521: Mailbag 7/2/21

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zachersa j J Zacherson. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandle and at Number five dot com and this episode five hundred and twenty one of the Late Round podcast so many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Hey, baseball fans, Fandel is giving you the opportunity to get involved with daily fantasy baseball with the MLB Home Run Challenge. Each day, you can draft three players and you'll receive one point for every home run that they hit. Score three points for a share of the two thousand dollars prize pool. Score six or more points and you'll win a share of the ten thousand dollars prize pool. All you have to do is head over to Fandel today and draft your sluggers. Eligibility restrictions apply. Go to fandle dot com or download the fandle app for more details. It's a mailbag episode, so let's get to these questions. The first question this week is from at FB injury doc our friend Edwin. He says, Hey, JJ still hate the show. I never listen. There's so much content and data to digest. Other than picking a handful of analysts to trust, what are the most undervalued data driven principles that you follow on draft day? Honestly, if I had a dumbed down my fantasy football philosophy into just a couple of phrases or sayings, the first one would be what I said earlier this week, and that's regression is everything. It's fine to dream up some scenarios where players break regression and become outliers. Those players happen. Dereck Henry is one of them. Tyreek Hill is one of them. They happen because of my philosophy. It doesn't mean I'm gonna miss on those players. It's just that for the vast majority of players, regression is real. And even for those guys, it's real. Even for the players who seem like they'll never regress, they will regress, maybe not to a league average mean, but they regress in some way. The other thing that I always try to keep in mind, which seems less data centric, but it really is data centric. But it's that you're going to be wrong. I'm gonna be wrong, We're all gonna be wrong. Be open minded about that and don't fight it. We're all human and we all want to be right. I really want to be right because my job depends on it, but because we know we're going to be wrong. Instead of focusing so much on pretending to know exactly what's gonna happen in fantasy football, focus your time on looking at range of outcomes. Focus on really thinking about the probability of different outcomes instead of one singular outcome. Don't make too many assumptions, and embrace variants. Some people hate that about my analysis that I don't take these super strong stances on players, especially early round players. If you notice my strong takes are usually on later round guys. Why because stakes are lower in the later rounds. If I miss on that player, if I go all in on that player, it doesn't really matter. If I miss on a second round pick, that matters, not just because you guys are gonna yell at me about it, but because my fantasy teams are gonna suffer. Need to go all in on a second round pick. That's not good management. And with those later round picks, remember that it's fine to tell yourself a story to how those players will become relevant. I mean keep in mind, average draft position is really just created by a group of people who are making assumptions. We're all assuming things are going to go a certain way with these players, and we're averaging those assumptions out. Try your best to not make those assumptions certainties. When you can do that, you start to realize the range of outcomes for players a little bit more, You start to embrace variance more, and you start to really become a better player. This last question is from at Manna Underscore dork. Am I wrong in thinking that Justin Jefferson's ADP is too high and Adam Thelen's is too low? Even with his high number of touchdowns last year, thelan seems to be the go to in the red zone, and with improvements to the defense, it's likely that the offense will regress as a whole. So I'm not sure what that last part has to do with Adam Thlen necessarily being ranked too low. It seems like if you're expecting regrets in this offense or even a more run heavy Vikings team, then he'd probably want to be more out on both guys, both Justin Jefferson and Adam Thlen. Now regardless as you mentioned Adam Thelen is a very obvious touchdown regression candidate. I was going to talk about him on next week's show, and I'm still going to talk about him. But he scored way too many touchdowns given his peripheral numbers. Last season, he scored thirteen times in the red zone. That's the second most that we've seen from a wide receiver since twenty eleven. The top number was fourteen by DeVante Adams last season, but DeVante Adams had seven more targets in the red zone than Adam Thelen had. Delan converted thirteen of his twenty red zone targets into touchdowns. We've had five hundred and thirty four wide receiver seasons since twenty eleven where a wide down has had ten or more red zone targets. Thelan's rate of conversion is third best among that group. Now, he did see a lot of looks within the five yard line. He saw eight of them, but he converted seven of those goal line targets into touchdowns. Now we can say that Thelan's the go to red zone guy, and he probably is, But just two years ago, in twenty eighteen, Thelan had the exact same number of red zone targets as he had last year. That season, he converted six of them into touchdowns. Again, just to reiterate, he converted thirteen of his red zone looks into touchdowns last year, and back in twenty eighteen, he converted four of his six goal line targets into touchdowns. That's also lower than his twenty twenty rate. Should we assume this twenty twenty rate is the norm. Probably not. We're not gonna see the same type of performance from a touchdown standpoint from Adam Theln in twenty twenty one. That's just not gonna happen. And considering he's gonna be thirty one in August and Justin Jefferson's no longer a rookie, I don't think that we can just assume that Thelan is gonna see a similar target share to Justin Jefferson like we saw last year. Like we have to do some projecting based on experience in age curves here. I'm by no means saying that Adam Thelen is gonna just disappear. It's just that Thelan and Jefferson's target share per game rates last year they were pretty comparable. We should expect that to favor Jefferson more in twenty twenty one. Now, with all that being said, the market is adjusting for this. That's what's important here. I don't think we would look at Adam Thlen's ADP and say that people aren't regressing his touchdown numbers a little bit. People understand this. He's being drafted as a low end wide receiver two. And Jefferson, given the talent he is and how dominant he was as a rookie, he's properly valued as a wide receiver one because he showed us that he has that high of a ceiling. There are some things with Jefferson that could regress, like his yards per target ray last year, but that could be offset with volume and with touchdowns. So my final answer here is I think both are properly valued. My projections seem to like thielin a little bit more than I do, and that's likely because I'm not going to be super bowlish on a thirty one year old wide receiver who's coming off in unsustainable season statistically. But a lot of people feel that same exact way, hence his ADP. This s's christ is from at c Bauman ninety one. Should we be more concerned with Kamara as a first round investment with counting on either Jamis or Taysom defeed him some targets or is it safe to assume the coaching staff will implement him in a way that will keep him in the top tier. Thanks JJ. I think there's risk involved with Kamara. Absolutely, He's another touchdown regression candidate. We've got a new quarterback situation there, and he averages fourteen point two PPR points per game without Drew Brees. Last year with Drew Brees, that number was twenty nine. I think what's potentially even more important there too is that Kamara had a thirteen point four percent target chair per game in that split without Drew Brees. That number jumped to over twenty five percent with Drew Brees. So yes, based on those splits, you have to be somewhat concerned. But as you noted in this question, you have to think there's going to be competent coaching in New Orleans and there's really not a whole lot of competition for targets in that offense. And the other thing that's important here too is that Taysom Hill might not be the starter. Remember Drew Brees missed five games in twenty nineteen. Kamara was active in four of those, and in those four games he averaged almost twenty points per contest, and he never scored fewer than thirteen point six PPR points. He was fine with Teddy Bridgewater. I do think it's okay if you want to draft someone like Saquon Barkley, Derek Henry, or even Ezekiel Elliott ahead of Alvin Kamara this year. I actually have those players ranked ahead of him, but he still belongs in the first round in my opinion. Now, this next one is closely related to that last question, says hi JJ, big fan of the show. Thanks am, I overthinking the running back landscape too much. After CMC and Dalvin, I feel that the next eight to ten guys Kamara, Henry, Zeke, Saquan Chubb, Jones, Eckler, Mixon all have good cases to be made as to why they can finish his top five running backs, but they all have serious questions as well. In fact, I like some of the guys being taken later in the group, like Eckler and Mixon, over guys like Kamara and Saquon. This year, I have the number three pick in a fourteen team league, and I can't stand it. Are Henry and Kamara really safer bets in the rest of the group to give me a top five running back return? Is it too early to reach for someone else in that group, knowing I have no shot of getting them in the second Thanks John. So I actually got a lot of questions similar to this one this week, which was really weird unless it was the same couple of people asking the question through email and Twitter, which could easily be the case. But yeah, sure, I get you there are question marks with these guys, But what's your alternative? Are you gonna go with the wide receiver or Travis Kelcey? Who are you drafting instead of these running backs? I mean, I wouldn't totally fault you necessarily if you went after someone like Travis Kelcey, but there are plenty of reasons to not do that too. Now this is only loosely related to your question, but I think what gets in the way of fantasy managers a lot with early round picks is that they confuse safety with value. Like, sure, there's something to having a very safe asset. That's great, but you shouldn't get fixated on floor here. The potential in the ceiling matters too, as does the position that they play. If you end up with one of the handful of elite running backs at the end of the season, then you'll have one of the best advantages in fantasy football. Does that come with some risk, Yeah, but they come with huge rewards too. That's why we're drafting running backs early. But if you feel like there's a giant tier there, then yeah, you'd ideally want to draft at the bottom of that tier. That's how you should generally view tiers. But to your question, and to answer it more directly, I do think Derek Henry and Alvin Kamara are safe for bets to be top five backs than some of the other guys that you named. That's how my projections view it, and I think it's logical to think that way. They have the track record and they're in line to see volume. They are locks to see a lot of volume. Do the other players have a chance to outscore them? Of course? But even though I really like Austin Eckler and Joe Mixon this year, we still haven't seen those players put together those complete warkhorse seasons. Eckler still needs projecting to be done to get goal line work, and Joe Mixon hasn't seen great receiving numbers across an entire season. That's why those more established players are better bets. This last question is from at Jersey Gator nine, love the pod. Thanks. I know in redraft you prefer to acquire other GMS handcuffs for more upside opportunity until the playoff run. What about large roster dynasty leagues? Do you try and acquire your own handcuffs, other handcuffs or make value plays like stocks for your bench. So to be clear, I don't usually take the high end handcuffs, and fantasy drafts, I usually do not draft handcuffs. My stance is that if you're gonna do that, you should go for the upside play and take someone else's. Like if you have Dalvin Cook get Tony Pollard instead of Alexander Madison, it's a ceiling play. I understand it's not a floor play. I understand it's not a safe play, but it's a ceiling play and I play to win. I generally don't draft handcuffs, though in regular redraft leagues, I wait until mid season to start picking them up, and the idea isn't really any different in Dynasty. I would rather have value plays or players with standalone value on my bench who don't need an injury to succeed. What we've seen in the past is that players who emerge on their own own are the ones that you just generally want, not the ones who need an injury to be relevant. And I'm not saying that's a one hundred percent thing versus zero percent thing. Of course, Mike Davis happened last year. That kind of stuff is gonna happen. It's just a matter of what happens more often. The sext question is from at Bob Forrest three. Can you discuss the regression expected in New England as it relates to their running game? I can't stop drafting Damien Harris at his value? Is that crazy? So on the show earlier this week, I mentioned how New England had a super low pass rate last year. Their past to rush ratio was the eleventh lowest that we've seen since twenty eleven, and as I noted on that show, those numbers usually regress to the mean. So New England this year would hypothetically become more pass heavy. If that's the case, then we should expect fewer overall rushes, and we should expect their touchdown scoring to skew more towards the air. Considering their past to rush touchdown ratio last year was just point six, the second lowest and is twenty eleven. We should absolutely expect more passing touchdowns to happen in twenty twenty one when compared to rushing touchdowns. At least when you compare it to what happened in twenty twenty, we should expect the ratio to rise. That touchdown piece is going to hurt the running backs on the team. What you need to happen in order for Damien Harris to have true touchdown upside is that you need New England's offense to just be better, because if that pass to rush touchdown ratio is higher, then we need to make up for those lost rushing touchdowns with having just more overall touchdown volume. Now I've mentioned this before on the show, but Damien Harris is the kind of running back that I generally don't get behind. He saw seven targets last year in ten games on a team that targeted their running backs to the highest rate in the league. Seriously, no team had a higher running back target share last season than the New England Patriots, and we know New England doesn't typically utilize their running backs and workhorse roles. They have their individual roles that they all play. Now, if Mac Jones takes over as quarterback, Harris probably has a little bit more upside because he doesn't have to deal with Cam Newton at the goal line. But even still, some big changes need to be made in order for Damien Harris to truly truly hit as an every week starter. If you're in a Best Ball league, that's a little bit different, he'll give you some usable weeks, but in Redraft Harris just seems like someone who's going to be a weekly headache. Maybe they end up using him more as a receiver this year, and I'm sure they will to some degree because Rex Burkhead is no longer on that team, but James White is still there and he's probably gonna cap Damien Harris's ceiling. The last question this week is from at FF Hansenader. I saw someone post that Michael Thomas had zero targets twenty plus yards deep last year, which I took as noise because breeze and tasom in New Orleans as a whole didn't throw deep all that much. My question is, when Thomas was a PPR darling the year before, how did his deep ball rate compare with other wide receivers in twenty nineteen that are being drafted around his ADP this year? And if it wasn't good, it feels like the ADP is recency bias based on something unlikely to be duplicated. Do you agree? Or maybe him no longer considered a top three? Did we correct the appropriate amount? Okay, so this question is really just asking how I feel about Michael Thomas, and in particular, how I feel about him based off of some of these deep ball numbers. I actually got another question about Thomas, so hopefully this answers that one too. First off, Thomas didn't have zero targets of twenty plus air yards last season, at least according to the data that I work with. My data has him at three. My data also has him at thirteen targets of fifteen plus air yards, so we had a whole lot of looks. Given he finished the year with fifty five targets, he had a whole lot of targets in that fifteen to nineteen yard range. In fact, almost twenty four percent of Thomas's targets last year came on fifteen plus airyard throws. That was actually the highest number of his entire career. The year before that, when he went off for almost one hundred and fifty receptions, his fifteen plus airyard rate was a career low eleven point three percent. But more importantly, instead of looking at how many targets hit a certain threshold, you can just look at average at the target. Last year, Thomas's eight out was nine point six according to next Gen Stats. Before that it was eight point one. Average depth of target does matter, and we generally want higher A dots for our wide receivers, but not at the expense of volume. A huge reason Thomas was so insane in twenty nineteen, and actually you could say that it was the reason. It was because he had almost a thirty five percent target share that was the second highest since twenty eleven. Here's the thing, though, Thomas was banged up last year, so we didn't play half the season. But for what it's worth, his pro rated target share, his target share per game pro rated across sixteen games, it was over thirty percent. That's still insanely, insanely good. We can't project something like that because a thirty percent share doesn't happen very frequently, but we can feel confident that a lot of volume is gonna go Michael Thomas's way, and that's what we should buy in fantasy football. More than deep balls or average at the target or anything else. We want volume. So I actually think that Michael Thomas is a really good value this year. My projections have him at wide receiver seven, and my rankings, which you can get for free over on number fire dot com right now, they haven't at wide receiver eight. I think with a question like this, the thing to keep in mind is that a lot of statistics are still secondary to the most important thing that we care about in fantasy football, and that's volume. Let's just hope that Thomas can get back in the end zone in twenty twenty one. That's going to do for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening, everyone. I hope you enjoy your holiday weekend and I will talk to you next week.