769: Mailbag 6/2/23

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Speaker 1: This is the last with your host JJ Zachera J J zacher Reeve. What's up everyone. It's JJ zachar Eson in this episode seven hundred and sixty nine of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by FanDuel. Thank you for tuning in. After publishing the Rookie Quarterback episode on Tuesday, I got hit with the same question over and over again. We all know this data about rookie quarterbacks and how they're not good news for their teammates and fantasy football. If you don't know that, then hit pause right now and go listen to Tuesday's episode. But what about someone What about a quarterback who didn't play his rookie season? What about the rookies who aren't their team's primary starter and then they get the nod in year two like a Desmond Ritter this year. So to start today's show, I'll quickly recap what I found when looking into this. I've got a sample of eighteen quarterbacks over the lift eleven seasons who didn't get run during their rookie year or who weren't their team's top passer, and who then went on to be the primary passer in year two. So guys like Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, Jared Goff, They're all on this list. When looking at how each position in fantasy football performed for those players, the answer is mostly below average. Team running backs ranked about nineteenth, and fantasy points scored from those quarterbacks teams that's below average. Wide receiver was nineteenth as well. Tight End oddly ranked at fifteen point eight, so tight end was actually above average for these year two quarterbacks. Honestly, though that tight end rank, it kind of tells me that this sample size might be a little bit too small to have any definite takeaways. And we also have to keep in mind that the quality of quarterback can be much much different when we're looking through this new lens. With the rookie quarterback study, we're mostly looking at higher end players because if a rookie quarterback is going to get a lot of snaps under center, he's probably someone who was a f first round pick, an early first round pick. With these second year guys, you run into a situation where they didn't play in year one because they just weren't very good to begin with, and some of these players saw work unintentionally. They weren't their team starter to begin the year, but they were thrown on the field because of injury or something because they're backups. That happens a lot less often with a rookie quarterback. So yeah, we have Patrick Mahomes, we have Lamar Jackson, but the vast majority of these quarterbacks were almost unintentional starters, and that skews this type of data. Now, the good news is that when you do the market analysis, there's not much that comes of it with rookie quarterbacks. The market tends to overinflate the prices of the weapons on that rookie quarterbacks team. So if you have a pass catcher on a rookie quarterbacks team, he's generally overvalued by ADP. With the second year guys who didn't do anything in year one, the market actually seems to appropriately value them. They're not values though they're not necessarily players you should bump up your rankings. They're just not in the same type of situation as the true rookie quarterbacks. So hopefully that clears things up. We do have a mailbag episode today and we'll get to those questions in just a second, But first I just want to remind you to check out Lateround dot com. I've got the Late Round Prospect Guide for sale, which can help you with this year's rookie class. And then there's the Late Round Draft Guide too. The Draft guide outlines fantasy strategy for twenty twenty three and I give you tips to spot breakouts players to avoid in more. You can read more about both guides over on lateround dot com. Now, I actually have one more question this week surrounding Tuesday's study on rookie quarterbacks, and this is also one that came my way multiple times this week. This one's an email from Steven. It says, like every episode, I enjoyed your most recent episode on rookie quarterbacks. Thanks. One question was could there be a correlation that doesn't mean causation? As you mentioned during the podcast, for the most mos part, the rookie quarterback data set was made up of largely early rookie picks. That typically means that they went to a bad team. That likely means poor pass catchers if you look at this year's rookies, I think that part holds up. Even if Patrick Mahomes was on the Panthers Texans, their colts, the only pass catcher that would be ranked in the top twenty four would likely be Michael Pittman and Dalton Schultz, and Schultz would probably be a mid tight end one. Have you compared how a similar group of wide receivers performed compared to the previous season. Do they typically go up or down? Or looking at what happens when the rookie and vet split the season. I'm not trying to be overly critical or question the work that you do, as everything you do is always top notch. I'm just wondering if the issue is the rookie or that the pass catching options are just bad to begin with. Okay, So first of all, when I get emails like this, I don't take it as anyone being overly critical. This is exactly why I do this podcast. It gets people thinking deeper about fantasy football. This email alone is a huge w for me, so thank you. Now, with that being said, I do want to address a few things first. Yes, the data set does have early first round picks in it, because if a quarterback gets drafted early, he'll have a higher likelihood to start during his rookie season. But not all of the rookies are from the early parts of the first round. Now number two in situations like this, it's very easy to make super strong assumptions like you're making in this email that if a team is bad, surely they don't have good pass catchers. Like maybe that's true to some degree, but one wide receiver doesn't make or break a team. A good pass catcher can certainly elevate a team, but it's not like we never see top wide receivers on bad teams. Now. Third, and this is the most important piece. Some of the analysis that I did earlier this week was versus the market, meaning the quality of wide receiver doesn't really matter. If the market is saying this wide receiver is being drafted sixtieth overall, then that's how people are valuing that wide receiver. And as we saw, wide receivers are frequently not living up to ADP expectation when they have a rookie quarterback throwing them the ball and they're not becoming true breakouts. Either. That's not in relation to nothing. That's in relation to the market or how other fantasy managers are viewing those players. Now, the study on Tuesday was sort of broken up into two parts. There was all this talk about the market, which does sort of put all this to rest. But there was also the raw data, the data that showed wide receivers in particular really underperforming as a team in Fantasy points scored when they had a rookie quarterback. So let's address that. Within our data set of rookie quarterbacks, there were twenty four wide receivers who before getting that rookie quarterback, ranked in the top thirty six and PPR points per game the previous season. This is since twenty eleven, and wide receivers had to play at least eight games that previous year, So essentially, a wide receiver ranked in the top thirty six one year in PPR points per game, then the following year they got a rookie quarterback. These players are hypothetically good at football, right because they ranked pretty highly the year before getting that rookie quarterback. They were at least wide receiver threes in Fantasy. Four of them were wide receiver ones or top twelve wideouts, seven were wide receiver twos, the remaining were wide receiver threes. Now, of those twenty four, all but one played eight or more games the following year, so it wouldn't really be fair to compare his year over year numbers. So now are samples twenty three. Guess how many of the twenty three wide receivers improved their points per game rank from one year to the next when they didn't have a rookie quarterback, and then the next year they did have a rookie quarterback. Guess how many of the twenty three improved their points per game three of them. Three of the twenty three got better with a rookie quarterback. Those three were Keenan Allen, who I talked about on Tuesday show, Reggie Wayne, who I also talked about on Tuesday Show, and Pierre Garson peer Garson went from wide receiver twenty six to wide receiver twenty one after going from Curtis Paynter at quarterback to rookie RG three. No matter how you slice it at a high level, the data does not favor wide receivers with rookie quarterbacks. The next question is from Patreon is from Devin. It says, have we seen peak value for DeVante Smith? Dallas Goddard will be returning, and it feels like it's going to be hard for DeVante to replicate the volume that he received last season. So Smith did see a volume jump without Goddard. Last year, when Goddard was out, Smith's target chair per game rate was twenty eight point seven percent. With Goddard active, it was twenty six point one percent, But a twenty six percent target chair is still really, really good. And over the final two games of their season, with Goddard hitting a nineteen percent and twenty three percent target share, Smith was at forty one percent and twenty six percent. It's like things started to click down the stretch for him. It's really tough for me to sit here and say that DeVante Smith peaked in twenty twenty two. I've seen this take out there, but I just don't think it's a fair thing to say. It's not like he scored fourteen touchdowns. He outperformed in the touchdown column by about two according to Pro Football Focuses Expected Touchdowns formula. But that's not all that uncommon, especially when the Eagles had such a good season through the air. Now did a near perfect storm hit for Smith overall? I mean, maybe godd are getting hurt helped, and the Eagles had a top twenty five season in touchdowns per game since twenty eleven. Those are all good things in favor of Devonte Smith. But it's not like they're incapable of eventually having a better season than that. And they were actually an outlier last year in terms of how they scored their touchdowns. Roughly forty four percent of their touchdowns came through the air. That was the ninth lowest rate that we've seen since twenty eleven. And yet that number is going to be lower when you have Jalen Hurts running the ball instead of throwing it close to the end zone. But that number was still slightly lower than what they did in twenty twenty one with Hertz, and those numbers can fluctuate big time too. So last year may have been a good storm for Smith, but it wasn't a perfect one. We're talking about one of the best wide receiver prospects of the decade here. To assume that he peaked as a high end wide receiver two in points per game seems a little bit premature. Now. I understand the sentiment behind this question, trust me, Like I said, I've seen this take out there. He may not necessarily exceed what he did last year here in twenty twenty three, but I don't think it's necessary to think that he peaked another great season can definitely boost his value in all fantasy formats. The sas questions from twitters from at todd Zilla won three to three seven. It says, I'm curious about your thoughts on devon A Chain's career best potential. Since twenty twelve, running backs less than are equal to one hundred and ninety six pounds receiving at least eighty opportunities in the season have a near forty percent hit rate in achieving fourteen plus PPR Fantasy points per game at some point during their career. That was a mouthful. What do you see him achieving? The analysis that I've done on running back weight shows that there is correlation between weight and fantasy production even when you adjust for draft capital, so even when you adjust for how good the player is, because oftentimes smaller running backs just aren't as good, and a Chain is an outlier from that perspective. He's the first top one hundred pick since twenty eleven who weighed under one hundred ninety pounds at running back. He's just the second who is under one hundred and ninety five pounds. I think it's only logical, then, to approach a Chain a little bit differently than other smaller running backs. His production profile was pretty strong too. He had a good receiving profile with a top season reception share over sixteen percent, and his total yards per team play rate during his best season was also above average. Now, we've seen other small backs like Donald Pumphrey, Kerwin Williams, Tyler Irvin. Those guys had good production profiles in college, but a Chain had by far the best speed score of that group. He has the best size speed combo that we've seen from these smaller backs. So my stance on Chain is that I do think that the running back weight stuff does matter, but it likely doesn't apply as much to a Chain because he's a very unique prospect. It's okay to inject a little subjectivity into your process. Now, if a Chain had gone to some random team and not the Dolphins, I probably wouldn't be that excited about him because of all that data, because of everything I just talked about. He's better than most small backs, but he's also going to have a hard time being a two hundred touch player. But it's not because of him as a player all of this running back weight stuff. It isn't about these smaller backs being incapable of carrying a big workload. It's more so based on what coaches generally do. Coaches seem to not want to give smaller running backs big workloads, but a Chain fell to a spot where he has a real chance to see a bigger workload than he would anywhere else. Not only is this scheme perfect for what he can do, but Mike McDaniels from the Kyle Shanahan coaching tree, we've seen smaller backs like Raheem Moster Elijah Mitchell thrive in the scheme, and a Chain is a better prospect than both of those players. I've said this before on the show, but if there's one coach who might give a smaller back a decent workload, it's probably Mike McDaniel. A Chain's a rare case where I'm letting landing spot dictate how I feel about him, but that's because he's a unique prospect. We don't have much data on players like Devon a Chin, so for me, I think he's someone who has a shot to be an RB two in fantasy football. I highly doubt we're going to see RB one production from him, but he can definitely be an RB two given his environment. The last question this week is from at from Cuts to Bites. It says, do you believe Chris Olave should be drafted ahead of the guys who are the second receiver drafted from their team? So we've seen a handful of teams with multiple wide receivers get drafted in the top three rounds through the years, and of those wide receivers, there's no substantial difference in how well they've performed versus ADP expectation. ADP expectation being the number of points that we'd expec than the score given their average draft position. So that quickly tells you that being the number two wide receiver on your team by ADP in the very early rounds it might not matter that much. I wouldn't heavily factor that into this equation. Now, if you look at recent bestball ADP, a Lave goes behind Jalen Waddle, who's a team wide receiver too, And if you want to throw DeVante Smith and T Higgins in there, that's totally fine too. In half PPR settings. My projections do like each of those players more than a Lave this year, and my rankings reflect that as well. But I wouldn't get so caught up in the fact that there are number two wide receivers on their own team. In fact, it tells you that they're really good players. They clearly have a good teammate on their team, and they're still being drafted that high. That shows you that they're talented and there's some upside with those players individually. If something were to happen to that teammate with the Lave, you're kind of getting what you're getting. Now. This isn't me saying to fade Chris Alave this year. You all know that I love him as a talent and second year player are always worthwhile targets. For this specific question, though, I think the ADPs are justified. It's fine if you want to take a team wide receiver two over Chris Alive. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you get subscribed to Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and to follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening this week everyone, I greatly appreciate it. Enjoy your weekend, and I will talk to you next week.