486: Wide Receiver Prospects Who Produced Like Studs

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Speaker 1: This is the Label Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa J J zacher reson. What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen, the editor in chief at fandel and at Number fire dot com in this episode four hundred and eighty six of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. Last week, I walked through my running back prospect model and talked about players that seem to like and not like in this year's draft class. This week, I'm moving on to wide receivers, and this wide receiver class is lots of fun. If you listened to last week's show in the running back class, then you already know what's coming today in terms of format. Like last week, I wrote an article on Number five that published on Monday that was called which Draft hopeful wide Receivers produced like studs in college? In that article, I looked at successful fantasy receivers in the NFL and compared their production profiles in college to this year's draft class. And I tried to find which players from this year's class look like studs based on those production profiles. So today I'll walk through what my wide receiver model looks at talk about players who have some concerns within the production metrics in the model, and then provide a little bit of insight around players that I like in this class, and like I said, it's a good class. Now, before get into things, I want to let you know that Fandal and Mountain de have teamed up to celebrate one of the most exciting plays in basketball these days, the three ball, and they're doing so with their Mountain Dew Super Trade Day NBA contests. The contests are simple. All you have to do is enter the Mountain Dew Super Trade Day NBA Daily Fantasy Marquee contests for three dollars and thirty three cents and build your best nine player lineup while staying under the sixty thousand dollars salary cap. You'll compete for a share of the main prize pool, and if that's not enough, users will win a share of the thirty three thousand dollars three point bonus if everyone in their lineup hits a three. March third is right around the corner, So download the Fandle Fantasy app and submit your best lineups today. Details us at fandle dot com or download the fandle app today, eligibility restrictions apply. So, like I said, I wrote an article on number five that published on Monday that looked at successful NFL wide receivers and compare them to the players in this draft class. In order to do that, I had to look at what my model looks at. So let's start there. My wide receiver prospect model is more fun than my running back prospect model because production matters more and draft capital matters less. That's pretty intuitive in my opinion. With running backs, if they can find the field and generate volume, they're going to be fantasy relevant. It takes a little bit more at wide receiver, so draft capital alone can't catapult even mediocre players into being good fantasy assets. Now, the wide receiver model, like the running back one, it has environmental factors and then it has production related metrics. The environmental factors are things like the kind of school the player came from, teammate scorer, and draft capital. The production metrics are things like breakout age, which is really important at wide receiver, and then three main production metrics best season receptions per game, best season yards per team pass attempt, and best season touchdown share. Now, standalone, something like receptions per game doesn't matter a whole lot. It can be skewed by pass heavy offenses. It's a little weird that a non market share number is included in that model, given everything that I've talked about on this podcast, but it tested well in conjunction with the other metrics, and I think it's kind of logical. Yards per team pass attempt is an all encompassing metric that sort of includes efficiency and market share that when connected to receptions per game, it can tell us that a player was doing a whole lot with his yards while seeing a lot of receptions, meaning he's not just catching a lot of balls close to the line of scrimmage anyway. In the article that it did on Number Fire, I wanted to look at those production metrics and compare how this class stacks up versus NFL studs. And by NFL studs, I arbitrarily defined them as players since twenty eleven who have had multiple Top twenty Fantasy seasons, and after filtering out some players who were older and didn't have combine info, I ended up with an NFL stud sample of things thirty six players, so thirty six wide receivers who had multiple Top twenty performances since twenty eleven. Of those players, their average best season receptions per game was six point seven eight, their best season touchdown share forty three point eight four percent, and their best season yards per team pass attempt was three point one four. Now, like last week, those numbers don't mean anything to you. What we really should be concerned about is how those numbers stack up against players from this year's class. So I went to my friends at Dynasty League Football dot com. I grabbed their rookie rankings and I used those wide receiver rankings as my sample for this class, because we got to cut it off somewhere, and there were thirty four players from this class, so thirty six studs and thirty four players from the twenty twenty one class. Of those thirty four, the samples best season receptions per game was five point nine to seven, so about point zero eight receptions per game lower than our STUD sample. They had a touchdown share average of a little over thirty four percent that was nine percent each points lower than the STUD sample. And then their yards per team pass attempt was two point five to five versus three point one four in the STUD sample. This makes sense. This is logical. Good players in the NFL were generally good in college, so we'd expect their numbers to be strong. It's just a quick example of why production does indeed matter. Now, like I did last week, I'm gonna walk through each of these production metrics and talk about a few players who have some concerns within each one, and then at the end we'll see which players from this year's class sort of hit on all three, and then I'll give some thoughts on additional players as well. Let's start with receptions per game again. The average among the NFL stud sample was about six point eight receptions per game within this classes sample. Remember there are thirty four wide receivers in this class sample. But within this classes sample, ten players didn't hit a receptions per game rate higher than five. One of those players was Diami Brown. If you've watched Brown, then you've seen that he's a big play waiting to happen. And this past year with North Caro, he played on a fairly run heavy team. He averaged exactly five receptions per game. That's not ideal, but he also had the ninth best yards per team pass attempt in our class sample. That's because when he caught the ball, he was doing a lot with it. He's had two straight seasons with a twenty plus yards per reception rate, so I'm not necessarily that concern with Brown's profile, and he actually looks decent enough of my pre draft model. I do think there are concerns about his route tree in general, though according to PFF, his average depth of target was eighteen point four yards this past year, so it does make some sense that he was as efficient as he was now. The other player that I want to call out on the receptions per game side of things is Jalen Wattle, because Waddle is someone who's not going to look as good as he should in most models. He didn't have beastly beastly production in Alabama, but there are reasons for it. First off, as a freshman, he was competing for looks with older players that ended up being first round picks like Jerry Judy, Henry Ruggs, and then DeVante Smith was there who's projected to be a first round pick this year, and he also played with IRV Smith during his freshman season. He still finished with forty five catches for eight hundred and forty eight yards and seven touchdowns. Now, after a twenty nineteen that wasn't as strong, Wattle started out his twenty twenty season really really well. He had four healthy games and in those games he averaged almost one hundred and forty yards receiving per contest. His worst game had one hundred and twenty receiving yards. He was outpacing and outperforming Heisman winner Devonte Smith, but then he got hurt, so he wasn't able to boost his production profile with a really awesome junior season. I think this stat explains Wattle really well. He had four healthy games this year. Each game saw him with one hundred and twenty or more receiving yards. First rounder Henry Ruggs from last year, from the exact same team, he had two of those types of games across his entire collegiate career. This is not another Henry Ruggs situation. Jalen Wattle is a much better prospect than Henry Ruggs was, and when draft capital is input, he'll look totally fine in my model. It's just that he's one of those cases where the numbers that my model looks at, they're not going to totally capture everything for Jalen Waddle. Now, let's move on a touchdown share to reiterate, the STUD sample had an average best season touchdown share of almost forty four percent. There were twelve players in this draft class who didn't even hit a thirty percent share, where only one player in the STUD sample didn't have that thirty percent share. And the one dude that I got to call out here is Kadarius Tony. A lot of people are mocking Tony to the first round, and I get it. He's electric when you watch him. He's got the athletic upside that's hard to ignore. But the production profile is not that strong, and that's what today's podcast is all about. He had a twenty one point seven percent touchdown share during his best season that was fourth worst among our twenty twenty one class sample. In receptions per game, he was twelve, and in yards per team pass attempt he was twenty second. And he also wasn't in early declare. That's a bad sign. A lot of things are working against Tony right now. Now, with first round draft capital, Tony would still be a decent enough player in my model, but there are other probable first round wide receivers where I'm likely going to be more interested in. Now, we did have Van Jefferson last year out of Florida who had similar production problems, and I should say I need to note that Tony isn't that bad. His production profile wasn't as bad as Van Jefferson. But even still there are red flags. There are concerns with various Tony's overall profile. Now we'll move on to receiving yards per team pass attempt. This is the metric that matters most of the three in my model, and I say, there aren't many surprising players who have low Marx except for Terras Marshall, sort of similar to Jalen Waddle. I have a hard time knocking Marshall for any lack of production that he may have ever had. Just look at his journey. Models like mine are there to guide us, They're there for us to investigate further. As a freshman, Marshall didn't do anything. He had twelve catches one hundred and ninety two yards for LSU as a sid Moore though he played with Justin Jefferson, who just broke the rookie receiving record in the NFL, and he played alongside Jamar Chase who's also in this class, but who's also regarded as the best prospect in this class. Jamar Chase outperformed the aforementioned Justin Jefferson as a sophomore. Now, Chase didn't play this year because he opted out, and Marshall did the same thing after playing seven games. If Marshall had played the full season for LSU instead of seventy percent of it, his numbers would have been a lot better. This yards per team pass attempt number would have looked a lot better. So I am not concerned at all about Marshall. I think is a very very good prospect. He's just being overshadowed a little bit by Jamar Chase, and he should be. Jamar Chase is an incredible prospect. So those are some of the bigger name players who popped up as having concerns within the production metrics that I look at. But as you just heard, a lot of those big name players just need a little bit of context, and when you give them that context, we don't care as much about those red flags. That just goes to show how good this class is. Now, if you take the averages from our stud sample and use them as filters across all three metrics, three names remain. One is DeVante Smith, which is not a surprise. Smith is a beast across the board, but he does have size concerns given his BMI is so low. He's a small dude. Now, it's true that we don't really find successful Fantasy wide receivers very often with that small of a frame, but we also don't find players with that small of a frame have that good of a production profile. The only two players that were first round picks my database that goes back like a decade and a half, the only two players with first round draft capital who had BMI's under twenty five were Calvin Ridley, who's a hit, and Marquise Brown, who's sort of in the middle. DeVante Smith's BMI is even lower than theirs, but his production profile is also better, So it just goes to show how rare he is as a prospect. So it's hard for me to say that his size is going to make him so much worse at the NFL level. He's already an outlier. I think it's okay to say we just don't totally know and that makes him a bit of a risk, but he's he's still worthy of being one of the top receivers in this class in my opinion. Now, Elijah Moore was another player who hit on all of the filters. I think Moore is going to be really good in the NFL, but I do worry about him mostly being just a slot guy. Pro Football Focus charted him with just thirty eight snaps this past year against press coverage. But he's a great yards after the catch weapon, and his production profile was absolutely dominant. And then the last guy is a smaller school player named Jalen Darden. He also doesn't have a ton of size, but his production profile is pretty flawless across the board. Now, of course it's going to be a little bit easier for a small school guy to dominate his competition. That's a red flag. I found that smaller school wide receivers that matters a lot more wide out than it does it running back. But Darden did have offers allegedly at places like Virginia Tech, so it's not like he came completely out of nowhere. He's mostly someone to just watch out for Layton drafts as a sleeper. Those were the three Those were the three players off of DLF's rankings that hit the the averages set by the NFL stud sample clearly, though, there are a lot of wide receivers, good wide receivers from this draft class that I didn't talk about, one of them being Jamar Chase. I only briefly talked about Chase when talking about Terris Marshall. But Chase, to me, is the wide receiver one in this class. That's not a surprise. But he's got the size, he's got the early college career production. He did that with great competition. He played at a big program. I mean, if he goes in the top ten of the NFL draft, I plug this into my model. If he goes in the top ten, we're talking ninety ninth percentile wide receiver in my model, we're talking him being with players like Amari Cooper and Julio Jones and Calvin Johnson. He's that good of a prospect. So I'm very into Jamar Chase. I'm also very into Rashad Bateman, as is everyone else. I get it, but Bateman really has a strong profile across the board. The only piece it's a little low is his best season touchdown chair. But he has a great breakout age. He was able to post a great sophomore season while playing with a pro and Tyler Johnson. He's got pretty good size. Bateman is likely my wide receiver to in this class, behind Chase and ahead of Devonte Smith. Now that's subject to change, but things look really good for him right now. I also got to bring up Rondel Moore, who's the consensus number four receiver over on Dynasty League Football More actually has a better overall score right now in my model than the guys that I just talked about. He could very well end up looking better than someone like Bateman once the draft is over, and I wouldn't even fault someone for having Rondell Moore as a top two or three guy in this class. All of his numbers in my model are essentially being taken from his freshman season, where he had one hundred and fourteen catches, twelve hundred and fifty eight yards, and twelve scores. He's probably the shiftiest player in this class. There's a lot to like about that kind of player in today's NFL. My fear is that given his size, because he's a smaller guy, but my fear would be that a team doesn't allow him to be this super high volume wide receiver, but he's a stud. So right now I'm at Chase Bateman, Devonte Smith, Rondell More, and than Jalen Waddle as my top five. It's pretty choky, but there are so many players who we can talk about after those guys who look good to my model Terris Marshall, who I talked about, he actually has a strong score tailand Wallace looks really good. Elijah More obviously is looking great. It's just a really deep class. It's a really good class. I think it rivals last year's so like last week, rather than just go through player after player after player, I'll propose this. If you guys want me to dig into specific players on this show, or if you want me to talk about a random sleeper or something like my guy Michael Strawn out of Charleston, hit me with a mailbag question, I'll do my best to get to it. You can send those questions to me on Twitter or you can email me JJ at number fire dot com. Otherwise, that's gonna do it for today's show. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got 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'll talk to you later in the week with the Mailbag episode.