61%. He had a 74% rush share. In those four seasons with the Seahawks, those numbers were 48%, 43%, 60% and 55%. And then like I said, he had a 46% route share. In four seasons in Seattle, those numbers were 38%, 46%, 35%, and 41%. So if we just assume that week one's usage just continues rest of season, he's going to see far better usage than he has ever seen in the NFL. His expected fantasy total on Monday night was 20.9 PPR points. Last year, his expected points per game was 10.5. I mean, if this keeps up, we're talking about a top five running back in fantasy football. That's where I have him ranked right now. Especially with the way that he ran, he produced 107 yards on the ground after contact. That was the most in the league in week one. The usage overall was amazing. Jalen Coker was rostered in too many leagues for me to shout him out on the 15 transactions show yesterday. But I had a couple of people ask about him, so let's talk about Coker. Coker was a late round dart throw in the draft guide this year. So while his week one performance was definitely surprising, I don't think anyone thought that you'd be the top wide receiver in fantasy football after a week of games. But I'm not totally surprised that he had a good week. He was featured on last week's sleepers episode. This actually extends beyond just this game, including the playoffs over the Panthers last seven games, Coker's averaging 17.4 PPR points per game. His route share is at 86%, and he's seen a target on over 23% of his routes run. He's out-targeted Teterou Mcmillan 45 to 41 over this time frame. He has a 2.48 yards per out run rate to TMAX 1.75. This isn't to say that I like Coker more than TMAX from here on out. I think Mcmillan can be fine. But Coker's not some one week wonder. He's been working and he's been getting better since he entered the league. So if he's somehow out there on your waiver wire, yes, you need to add him. With the NFL shift to heavier personnel the last few years, and with it being really noticeable last year, I've been talking more and more about usage when two or fewer wide receivers run the field at once. Because when that happens, we tend to see the wide receivers who are actually on the field get better efficiency. Better per out run metrics, yards, targets, and points per out run. I talk specifically about this with Lad McConkey. Mike McDaniel has historically run offences with less 11 personnel. It stems from how Kyle Shanahan does things. And Lad has been much better with fewer wide outs on the field with him. In week one, here are the teams, you're over here, who saw the biggest jumps in percentage of plays with two or fewer wide receivers on the field. So these are teams who saw an uptick in percentage of plays with two or fewer wide outs on the field. Now keep in mind, gamescript can play a role here. But I think some of these teams make a ton of sense given what we talked about entering the season. They're coaching shifts and what they did in the draft. So I'll call out six teams who saw an increase of 18 percentage points or more. Vegas led the way at plus 27.5. So almost 28 percentage points. That's the Clint Coupiac effect. Unfortunately, their wide receivers just aren't very good. Number two was Jacksonville. They went up 27.3. Now, Brian Thomas was banged up a bit in that game and they had a nice positive game script. But that's definitely something to monitor, especially given how they handled this year's NFL draft. Third and fourth were the Vikings and the Jets at plus 22.8. The chargers, even in a bad game script, they were plus 20.5. And then the Giants were plus 18.1, which could really end up being good for Malik neighbors. Those are just some numbers to think about. (upbeat music) Sequan Barkley had some low key bizarre usage and annoying usage in week one. He ran a route on just 21% of Philadelphia's dropbacks. He actually ran as many routes as Will Shipley did. Barkley's route share was 61% last year. His share against the commanders was the lowest of his career in a game with a 50% snap rate. Now, a huge reason for this is that Will Shipley saw Philadelphia's two minute snaps. He played 100% of their snaps in that mode. He ran five routes. Barkley didn't have any. Now, I don't know if this is gonna be a thing for the Eagles moving forward. But if it is a thing, it's kind of a problem, a small problem for Sequan Barkley's upside. The offensive line also didn't play well in week one and it showed in the data. Barkley had just a 0.33 yards before contact per rush. He actually was sixth and yards after contact on the ground in week one. Fortunately, there is some hope. The Eagles get the Titans and then the Bears over their next two games. So I wouldn't be out there selling Sequan Barkley just yet. I talked about Patrick Mahomes' deep ball rate and deep ball effectiveness on last week's 10 trends episode. And he was good in fantasy football in week one. The rushing touchdown, his mobility in general was a pleasant surprise. But watching that game, I didn't walk away thinking, Patrick Mahomes is back. It was a tough matchup. So it's not like this is some concrete take. I just didn't think that he looked amazing in week one as a thrower. And looking at the data, it backed that up. He was the only starting quarterback who finished a game so Kyler Murray doesn't count here, who didn't complete a single pass that traveled 10 or more ariarts. And keep in mind, this is coming off a season where he ranked outside the top 20 in that statistic. We'll see with Mahomes. Like I said, I thought his mobility did look good and fine. And that's shocking considering the ACL. And the Chiefs have what looks like a great run game. But I still wasn't quite there with Mahomes as a passer in week one. I kind of hinted at this on yesterday's 15 Transactions episode. but the Steelers really pushed the ball down the field in week 1. Aaron Rogers had his highest average at the target as a Pittsburgh Steeler. Only 7 quarterbacks had a higher A dot than Rogers in week 1. When he was literally at the bottom of the league last year in A dot. The problem in week 1 is that he just didn't connect. He didn't have a single completion on a 20+ area yard throw, and his 10+ area yard completion rate was bottom 5. It was only better than Dak Prescott, Cam Ward, Kurt Cousins, and the aforementioned Patrick Mahomes. But a big beneficiary of this was DK Metcalf. He was second worst in the league this past week behind only Jamison Williams in terms of underperforming his expected points per game. He left almost 10 peepier points on the table based on his usage. But that usage was obviously really great. He was 5th among wide receivers in Roucher, he was 14th in target share, and only Chris Alave had more ariards than DK Metcalf. I would consider Metcalf a buy right now, but it's a little bit more volatile than the Jamison Williams buy. The one that I talked about yesterday. Because unlike Williams, we don't know if this is really going to keep up. But as it stands, I was probably too low on Metcalf heading into the season. We'll see what happens moving forward though. I didn't mind Antonio Williams as a prospect. He was in that group of wide outs from this year's class that went day 2, where none of them had elite profiles. But there were some stuff about Williams profile that I did like. He actually got a Lad McConkey comp in the Zat model. When the Commander signed Stefan Diggs though, it kind of wiped my enthusiasm for Williams here in 2026. But after seeing how weak one went down, I won't be surprised if he's playing a more legitimate role for this team at some point this year. The usage was understandably weak. He only ran a route on 26% of Washington's Drop-X. But he did see a target on 40% of those routes run. And here's something fun with small samples. He had a 6.4 yards per route run rate. I just thought it was a worthwhile call out on today's show. Because Diamy Brown were in the third most routes for the commanders at wide receiver on Sunday. They were deployed differently. Brown had a 14% slot share, Williams 50%. Williams is more of that direct backup to Stefan Diggs. Stefan Diggs, he had a 56% slot share. But they talked about this in the preseason. The commanders think that Williams has a chance to play outside. If that's the case, then there's a chance that we see more Williams sooner rather than later. Harold Fanning kind of had it bad in week one. His route share was 64.5%, which was 19th among tight ends. Aside from week 17 last year when he was hurt, he hadn't been at that low of a route share since week 11. And unfortunately, he was only targeted on 15% of his routes. That was the lowest mark of any single game of his entire career, which obviously just spans back to last season. Now, Fanning was kind of a worrisome pick this year, because his target shares were just insane down the stretch last season. It was going to be tough for him to maintain that, especially when Shador Sanders wasn't going to be under center to start the season. But mostly, it was the fact that the Browns had more competition at pass catcher this year. And we saw that come to life in week one. They have three viable enough wide receivers in their two rookies in Denzel Boston and Casey Concepcion, and then there's Jerry Judy. Cleveland ran out of 11 personnel at the 7th highest rate in the league this past week. And a problem was that Fanning's targets per out run rate, it dropped when the Browns were trailing by double digit points. And it was just 14% when the Browns ran out of 11 personnel. Last year, Fanning did see a very small uptick in targets per out run when he was in 12 personnel versus 11. Now, I'm not trying to have everyone panic here and sell Harold Fanning right now. I do think some of my priors were confirmed though after one game, but it was also just one game, and he's a really good player. But my overall concern just solely based on one week, because that's all we have right now, it would be this. It's an offense with more useful weapons now. And if they do trail a lot, it could lead to more 11 personnel. And traditionally, that's been a slightly worse thing for Harold Fanning. I'm going to end today's show with a trend that I think everyone who plays fantasy football needs to hear. I just kind of set it with Harold Fanning a second ago. I don't want you to take things from this week's show and just start panicking. I'm merely providing information from what we saw on week one. Some of these trends are going to stick. Some of them won't stick. That's how it goes with a one game sample. And speaking of that one game sample, how important is it? Well, the answer to that is that it's not nothing, but it's definitely not something. I know, super helpful. But no, seriously, I ran some numbers yesterday where I looked at the connection between week one points per game versus the entirety of a player's season and points per game. So week one was initially included in this analysis. This is more of a descriptive thing right now, not a predictive thing. To limit my sample of relevant players, I looked only at end of season top 24 quarterbacks and top 24 tight ends and then top 48 wide receivers and top 48 running backs. So the question is, how correlated is week one's production and points per game versus total season points per game? And the answer is, it kind of is when you include week one performance, but it's also dependent on the position. In order of importance, week one performance matters most for running back, then tight end, then quarterback, and then wide receiver. So if you have Jalen Waddle, maybe you have Marvin Harrison Jr., some other wide receiver who didn't come through in week one, there is some hope. Running back likely has the highest correlation because of what I always talk about on this show. And what I talked about last week with Austin Eckler. Running back usage comes down to a coaching decision. And that coaching decision is likely going to be pretty consistent all year long across a larger sample. With wide receivers, you just see more volatility. For all you nerds out there, the R squared values here are about 24% at running back versus 14% at wide receiver. But here's the thing, if you're looking at how well week one points per game explains future performance in that season, the correlations are actually far worse. Because in the exercise that I just described, I'm including week one data. Since there are only 17 games, that naturally accounts for a decent chunk of those games. So how a player performs in week one is going to correlate more strongly to total season production. So I also looked at week one points per game versus points per game from week two onward. It's the same sample, top 24 quarterbacks and tight ends, top 48 wide receivers and running backs. And the R squared values predictably drop because we're now seeing how much week one explains that future performance. Quarterback is just 5%, running back is 13%, wide receiver 4%, and tight ends 7%. So this is all to say, relax everyone, don't panic. It's a long season and we're just getting started. That's it for today's show though. Thanks all of you for listening. If you had subscribed to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are researching for it. Pretty much anywhere podcast can be found. And to fall me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. 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