864: Running Back Prospects Who Produced Like Studs

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacher Rethis JJ zacher reson what's up everyone. It's JJ zach er Esen in this episode eight hundred and sixty four of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast. Thanks for tuning in. I haven't done any sort of analysis on the show yet about this year's draft class that changes today. This show is one that I do every single year. It's sort of a primer for those of you who aren't familiar with my prospecting work. I look at the world through data. Shocking, I know, but I have models that help me predict how well a player is going to perform in fantasy football across his first three years when he enters the league, and those models are looking at data driven factors like age, adjustin production for example. All of that stuff is laid out in My Prospect Guy, which you can currently pre order on Lateround dot com for eleven ninety nine. If you're interested in exactly what goes into these models, if you want prospect scorers, prospect profiles, and a whole lot more, you can check it out. Today we're going to walk through a couple of metrics that go into those models. Specifically, a running back. But the point of today's exercise isn't the look at things like projected draft capital or to only talk about where a running back might get drafted. Today's exercise is about how these running backs produced in college, what did their numbers look like, and more importantly, how did those numbers stack up against successful running backs in the NFL. Think of it this way, there are college production metrics out there that are useful for predicting fantasy football success at the next level. Since that's the case, that means that the running backs in the NFL who have been good in fantasy football, who have been successful, they likely share some production related traits. Right. If they didn't, then collegiate production wouldn't really matter. So what I'll be doing today is looking at a group of successful NFL running backs and I'll be comparing their collegiate numbers to the numbers from players in this year's draft class. It's that simple, Now, real quick. Before get into that analysis, I just want to let you know that I'm selling some late round fantasy football T shirts and hoodies. They're pretty comfortable and they're cool. You can check them out by heading the Lateround dot Com and clicking shop that's lateround dot Com, and then select shop in the top navigation. To kick things off, we need some definitions. How are we determining successful NFL running backs? Is it an RB one season? Is it someone who scored x number of Fantasy points across the year? What makes a running back successful in fantasy football? Now, this is a little arbitrary, which is fine because this is just a high level look at the production profiles in this year's draft class. So it's okay to be a little arbitrary with our definitions. But I'll be defining successful NFL running back by players who scored fourteen or more PPR points per game across multiple seasons since twenty eleven. Why fourteen or more PPR points per game because it's a relatively usable RB two type season. We're not really striving for RB two seasons. I get that, but if you were to raise that threshold, we wouldn't have a large enough sample size to work off of. When you do this, you get forty two individual running backs. So forty two running backs since twenty eleven have given us multiple seasons of fourteen or more PPR points per game, and a running back needs to have played at least eight games for a particular season to count. Some like Aaron Jones and Christian McCaffrey. They've done it a lot of times. Many have done it just a couple of times, but it gives us a good list to work off of that includes the best running backs of the last decade plus. Now, within my prospect model, I only analyze running backs who either went to the NFL Combine or who were drafted. Sometimes you get players who weren't part of the combine who do get drafted, so I want to include all of them. That does leave out undrafted players though, who weren't combine invites. The model also dates back to twenty eleven, so any player before that, the data I have for them isn't as robust. So we've got to eliminate those two groups from our successful NFL running back sample, and that leaves us with twenty eight run There were a lot of older guys like Jamal Charles Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson who are now not part of this sample, so let's just recap where we're at. We're trying to find out which running backs from this year's draft class produced like studs in college. To define studs, to get our studs sample. I looked at successful running backs in fantasy football over the last twelve years, and there are twenty eight of them. The goal now is to look at what the group's production profiles generally looked like. And this is where we start to get a little bit nerdy. Now I've hinted at this over the last month or so, but I have changed my prospect models a little bit. I also changed the name of them. They're now referred to as the ZAP model, which stands for Zacharyese an Adjusted Prospect Model. I know, it's such a cool name. It's so so creative. One of the big things that I changed this offseason, though, or over the last month, is how I look at breakouts. Typically, when someone describes a breakout, they're talking about a point in time when a player had a really good season. Huka Nakua broke out this past year as a rookie. Nico Collins in twenty twenty three, he broke out as a third year player. College breakouts happened too, and knowing when a player broke out that can help you with your prospect analysis. Now, one common way that people have looked at breakouts in the past is through breakout age. Breakout Age tells you the age of the player was in college when he hit a certain dominator rating threshold. You don't need to know what dominator rating is, just know that it's an attempt to measure how much of an offensive player owned. Essentially, so if a player did a whole lot within his offense at a young age, that would be a good sign. When someone does something really well at a young age, that someone is probably good at that something. We do get signal from breakout age, especially at wide receiver. I used that in my previous iteration of the prospect model, but with the ZAP model, I decided to create my own breakout score, and the reason for that was pretty simple. Number One, I don't think dominator rating is some flawless metric. There are others at both running back and wide receiver that I like more. Number two, breakout age is very very binary. A player could be this close to breaking out, and if he fails to reach the proper threshold, then he's looked at the same way as a guy who had absolutely no production at least within that metric. So this offseason I developed a breakout score at both running back and wide receiver. For running backs, a breakout score is a number between zero and one hundred, and it looks at the age of a running back when he hit multiple thresholds in total yards per team play, and that's pro rated for games played, with a minimum six games needed for a season to count. So instead of saying this guy did or did not hit this singular metric, breakout score is looking at multiple thresholds for that player to hit, and it's looking at one of my favorite running back metrics, which is total yards per team play. Breakout score is pretty predictive and it's one of the two production metrics that I'm gonna be talking about on today's show. The other metric is another one that I love. It's reception share. Reception share is pretty straightforward. It's the percentage of receptions that a player sees within his own offense. Running back receiving is really important at the college level. A good receiving profile running back doesn't mean the player will be a good receiver as a pro. Instead, it tells us something about both intent and ability. If a running back is getting a lot of work as a pass catcher, then his team may be trying to get him the ball. That's a sign of talent. If he's getting a lot of receiving work, he also might just be a good player. Fantasy scoring also favors pass catching running backs. Everything I work with focuses on full PPR leagues, so pass catching naturally has a lot of weight in the model. Now that that's all out of the way, let's look at those twenty eight stud running backs that I talked about earlier. These are the guys who've had good fantasy careers, having given us multiple fourteen plus ppuro point per game seasons as pros. Of those twenty eight players, the median breakout score was eighty seven point five, and for the record, fifty is an average score. Three of the twenty eight running backs and our stud sample didn't break out at all. They had scores of zero. They never hit any of the thresholds in total yards per team play, but twelve of the twenty eight had a score above ninety Sixteen of the twenty eight were above eighty. Now let's shift our focus to this year's running back class. There were twenty nine running backs who were invited to the NFL Combine this year, so it's a pretty close sample size to our STUD running back group. Among those twenty nine who were invited to the combine, just one of them had a breakout score above ninety. So that's a three point four percent rate of a running back in this year's draft class hitting a breakout score of ninety or better. Among our stud sample, that number is closer to forty three percent. That's a pretty big difference, but it speaks to the predictive nature of this metric, as well as the fact that when you're looking at a draft class in total, there are going to be a lot of average players. Now, within this class, five running backs failed to break out and only three players had a breakout score above eighty. Again, those are worse numbers than our STUD sample. Now, let's go back and look at our STUD sample and look at reception share. The model uses a pro rated reception share number, and for that number to count for a player, he needed to play at least six games in a single season in college. Within our STUD sample, twenty one of the twenty eight running backs had a best season pro rated reception share above ten percent. When looking at this year's class, that number was fifteen of twenty nine. Eight of the twenty eight studs had reception shares above fifteen percent. In this year's class, only two players had a reception share that high. So you can see that within those two metrics, the two main production metrics that this model looks at, the stud sample far out paces the sample in this year's draft class, which makes sense because if they're in the model, they should be helping us forecast more accurately. So if they're good in fantasy football, if they're good as nflers, they should have had good marks within these production metrics, unless the model's terrible, which I don't think is terrible. Now, I do want to be clear here those two things are not the only things that make up a player's prospect score in the ZAP model. I'm still looking at age, at draft capital, at size. There are other factors that go into this. We're just focused on production today. The question we now need to ask is which running backs from this year's class actually produced like studs. Well, I can tell you some players who didn't, and some of them may be interesting to you. This draft class is not very strong overall. I do think that depth might be a little bit better than others believe, but we don't have any can't miss prospects at all. When just analyzing the top of this class, it's the worst draft class the ZAT model has ever seen. Not a single running back has a prospect score above ninety. That's happened in every class since twenty eleven, even the twenty fourteen one one where Bishop Sanke was the first running back drafted, but Jeremy Hill got above a ninety score. Let's first look at some players with breakout score red flags. Trey Benson is someone that a lot of people view as the RB one in this year's class, and according to NFL Mock Draft database dot com, he's now the consensus RB one by projected draft Capital. The ZAP model doesn't fully agree with that. He has an ok enough score overall at the moment, but his breakout score is below fifty. It's below average. That's because he played four years in college and ended up tearing his ACL his freshman year. That led to an unproductive second season before he transferred to Florida State. But even at Florida State, Benson's total yards per team play rate never got above one point three to six. That's not a good number at all. In fact, it's the eighth worst mark in this year's draft class. That's what led to Benson's below average score, and it's one to remember as we get closer to the NFL Draft. Now, other players in this year's class with a questionable breakout score include Marshawn Lloyd, who's at thirty one point five, Jalen Wright who's at forty five, and Dylan Johnson who's at twenty four. It's not the end all for those guys, but they do look worse than the model because of those lower breakout scores. Now, I mention that there was only one player with a breakout score from this class that was north of ninety and he's at ninety point seven, and it's Braylen Allen. Allen has an absurd age adjusted production profile after entering college early and breaking out before turning eighteen years old, and he was recruited at first to play on the defensive side of the ball. Now, the reason Allen's number isn't higher, the reason it's only at ninety point seven and not at like ninety eight point seven, is because he maxed out his total yards per team play at one point seven to six. That's not an overly special number, but he's definitely someone the model likes at the moment as a bigger body back. With that being said, I do have some more subjective concerns. Alan's huge, like an AJ Dillon tight back, but he was below average and avoided tackles per attempt according to PFF's data. I really want to see how fast he is of the combine too. A great speed scorer could change his outlook, but I'm not optimistic that that's gonna come so right now, I'm kind of middle of the road with Braylen Allen despite what the model is saying. Now, as I said before, there are two other guys who have breakout scores above eighty in this class too. Both of them are smaller school players in Isaiah Davis out of South Dakota State and Jaden Sheridan out of Monmouth. It's easier for smaller school backs to produce in college. Imagine someone like Jonathan Taylor at like San Jose State. Now, with that being said, the numbers are not adjusted for school for conference at the running back position within the Zapp model. Spoiler alert, though they are a wide receiver but a breakout score at South Dakota State counts the same as Wisconsin. It's just how the numbers work out. Davis and Sheridan are unlikely going to see high draft capital, which is why their numbers likely look the way that they do. And just because they went to a smaller school doesn't mean that they automatically are going to produce. There are plenty of smaller school running backs who got invited to Combine who didn't produce that well in college, so watch out at least for those two backs. Now let's move on to reception share. This number matters a little bit less than breakout score, but it's still something to look at. I usually use a best season pro rated ten percent reception share as a quick benchmark. A player below that mark scares me a little bit more. As we saw, we've got a lot more running backs over that mark in the stud sample than the twenty twenty four class sample. And Trey Benson gets another shout out here. He's under a best season reception share of ten percent as is ODRIC estimate estimate, though had a seventy nine breakout score. He's looking pretty okay in the model today. Now, most of the higher end running backs in this class had okay enough reception chairs, but I do want to shout out another small school guy, and Dylan Lowby. He not only has the highest best season reception chair in this year's draft class, he is the highest best season reception share in the entire ZAP model database. Now, he went to New Hampshire. You have to take all of that with a grain of salt. I'm sure his draft capital will be lower simply because of that, but he's a really fun prospect who could find himself in a pass catching role at the next level. Now, putting all this together, which running backs in this year's class officially produced like studs? Well, let's do this. The median breakout score in our stud sampled, like I said earlier, eighty seven and a half, the median reception share thirteen point three percent. Do any running max in this year's class hit those marks? Unfortunately, no brayln Allen clears in the breakout score department, But he's a percentage and a half point shine reception share. But if we loosen the parameters a bit, he'd definitely be the player who produced most like a stud in this year's class. And that doesn't mean that he's the RB one in the Zach model or in this class because there are other factors, but he looks pretty good on the production front. Now, another player I want to shout out here is the name that you've heard me talk about on this podcast before, but I talked about it years and years ago, Frank Gore. But it's Frank Gore Junior. Yes, that Frank Gore. Frank Gore Junior has a good production profile. Again, he didn't go toke Alabama. He played at Southern Mississippi for four years. But he had a breakout score just shy of eighty and his top season in pro rated reception share was fourteen point four percent. Those are some of the higher marks within this year's class. But I think what all of this tells me and probably tells you two, is that this class is really lacking elite talent. Some guys will undoubtedly become Fantasy relevant and we'll be talking about how good they are in twenty twenty five and beyond, but as prospects, it's definitely a class that lacks elite playmakers, and that's just going to make the established guys in Dynasty that much more valuable. There are plenty of guys that didn't talk about on today's show too, Blake Korum, Bucky Irving, Jonathan Brooks. Some of them have okay enough marks across the board, but not elite marks, but if you have questions about them, you can feel free to ask them for a mailbag episode. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and do't for to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. We've got a mailbag episode this week that'll drop on Friday. I'll talk to you then,