619: Mailbag 3/4/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Retha j J Zacherson. What's up everyone. It's JJ zachar Esen and this is episode six hundred and nineteen of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in, Hey, sports fans. There's no better time than today to sign up for Fandel Fantasy. For users who have yet to make a deposit on Fandle Fantasy, you can deposit today to receive two free entries. All you have to do is deposit a minimum of ten dollars into your fandul dfs account and you will instantly be rewarded with two free vouchers. Is a limited time offer, so be sure to deposit now and play for free. Head over to fandel dot com or download the Fandle Fantasy app today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the Fandel app for more details. The first question this week is from Twitter's from at mcclungfara. If the Dolphins draft are running back in the first three rounds, does that player become the Dynasty rookie one oh one draft pick. No, definitely not. Is Miami a good landing spot for a running back. Absolutely, yes, I would love to see Breis Hall or Isaiah Spiller go to Miami and that would undoubtedly get dynasty managers excited. But number one, we have to remember that draft capital matters here. Lumping the first three rounds together doesn't do us that much good because there's a big difference between a first round running back to a second round running back to a third round one third round running backs. We're getting into questionable prospects in that range. Now, if the question was in the first two rounds, then maybe there's more of a question. But I don't let landing spot dictate things that drastically, and my current analysis is showing me that the top three wide receivers in this class, Treylon Burks, Garrett Wilson, and Drake London, that they're better bets regardless of landing spot than any of the running backs. That's where I'm at right now. Talent matters how we view these prospects. It matters we should be buying into the player, not the player situation, because way more often than not, dramatically changing your stance based on situation is going to hand you in l in the long run. This next question is from Patreon. It's from David. It says the most volatile NFL fantasy assets are Amen Ross, Saint Brown, Kadarius, Tony Gabriel Davis, Darnell Mooney, and Hunter Renfro. It's so difficult to define what they will become. I'm interested in your thoughts when ranking these players, so instead of going player by player here, I think there's just a lot to dissect with a question like this, so bear with me. I think every single player in the middle rounds of startups and even redraft leagues, they're just generally tough to project. Like at the top, you have elite players who are bound to be good Jamar Chase, Justin Jefferson, we know that they're going to be good. At the bottom, you have guys who need some fortune in order to break out. It's those middle rounds or the wide receiver three to four where things are tough. I don't necessarily think it's unique to this set of players that you're mentioning. I think it's just generally tough. They're in that range for a reason, and it's even more difficult when a player is younger and we have a smaller sample size than the guy. This is where having a process can come into play. Though, I can look at prospect profiles in my model and find the probability to a certain player will hit a certain threshold in points per game in years one, two, or three, and I can do the exact same thing then when looking at my year two model. So let's look at amen Ros Saint Brown as an example who's coming off a huge rookie season. In my prospect model, Saint Brown had a prospect score in about the seventy fourth percentile. Historically, players in that percentile group they usually don't hit at a high rate. Over the last ten years, we haven't seen a single wide receiver from that percentile tier give us a top five season across their first three in the league. We've seen five percent of them in that tier give us a top fifteen or so season, but not top five. That doesn't happen, So right away you know the odds are against Saint Brown. You can even look at draft capital alone to see that most hits are going to come from earlier rounds. We know this, but then Saint Brown goes nuts in year one. His year two model score is now close to the ninety second percentile, which again the year two model is a look at a player's prospect score and how he performed in year one, and it helps predict how a player is going to do in years two and three. But if you look at players in the ninety to ninety five range in the year two model, in that percentile range, which is where Saint Brown now is, that wide receiver one season hit rate increases to about sixteen percent. It went from non existent to now being existent. And that's based on what can happen in either year two or year three and that top fifteen or twenty season it was five percent before now it's closer to thirty to thirty five percent. Saint Brown did all of the right things to put himself in a better position this past year. And then I can use what I call journey comparables to find players who went through a similar prospects score to year two score journey, and two of his top comps there they're good ones. They're Stefan Diggs and t Y Hilton. Not only that, but Saint Brown's so one of the biggest jumps my model has seen from prospect score to year two score over the last ten years, the only two wide receivers with bigger jumps were Martevis Bryant, who had off the field issues, and Terry McLaurin, who's very good at football. This isn't to say that Saint Brown's going to become Stefon Diggs or Terry McLaurin. They're not even the same type of receivers. And his third comp is Keiki Qt. I'm not trying to paint this as only butterflies and rainbows. What I'm trying to show you is a general process because in situations like this, in situations where you're evaluating these wide receiver threes, in wide receiver fours in dynasty, it's really important to have that backbone to have that process. If Saint Brown's Year two model score showed that he had no chance of becoming something big, but people were valuing him the exact same way they're valuing him right now, then he would be an obvious player to sell. I would come on the show and say, based on what the market is generally saying right now, and based on Saint Brown's scores in my models and its comparables in the year two model, it makes a lot of sense to trade Saint Brown away right now. That's if his year two score didn't look as good. I can do the same thing, go through the same exercise with other players that you mentioned in this question. Gabriel Davis actually saw a really, really big jump when looking at prospect score to year two score. He then didn't do a whole lot until the second half of last season. But just given his journey, I don't think it's logical to rank him. I had a Saint Brown because Saint Brown has a lot brighter of an outlook based on what he did in year one and where he ranked as a prospect. But I still don't think that Davis is that bad because we still see some hits from his tier in the year two model. I don't think Davis is a bye, but I'd only be selling Davis for a premium right now. Kidarius Tony look from the same lens as Saint Brown because he's also entering his second year. He answers the league as a ninety first percentile prospect. He exits year one as a ninetieth percentile one. That's a good place for him to be given what we've seen from why outs there. Historically, it's not elite, but it's at least hitting a threshold that we'd like to see hit. You can go through that type of general process over and over and over again. You're looking at trends. Yes, you may lose trades based on trends, but you're going to win in the long run. But I'm also not just looking at trends. I'm looking at how good the player looks to be. And this obviously is strictly my analytical opinion about that player. It's fine to throw in some subjectivity. It's fine to watch the player. It's fine to say I like this player based on what I'm seeing. If I'm being honest with you, guys, I think part of the problem with fantasy analysis is that it's too forced. There's always this urge to want to describe a player as either a clear buy or a clear sell, but it's rarely that. It's rarely that black and white. I mean, I can, and I will tell you where i'd lean for each of these guys based on what the market is generally saying. But it's not like we have a singular price for each player. The market doesn't say Kadarius Tony can be had for rookie pick one oh six, no more, no less. That's it. Every single league and every manager's evaluation is going to be different, and that obviously changes the buy and sell equation. I say this all the time in the show, but some people take this as me not being bold with my analysis, and that's cool. You do you. If I don't work for you, that's no problem. We can still be friends or just talking fantasy football here. But to me, my job isn't to just give you answers to a test. My job is to give you the tools to be able to answer those questions on your own, with your own brain. That's what makes fantasy football most enjoyable, and that's honestly the way that you win in the long run. Like there are plenty of times where I'll give you my answer, where I'll say this is what I would do, but I want everyone to first and foremost understand the importance of process and that fantasy football is way more than just liking or not liking players on an individual level. There are trends to analyze, there's a lot of game theory to this, and ignoring that can get you into trouble when you're evaluating players now, I know that answer is way different than what you probably expected, but this is all about process and I want to at least share part of that process with the answer. And I can't stress this enough either. So much of this is going to be in the Late Round Prospect Guide and that launches in about a week and a half. If you're interested in the things that I just talked about, go pre order that guide on lateround dot com. And something that at ABQ Joe Underscore are brought up on Twitter this week. I haven't talked about this much, but the guide will be updated after the NFL Draft, so you'll get all the pre draft information, pre draft rankings, pre draft profiles, all of that, and then you'll get more accurate information after the draft is over. That's all included with your purchase. You'll get download links sent to your email when the guide is updated, so again, you can purchase that guide over on lateround dot com. The next question is from Twitter. It's from at BC Vapor. Hey, JJ, what are your top candidates to have a sophomore wide receiver breakout next season? Would love to strike some mid round gold at wide receiver. Thanks for helping me take home the Trophy for the first time this past season. There's a really big gap with last year's wide receiver class between the players who look like they have it and the players who look like they don't. There's not a whole lot of gray area. Just to give you an example what I mean, within my year two model, there's only one player who ranks in the eightieth to ninetieth percentile in year two score a wide receiver, and that's Rondell Moore. But More is also really really really close to the ninetieth percentile. It goes from Rondel Moore all the way down to Nicocollins, and when you get to Collins you get a player who's odds of giving you a really really good of more year they're not very high. Things basically get cut off after Rondell Moore and the players above More are the ones that you would expect the aforementioned Amen Rossaint Brown and Cadarius Tony, Rashad Bateman, Elijah Moore, DeVante Smith, Jalen Wattle, and Jamar Chase. Those are the players I'd easily be more interested in when targeting wideouts who could have a true sophomore breakout. This has questions from at mister Goodcat fifteen oh nine. What if anything, are you hoping to see from players during the combine? So let me first talk about what combine related things go into my models, and it's pretty simple. At running back it's height, weight and speed score. At wide receiver, it's height and weight. My model doesn't care about anything else from the combine. I care a lot about athleticism at tight end, but I don't have a tight end model right now. It's just running back and wide receiver. I'm interested to see who's fast and who's athletically gifted, but more so for fun and to see who hits certain thresholds. It's not the end of the world if a productive players a fiftieth percentile athlete, especially a wide receiver. But within the things that go into my model, I'm excited to see what the results look like, especially a lot of the height and weight measurements. It sounds so lame, but it's serious. Those are the things that I care about with the combine because it keeps the data uniform. This as questions from at jk Underscore No underscore kidding? Am I crazy for thinking about hopping on the Mitch Trubisky bandwagon like, thinking of openings at the quarterback spot Denver, Pittsburgh, maybe even New Orleans or Washington. I'm starting to feel like i'd rather have him over any of this year's rookie quarterbacks in the same place. Now, I don't know if I would go that far, at least straight up in a dynasty environment. Look, we generally know how good a player is based on his first couple of years in the league. A Josh Allen jump doesn't happen very often. And yes, if we see jumps, we see it from players typically who move teams, who see a new environment like Alex Smith or Drew Brees back in the day, or when they get a new environment with a coaching staff like Jared Goff. But there's a correlation between early career success and later career success. It's not surprising either. If a player is good at something early, it's probably because he's just good. Now. I think it's fine to throw a dart at Trubisky, but I almost feel like it's getting to the point where the fantasy community is going to end up overvaluing him. And while people are throwing darts at Trubisky and making his cost go up, I may be more inclined to throw them at Marcus Mariota, who has a similar profile in terms of how he generates fantasy points if he becomes a starter. I think it's easy to get excited about these players, but it's always good to remember that Ryan Tannehill's situations they don't happen very often. And not only that, but a player like Tannehill had more success than Trubisky in the first place. This last question is from Patreon. It's from Nick, and it sort of is tied into that previous one. It says, is Trevor Lawrence a bye right now? I feel like he had a decent rookie year, even though he led the league in interceptions. But it's it seems the fantasy community is more obsessed with Lance's development. Is the market appropriately valuing Trevor Lawrence? So Dynasty League Football dot COM's ADP has Trevor Lawrence at QB fourteen when Trey Lance's QB eight justin Field is QB ten, and the difference between the three of them is like twenty picks. There's like eight picks from Lance to Fields and then another thirteen or so from Fields to Lawrence. That's in single quarterback leagues. I don't think that's significantly far off. My dynasty rankings have them ranked lance than fields than Lawrence, but I do have Lawrence higher than QB fourteen. So from that perspective, yeah, I guess that I would say that he's undervalued. But let's not assume there's zero risk there. I fully understand the risk involved. If you look at historical rookie numbers, it's tough to find a whole lot of hits who had as bad of a rookie season as Trevor Lawrence just had. Among the forty seven quarterbacks with three hundred more attempts as rookies since two thousand, Lawrence was thirty second in adjusted net yards per attempt. It's in a more friendly league, a more pass friendly league, and the only real hits who ranked below him were Matthew Stafford and Josh Allen. And I already talked about Josh Allen being a huge outlier. But I think that you can look at this situation objectively and say Trevor Lawrence was working with absolute garbage. The coaching staff was a joke, the pass catching situation was an ideal, and there were injuries in that situation too. It's not like he walked into a situation that Trey Lance is walking into. Now. Would I rather have Lancer Fields at this point, yes, because again there's the what if for Trevor Lawrence of what if he's actually just not very good and honestly, history is not on his side, and we know that Lance and Fields are going to bring more to the table for fantasy purposes because of what they can do with their legs. But there are at least some things to latch onto with Lawrence to make you feel like he can bounce back. He was an elite prospect. His situation was one of the worst you could imagine for rookie quarterback when you consider the coaching staff and the Jags themselves. They scored touchdowns in a really weird way in twenty twenty one. Don't forget that either. Natural regression will help Lawrence's numbers as well. The Jags had a pass to rush touchdown ratio last year that was under one. They had more rushing touchdowns than passing touchdowns. The average ratio across the league last year was one point eight. The Jags were at point nine, so I guess technically I think that he's a bye, but I do think it would be very team dependent. There are some dynasty rosters where I'd want to buy into that variance, but there's some that I'd rather stay away. That's gonna go for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get to subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by starting for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. I hope you enjoyed the combine this weekend. I will talk to you next week