632: Mailbag 4/22/22

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zachertha j J Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zachar Esen and this is episode six hundred and thirty two of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thanks for tuning in. There's no better time than today to sign up for Fandel Fantasy. For users who have got to make a deposit on Fandle Fantasy, you can deposit today to receive two free entries. All you have to do is the positive minimum of ten dollars into your FanDuel DFS account. You'll be instantly rewarded with two free vouchers. Is a limited time offer, so be sure to deposit now and play for free. Head over to fandle 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 Luis from Patreon. It says, Hi, JJ, how do you project Jerry Judy's year three will be with Russ under center. I think he has the talent, but given the poor quarterback play he's had to deal with fantasy managers. May feel a little uncertainty about him. Would love to hear your thoughts. So I like Jerry Judy just in general as a player. He rated really well in my model coming out of school. He had a good enough year two model score. He looks good. Things are good on the talent front, and I think you can at least latch onto the injury last year as reason for his underperformance. With that being said, I think there's a chance that he's not someone I aggressively target this year. It's only April, so my stance here can obviously change. Maybe by the time July hits, I'll have tons and tons of Judy. But he came in right around that wide receiver twenty four to wide receiver twenty eight mark in my initial projections. Now I'm giving that a range because projections could be really tight where one spot to the next is not super significant. But my projections currently have Judy at one thousand and sixty six receiving yards and five touchdowns. That may seem like a low number when you hear it, but Denver has playmates. They have good weapons in that offense that naturally just caps a player's ceiling. Now I say this all the time. But the too many mouths defeat argument is both real and not real. A lot of people will swear by it and do analysis that way, But I'm a believer that targets are largely earned. So if you're a good wide receiver, chances are you're gonna see at least around a twenty percent target chair in your offense. That's assuming the rest of your team is average or above average. Obviously, if you had a team with stud pass catcher after stud pass catcher, some very good wide receiver wouldn't be able to hit a high target shair. But we know those scenarios don't happen. You don't have offenses with DeVante Adams, Tyree Hill, Justin Jefferson, et cetera, et cetera. The issue then is ceiling, and Judy's not such an elite wide receiver right now where we can just lock him into a twenty five percent target chair. He's not Justin Jefferson or Cooper Cup. I will say that's just from a projection standpoint. In Judy's range of outcomes is that he does take that step forward and captures a larger target chair with fewer breaks happening around him. Like Albert oh not being as involved, or Courtland Sutton not having a bounce back ear that's the way Judy really comes through with a wide receiver one season, or the Broncos are just absolutely incredible on offense, which is also possible. So yeah, it's in his range of outcomes to be really good. I definitely don't hate the idea of having Jerry Judy on my team. That would be silly. It's just a matter of cost. I think you can easily make the case that someone like Michael Pittman should be drafted over Jerry Judy, but he gets drafted after Jerry Judy. I don't want to make any locked in statements about draft value in April because there's no need to. I'm just saying that, while I do think that Judy has a path to a ceiling, my fear is that people are going to buy into the Russell Wilson trade a whole lot, and understandably so, but that puts Judy in a section of the draft where he's not a must draft player when I'd really like him to be a must draft player, and I think that's already happening. So I like Judy overall. My dynasty rankings are on the Late Round Fantasy Fotball Patreon, and I'm definitely bullish on Judy there. I just think from a redraft standpoint, I'm probably gonna like him at market value. I don't think he's gonna be something that I'm drafting a ton of. The next question is from at Connor underscore Donovan from Twitter. It says where do you value Alvin Kamara in a dynasty startup draft? At the moment, I'm not sure what to think. With his legal situation and age being the biggest factors. Kamara is one of those players that I'll probably rank higher than where I'd actually draft him in a startup just because I try to avoid those types of players and startups unless they fall a whole lot, because everyone in the league is going with more of a productive struggle build. I think within the running back position he's in that like RB fourteen range. That's where I had him in my last rankings update. But as Late round Fantasy Football patrons know, I value wide receivers higher than the average dynasty manager does. According to Dynasty League Football's April Startup ADP data, Kamara was thirtieth overall when I have him a little bit below that in my rankings. I know it sounds all doom and gloom for him, and the potential Eagle situation is still up in the air, but I will say this, he looked a lot better than I expected in my initial projections because he has a really high target chare ceiling in that offense. So if I'm gonna buy Kamara, it's in redraft. I very very rarely am drafting and buying these types of running backs in dynasty unless I'm getting a huge discount, which you might be able to get right now, just given his situation and everything that's so up in the air, And I do think that he can stick around the league longer than most backs given his central asset as his pass catching. So it's not all terrible for Alvin Kamara. But I'm slightly lower than consensus only because I'd rather build through wide receiver in a startup. The next question is from at age three fifty six on Twitter. It says, following the historical trend of wide receivers switching teams being bad for them in year one, does that make Tyreek Hill and Davonte Adams fades? I know DeAndre Hopkins and Stefan Diggs did well, but Julio and Kenny Galladay both flopped. I think the point I want to make about this was sort of indirectly answered in the question itself. There's definitely this idea out there that when wide receivers switch teams they usually see a drop in production, and it's not wrong. We usually do see that. However, you should keep two things in mind. Number one is cost. If the market also gives those players a dip, then it's all irrelevant. We shouldn't just be drafting based off of how good a player is going to perform, but how good the player is going to perform compared to cost, and DeVante Adams and Tyreek Hill are not being looked the same pre and post trade. The second thing to keep in mind here is sample bias. Wide receivers who switch teams are generally not elite wide receivers. If they were elite, the team would want to keep them. I know this offseason is a little bit different, but overall, that's the general gist. You mentioned in the question that DeAndre Hopkins and Stefan Diggs did well when they switched teams, but Julio Jones and Kenny Galladay didn't well. Julio Jones is way past his prime, and Galladay has never given us consistent play like Hopkins and Diggs have. Both hop and Digs were incredibly talented wide receivers before their trades happened. I think Adams and Hill can still be fine. They just happen to be going from two of the best quarterbacks ever to two quarterbacks who just aren't as good, so there's a natural downgrade. We shouldn't expect the same type of numbers. But in my initial projections, both wide outs are still top ten wide receivers, so depending on your expectations, I think they should still be fine. This that's questions for twitters from at puny Human. It says, if Green Bay drafts a wide receiver in the first and that player is not already considered a top five pick and rookie drafts, would they be moved into that range? I think they will from an eightyp standpoint at least, but I don't think it's a lock for that to happen. Within my rankings. There are some wide receivers who would probably get a nice bump if that happens. If they slide into that first round and they get drafted by green Bay. Like if it's George Pickens, Yes, Pickens and green Bay would be amazing. If it's Christian Watson, I'm not as bullish. I feel like I've been talking about Christian Watson a lot on shows over the last couple of weeks, but I think people are just going to like Watson more than I will. Right now. I have the aforementioned Pickens, Johan Dotson, and Sky Moore all over Watson in my wide receiver rankings, and it's because Watson is being pushed up by athleticism. If he gets first round draft capital, it's because of how he tested, which is fine, but I don't want to double count that draft capital likely captures athleticism for us, which is probably why it doesn't matter at all in my model. Watson's a smaller school guy with above average production. There are way better production profiles in this class. I don't dislike him, I just know that if he lands in Green Bay, people are gonna have him as like their wide receiver two or three or four in this class, and I don't think I'll end up getting there unless a lot of things go poorly for other wide receivers in the draft because there's still Kansas City picking in the late first two. Like if we pretend that Watson goes to Green Bay at twenty eight and then Johan Dotson goes to Kansas City with one of the next two picks, I'll favor Dotson over Watson. If Dotson goes to Green Bay at twenty eighth overall and Treylon Burks, let's say, falls to a really crappy landing spot, I think there's at least a discussion to be had about where to rank those players. Because I like Johan Dotson more than someone like Christian Watson. I think there are fewer red flags to his profile compared to Watson's. With forty fifth overall projected draft capital, Watson is just on the edge of the eightieth percentile in my prospect model. That's the mark that I really want wide receivers and running backs to hit. If he can't get there, he's gonna look a lot like Denzel Mims, and that scares me. And of course I recognize the upside athleticism can sometimes translate, but I do think that process wise, I still need to worry more about the player than the landing spot, and I just think that there's a lot working against Watson analytically right now. And this is all under the assumption that other dynasty managers would just like him more. I'm not ranking Watson below like John Mechi. It's just that if there's one wide receiver who could go to one of those really good landing spots at the tail end of the first round, who I wouldn't take over the big five wide receivers, it's probably Christian Watson, whereas if it was George Pickens, I wouldn't hesitate to put him in that tier. If it's Johan Dotson, I at least think there's a discussion. So I hope that all makes sense. I don't dislike any of these players. This is just me balancing how I think the market might react to how I feel about them to give you guys something actionable about this hypothetical. The last question this week is from at aj the Pie, London. What are some of the green flags you look for in a dynasty asset when trying to buy low, specifically with wide receivers. So first and foremost, I just look at the player himself and see if I like him or not. We usually know what to expect from veterans, So the digging into players usually occurs with younger players, and I'll look at the player's journey as a prospect, how he did early in his career, all the stuff that I talk about on this show all the time. So if I like the player, then he's on my short list as a bye from there, I want to see why the player has the ADP that he has. Usually, players in Dynasty will shift based on situation. It's not even just about the player himself, which is fine. Situation absolutely matters, but situations also change across a larger period of time. Someone like Rashad Bateman going to Baltimore last year, that was bad because the situation had a lesser likelihood to change. The Ravens with Lamar Jackson would likely be a run heavy team for a long long time. That limits Rashat Bateman's upside. That limits his potential to be a true wide receiver one in fantasy. He can still have a great floor, but the ceiling is in question. Whereas if you look at Philadelphia right now, we don't know how long Jalen Hurts is going to be their starter. We also can see Philadelphia drafting a wide receiver in just a week, and those factors are likely going to push Devonte Smith down, or they will push him down after the draft. But Smith himself is good. He had a solid rookie season. He was a ninety eighth percentile prospect in my model, and he was a ninety eighth percentile prospect within my year two model. He's got good marks. But I would anticipate people being lower on in post draft because the Eagles are tied to so many wide receivers, and that's all situation based. Devonte Smith himself didn't change throughout that. He still looks good objectively, so hypothetically he has a chance to then be a bye. The situation is sort of similar with Elijah Moore too, so I'd say to look at situation closely and see who's being elevated or pushed down unfairly. Because of that situation. You can usually pick off longer term values by looking solely at the player instead of tying so much of a player's value to a situation. A player needs to be good first and foremost in order to be relevant and fantasy football across a long period of time. If he's confirmed good and then lands in a dream spot, then you'll get something really really special. But if he's confirmed good and he lands in a mediocre spot or a bad spot, you can still get something from him and you have the upside of that situation, then changing that's gonna do it for today's show, though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks everyone, enjoy your weekend. Appreciate you listening. I'll talk to you next week.