Starts of the Week + Week 7 Breakdown, Rumor Fight! - Fantasy Football Podcast for 10/21

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It's football time. Yeah. What was that? I was just... I was just... I know, but it was like a... Yeah. Well, it was away from the microphone. It was like, yeah, but it was over here. It was a... Yeah. I thought you were going to keep going. Yeah, just on beat. Not a good enough game. Wait for next week, and maybe next week's game will get me more hype. You sounded like...

My hype man, my number two, but you weren't really sure if you agreed with what I was saying. Again, you got to wait for a better game. I mean, there's some problems here. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do I come in here? Thursday, October 21st, the fantasy footballers, Mike, right, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway back with you. Thank you for supporting the show, subscribing, reviewing, following on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever you're listening.

Thank you very much. Maybe it's YouTube. Maybe it's YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballers. Maybe you subscribe. Maybe you click the bell. Maybe the bell told you that we're here right now. That's a lot of maybes. Well, if all the maybes are true, thank you. Thank you very much. Twitter at the FF ballers. We have never not working news to talk about, injury news. Mike said it at the top. We got a game tonight. We'll be getting into the bi-apocalypse matchup breakdowns.

Less breakdowns this week than weeks in the past because so many guys are on by starts of the week on the show today. We got a lot to cover and of course. The boom boom. The boom. The boom. The next chapter in the story. Oh, my gosh. Are you going to write a book after all this? Oh, I've already got to. He's doing a publishing deal. I mean, the amount of total words in this book, I guess it's more of a children's book. Yeah. But not a really good one. I think today's.

Boom, boom, we'll put it out of the children book category. Oh, no. Oh, Jason. Is it rated R? We'll find out. Okay. All right, let's get it going. Never Not Working. Presented by Head and Shoulders, Scamp Shield Technology, available at Walmart. All right, today's Never Not Working segment. You know, every fantasy player needing to work a little harder. Want to guarantee success. Want to find opportunities. And today we want to look at.

zero in on some red zone opportunities for running backs and wide receivers after six weeks. So it's a pretty good sample size. In fact, Matt DeSorbo from the website, one of our way smarter than us writers, wrote an article on sample sizes in fantasy football and talks about six games being a nice, reasonable sample size for projections, trends. And so we wanted to take a look at who's overperforming and underperforming around the goal line.

because, you know, it brings to mind Jason bringing up certain players, maybe it's Cooper Cup, but other players that, look, if they've already delivered you these kind of out-of-bounds performances to start the year and you trade them for extremely high value, you know, the likelihood of them continuing something that is not relative to the averages over time.

is low. You know, it's not likely that some of these projections in the beginning of the year for Cooper Cup, he's not going to end up with 38 touchdowns or something like that. No, it's not going to happen. Oh, that's a shame. And to be fair, he's only on pace for 20. Oh, that's fine, actually. That might happen. That might happen. But when you look at some players that overperformed and what we're going to look at is basically what they are doing.

above expectation around the goal line. So on average, a red zone target for a wide receiver is worth 2.55 fantasy points. A red zone opportunity for a running back is normally worth 1.43. So if a player is scoring above that, that's because they are beating expectations. They're converting more touchdowns than average. Targets to touchdowns, opportunities to touchdowns. Yeah. So wide receivers that are overperforming right here right now.

DeAndre Hopkins is plus 2.033 fantasy points above expectations. And 10 red zone target, six receptions for six touchdowns. So every red zone targets ended up in the end zone, which obviously that's not always the case as well. You could have a target from the 19 and catch it on the six. DK Metcalf is plus 3.77 fancy points above expectation. Five red zone targets, four receptions, four touchdowns.

He's got a quarterback situation right now. And then on the running back side, Cordero Patterson plus 1.47 fancy points above expectation on his opportunities. Yes, he is. Well, that's one we kind of knew. And then Austin Eccler is actually performing above expectation on his red zone opportunities. He's had a lot of them, 23 red zone opportunities. So there's more to the equation, I think, when you look at how they perform. Like, I won a guy that with 23 through six games.

That being said, he's still scoring more points than expected on those touches. Yeah, and while the sample size article talked about that it is a good chunk of time, and it's probably more often right than wrong as far as whether their trends will continue, the one place where it's not.

as sticky is the touchdowns. The outlier statistics, touchdowns, interceptions, those type of things are not as sticky. So that's why we're focusing on those. Where have they overperformed or underperformed specific to that stat? Because that's where you could sell high or buy low. Like I would be fine. Any of those four names that you are selling high?

Well, I don't think you could sell high on Metcalf, unfortunately, because of the... Sure. I would personally be willing to sell high on Cordero Patterson. That is not me saying that I think Cordero Patterson is not going to be a usable fantasy asset from the... You know, I don't... I think he is going to be someone that gets enough targets and enough carries to be fantasy relevant every week. And you can definitely capitalize and get more...

for him than what I think his value is the rest of the way. Absolutely. I've seen trades where you package him together and get a Zeke level guy. And Cordero is right there with him scoring on the season. Cordero will not be right there with him scoring with him the rest of the season. I think that's that's kind of the point of this exercise is to look and say, who are these guys that just, it's just not as good. It's not that it's a mirage.

It's just that it's not going to be as good as it's been. It's not going to be as good as it's been. Underperforming players, though, these are trade targets, really, potentially. Wide receiver wise, Chris Godwin, Michael Pittman Jr., and Keenan Allen are under the fantasy points that would be expected by their opportunities in the red zone, the targets in the red zone. I mean, Chris Godwin has 13 red zone targets and only two touchdowns. That's the most red zone targets in the NFL.

And now there's talk today about, like, Antonio Brown is extremely iffy to play this upcoming week. And so you have a situation there where Godwin may capitalize this week. Kenan Allen's another one that's, you know, Keenan hasn't had a big game. Kenan's just been kind of overshadowed. He is, he is living in the very large shadow of Mike Williams. Keenan Allen is, I think, one of my favorite trade for targets because...

It's kind of like what I was saying about C.D. Lamb a couple weeks ago, the offense is great. DAC is great. C.D. Lamb is great. It's going to work out. Keenan is great. Keenan is just a great wide receiver. Herbert is great. The offense is great. It just has been going the other way. I think that Keenan is a great trade for target.

And then running backs that have had a lot of opportunities in the red zone but are still scoring fantasy points below expectation. Jonathan Taylor, Najee Harris, and Miles Sanders, which might surprise people, the first two names, because Taylor's been great over the last couple of weeks, but he only has three touchdowns and 31 red zone opportunities. He's had big plays outside the red zone. And he's returning to the mean over the last couple weeks, but he is still a player that you can target. And maybe this stat here and never not working is.

your confidence boost that what you've seen in the last couple weeks is sustainable, right? Like the performances, the fantasy value, and then Najee Harris as well. That, you know. Noges is just going to stick around, though. We kind of knew, like we would know that he would perform under the expectation because his team stinks and his offensive lines. You know what I mean? It's the opportunities he's getting that are phenomenal. He'll keep doing what he's been doing. Whereas Jonathan Taylor, I think he's, you would expect more efficiency.

in the red zone for Jonathan Taylor. I think we all came into this season ago. Naji's going to get so much work, he probably will be a little bit inefficient with it. And that's just what we've seen. A trade I've been trying to formulate in my head over here, because of the players who are overperforming, and again, these are, because we listed out other than Patterson. Patterson's a surprise, but the other guys are elite players. But DeAndre Hopkins is very, it's just a strange season.

For DeAndre Hopkins, the Cardinals offense is top-notch. I mean, they're putting up tons of points every single week. But DeAndre Hopkins is only seeing a 21% target share, which is not bad. You don't have to get rid of Hopkins. But the question I have is, like, he has multiple weeks here with four targets. Now he's happened to score.

in both of those weeks. But if he hadn't put up a touchdown and he's just four for 54 or three for 55, then that's a really down week. So would you take Hopkins and wait, not this week because it's by apocalypse, wait a week, be sneaky, and then go to the Stefan Diggs manager, who is on his buy now, and then next week go, hey, straight up? Not even straight up.

I bet you could trade Hopkins for Diggs plus just a little something on the side, maybe a running back three type of a player. And to me, you're making almost a lateral move at the wide receiver position. One of them is just overperforming, one is underperforming, and then get yourself a flex upgrade. This is Revenge Week for Hopkins against Houston. So you could probably do that.