1099: The NIL Impact on Prospect Evaluation

00:00:02
Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ Zacheris j J. Zacherson. What's up everyone, It's JJ zacharyesin in this episode ten ninety nine of the Late Round Fantasy Football Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. We're just about wrapped up with the NFL draft season, but there's one thing I wanted to research before fully turning the page. As you all know, I've got prospect models. I use the various ZAP models to help me project how well a player is going to perform in fantasy football at the NFL level. And as you all know, the college football landscape has changed dramatically over the last five or six years. We had a pandemic and that COVID season simply didn't count for players. A player could dismiss it completely as if it didn't happen from an eligibility standpoint, and some players at smaller programs didn't even play. That meant it became more common over this time period for players to stick around for an additional year before declaring for the draft. Meanwhile, name, image and likeness rules passed which allowed athletes to get paid. That meant, in order to get a whole lot of money, some players didn't have to only try to make it to the NFL. They could do it in college too. There's also transfer rules they changed during this timeframe. Players could more freely move from one school to another without having to sit out, which meant more movement in order to find the right spot to showcase their talent. If a running back was behind a stud on the depth chart, the backup could simply transfer to another school in order to get more playing time. All three of these factors can change the way that we prospect, or I should say, the way that I prospect. But how big of a deal are these changes? Does it actually matter? That's what I'll be digging into on today's show. Before that analysis, though, I did want to send another reminder about the Late Round Prospect Guide. If you want to know more about the ZAPP model, if you want to read write ups about all prospects who went to the NFL Combine, you can do so. In the guide. You get those write ups, you get ZAP scores, rankings, and more. You can learn more about it and purchase the guide over on Lateround dot com. It'll help with your dynasty leagues, obviously, But I think this class in particular there's a big redraft element to it as well, but again lateround dot Com. So we have the pandemic season nil and transfer rules all shifting this college football landscape, and that could change things from a modeling perspective for sure. For one, we'd imagine players would be older coming out of school. Age is a factor that I'm always looking at in the ZAP model. Older players tend to be worse producers, since better players will declare earlier for the draft. But there's another layer to the age equation that goes beyond raw age. If players are sticking around school more than hypothetically speaking, competition in college might be tougher because the players who are playing college football they're older and more experienced. If you're a true freshman running back and you're on a team with a fifth year twenty three year old running back, there's a five year age gap between the two of you. Player may have had experience in multiple systems at multiple schools with a wide variety of competition. That experience could hypothetically be more difficult for that freshman to overcome, which means it's not just age that's the potential problem, it's age adjusted production. We might be seeing later breakouts and less true freshman production in this era, which would definitely change the way that the model is viewing players in totality, at least when you compare current classes to the ones that happened ten years ago. So let's dig into this idea a little bit more. Is age shifting enough to make a dent in how I'm evaluating prospects or does it not matter? Let's start with running backs. The ZAP model database includes all players who are either drafted or at the NFL Combine since twenty eleven, and I have ZAP models for running back, wide receiver, and tight end. So in all, there are a lot of players and a lot of classes to sift through with running back, when you look at each class in some so the players who were drafted, but also the players who went to the NFL Combine but who weren't drafted, we have been getting older. In twenty twenty six, this year's draft class, the average age of a running back was twenty three point two years old. The median age was twenty two point eight. Those are the two highest values that we've seen from any class since twenty eleven. Meanwhile, since the twenty twenty one time frame, we've seen the average running back age among this group jump up by point three, so almost half a year over the last three draft classes. That's more or less the same. So all running backs in the zapmodel database, they're indeed getting older. But what about only drafted running backs, the players who NFL teams actually picked the guys who were most relevant in fantasy football. Interestingly enough, the median age for running backs in this year's draft class was twenty two point six. That's certainly on the higher end of ages, but it was higher in twenty eleven, twenty twenty one, in twenty twenty four. There's actually been next to no correlation in between draft class and the average age of drafted running backs from that draft Classince twenty eleven, there was much more correlation. We're looking at the totality of each draft class, which is when you start adding the players who were invited to the combine but then went undrafted. To think about that another way, it seems as though older players they're getting more love recently because they're getting combine invites, but NFL teams aren't necessarily rewarding those players the way that you would think now we are seeing more twenty four year old running backs get drafted. We had two of them this year, three of them last year, and four the year before that. From twenty eleven through twenty twenty three, we had seven total. We've had more the last three years than the thirteen years prior, but we're talking about a very small number of players. In general, it's not enough to dramatically skew our average in our median among drafted running backs. And part of the reason for that is we're actually not seeing a dramatic shift in players above the age of twenty three. We did in twenty twenty four, but there were plenty of years from twenty eleven through, like twenty eighteen, where we had five or six twenty three year old running backs get drafted. And here's what's probably most important. If you focus solely on top one hundred draft selections, we may be seeing slightly older prospects, but it's pretty insignificant. What we're really seeing with running back age is the following. We're getting older running backs invited to the NFL combine, but they're not always drafted. We do have more of them out there, though, so we're bound to see a couple more of them get drafted than usual. With that being said, it's just not enough to be meaningfully different versus our sample. Now, I do think running back is the position that could be impacted by nil most, at least as it pertains the fantasy football because, as we know, running backs get paid the least amount of money among fantasy relevant positions in the NFL. So if a player can dominate in college and make a comparable salary, maybe even more money, he may be incentivized to stay in college and then not go to the NFL right away. Even still, I don't think that it means that the model is all of a sudden wrong or bad, or that we're looking at the wrong things. In fact, when you look at age adjusted production metrics, there's really no sign that things are getting worse. As I said, you can maybe make the argument that with players staying in school longer, it means the team competition on those college teams is then stronger, and when that's the case, it's harder to post good age adjusted production. But that hasn't really been the case. The model uses pro rated best season reception chare best season adjusted yards per team play and best season adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt as the main production inputs for running backs. The latter two metrics are adjusted for strength of schedule and age in a given season, and again it's taking the best season within each of those metrics across a player's career. There really hasn't been a super meaningful difference across the board with those metrics. What's really happening is that the better age adjusted production is simply correlating to the draft classes that we're stronger, which is exactly what we want to see happening. Let me give you an example. This year's in twenty twenty four's adjusted yards per team play numbers. They were some of the worst of the database is seen. Maybe that has to do with competition being older and being better at the college level, maybe, but those classes have also not been very good, or at least we know the twenty twenty four class wasn't very good, and we're thinking that the twenty twenty six class isn't very good just based on draft capital investment. If there was something happening with the competition stuff, we would have seen lower numbers for the twenty twenty five class, for instance, But that one looks well above average according to the model's metrics, according to the production profiles of those players. I think where we're at with this changing college landscape with running backs is that there's some chance that we see like one twenty four year old running back give us something, or maybe one older running back get drafted earlier than usual, but that's still not really the norm. And when we remember an older heating back hitting like a Tyrone Tracy, we forget about the players who didn't hit. Age still seems to get pretty good signal, But at the very least beyond raw age age adjusted production doesn't seem to be changing in a meaningful way at all. So the production metrics that I've been analyzing, I can still analyze those metrics at running back. This discussion probably has gotten more run though, when it comes to wide receivers, if we're being honest. For years now, we've seen discourse in fantasy football circles about early declare status and how much signal that gets. But if wide receivers are incentivized to stay in school longer, whether due to transfer rules, eligibility because of nil, whatever the case may be, if they're staying in school longer, then we'd likely see fewer early declare wide receivers in general, and that's exactly what we're seeing. Does that model database has only seen seven, six and five early declare wide receivers over the last three draft classes. I mean we've essentially cut the number of early declares in half, more than half. That surely must mean that the average age of wide receivers is getting older then, right, Well, not exactly. When you look at the total Zapmodel database like I just did with running back, that includes players who weren't even drafted. It's hard to believe, but we used to get plenty of early declare wide receivers who went to the NFL combine but then weren't drafted. We also got early declare wide receivers who were drafted, but they weren't drafted very high. What's happening today is that early declare wide receivers are simply the best of the best. They're the players who know that they've got a shot at being drafted early. We had five of them in this twenty twenty six class, the lowest number that we've seen in the ZAP models timeframe. And guess what, all five of them Carnel, Tate, mackay Lemon, Casey Concepcion, Zachariah Branch, and Jacobe Lane were all drafted in the top one hundred, one hundred percent of them. Last year we had six early declare wide receivers. Four of them were top one hundred picks. The two who weren't were Elkaia Mannor, who went in round four, and then Isaiah Bond, who had off the field issues and went undrafted. Otherwise it was Tedero McMillan top ten pick, Luther Burden should have been a first rounder but was a second rounder. Matthew Golden and Travis Hunter both first rounders. Over the last three seasons. The last three draft classes, eighty three percent of the early declare wide receivers ended up going in the top one hundred picks of the NFL draft. That number was basically thirty percentage points lower for all the classes before that timeframe. To put that another way, early declares are happening less frequently, yes, but the quality of early declare wide receivers is relatively stagnant. And what's happening is that those early declare receivers are being filled in with other players who stayed one year longer in school more than likely, and the difference of seven to nine early declare wide receivers being one year older across a larger sample isn't really dramatically changing the average age of a wide receiver class. Now that being said, an averager amedian age may not change much because the sample size is relatively large. I mean, we have like fifty wide receivers in this year's class alone. When you break things down and look at the number of twenty three and twenty four year olds in each class, similar to running back, you are seeing a difference. It's the same kind of math dilemma as we got at running back, where there are more of them, but there aren't enough of them to dramatically change the averages. For example, among wide outs in the zapmodel database, ten percent of them from this year's class were over twenty four years old. That was eight percent last year, seven percent the year before that, and ten percent in twenty twenty three. Before twenty twenty three, the typical class saw about three percent of the wide receivers over twenty four years of age, and the same thing is happening with players over twenty three thirty eight percent of them from this year's class were over twenty three, thirty four percent from last year's thirty seven percent the year prior, but from twenty eleven three twenty twenty two, we had just one season where at least thirty percent of the class was made up of wide receivers who were twenty three years or older. Over the last three years, the lowest mark is thirty four percent. The thing is, most of those players they're not getting drafted early. We had one player above twenty three years old get drafted in the top one hundred this year, and that was among seventeen wide receivers, the most that we've seen in the top one hundred since at least twenty eleven. That one player was the Zoon Stribbling. We had one twenty three year old last year, almost two. Depending on how you went a round up or down, we more or less have seen the same number of twenty three year old top one hundred wide receivers dating all the way back to twenty eleven. That hasn't changed that much at all. What has changed is how old the Day three guys are. But Day three, as we know, produces very very few Fantasy relevant wide receivers, So yes, early declared status is they're changing, and we're seeing more twenty three and twenty four year old wide receivers in the draft pool these days. But that's mostly changing the Day three and the undrafted players, not Day one and Day two and Day one and Day two. That's what we're focused on most in fantasy football. That's where the majority of our analysis is drawn to. They're the most important players in this game now. The other question is about production. If the competition in college includes players who aren't leaving early for school, meaning they're more experienced, and if players are seemingly older, does that mean their age adjusted production is suffering, as in our players having a harder time producing earlier on in their collegiate careers because the competition on their team is just a lot more difficult to overcome. Well, I've got breakout score as the perfect metric to help us out with that. Breakout score is my way of looking at age and schedule adjusted receiving yards per team pass attempt. It scores a player's breakout within that metric on a scale from zero to one hundred, and it's the single most important production metric that goes into the ZAP model at wide receiver. When you look at breakout scores among Day one and Day two picks over the last three years, you'll find that the scorers are essentially lower in total. For example, the average breakout score for round one wide receivers from twenty eleven to twenty twenty three is seventy point seven. Over the last three years, it's been sixty two. When it comes to Day two picks, from twenty eleven to twenty twenty three, the average breakout score was fifty one point four. Over the last three years, we're looking at thirty nine point four. Those are kind of meaningful shifts. And when I saw them, I said, Man, maybe there is something to this. Maybe there's more difficult competition and it's holding back some of these wide receivers, and teams are recognizing that. And despite the worst age adjusted production profiles, teams are still giving these guys decent draft capital even if their production doesn't always match, because teams are sort of making excuses for the players, if you will. And then I thought about it more deeply, and I realized, wait a second, some of these draft classes really haven't been that good. The first round wide receivers in twenty twenty four were Marvin Harrison Junior, Malik Neighbors, Roma Doonza, Brian Thomas, Xavier Worthy, Xavier Lagette, and Ricky Piersoll. Those last two players had breakout scores below forty that dragged down that first round number. And then the Day two wide receivers that year, my goodness, they were bad. Thankfully we had Lad McConkey that's a big hit, but then it's Keyon Coleman ad and I Mitchell, Jalen Polk, Jermaine Burton, Malachi Corley, Roman Wilson, Jalen McMillan, and Luke McCaffrey. So yeah, the breakout scores were lower for that class compared to twenty eleven through twenty twenty three, but I think it's really warranted. I think the model was kind of doing its job. Last year. Luther Burton had an elite breakout score. He's the only Day two wide receiver that we currently feel really really good about. Otherwise it's Trey Harris, Savion Williams, Jaden Higgins, Jack Besh, Jalen Nole, Pat Bryant, Isaac Teslaw, and Kyle Williams. First rounders last year were Ttero McMillan good breakout scorer, Amecha Abuka good breakout score, and then Matthew Golden and Travis Hunter who didn't have good breakout scores. And guys, this is not hindsight analysis. This is all in the late round prospect guides that I've been publishing over the last few years. So yes, breakout scores, they have been lower recently, but I don't think it necessarily has to do with college football rules. I think it just has to do with the fact that teams are drafting wide receivers higher than they probably should given those wide receivers age adjusted production profiles. And this is pretty much what I've been saying all off season about this twenty twenty six class. Someone is gonna emerge from Day two more than likely because we had so many Day two wide receiver picks. But there's just average profile after average profile after average profile in that range. Their breakout scores are lower. And I don't think the breakout scores are lower because they're playing against super seniors. I think they're lower because they're just not as good of prospects as their draft capital suggests. Now I ran through this exact same exercise at tight end. I looked at the average age of each class in twenty eleven, and I looked at how breakout scores have been impacted, if at all, similar to the other positions across the entirety of the sample. We do see a slight uptick in average age in recent tight end classes, but I'm talking like less than three months on average. But once again, when it comes to the higher end draft capital, we see no difference from an age perspective. In fact, over the last three years, over the last three draft classes, top one hundred tight ends have been younger compared to the thirteen classes prior. When it comes to breakout scores, we're seeing a very similar pattern as what we saw with wide receiver. Technically, over the last few years, breakout scores at tight end they have been lower among top one hundred players. Also followed draft class talent. The twenty twenty five class, for example, one that might go down as historically good for fantasy football purposes. The top one hundred tight ends in that class have pretty normal breakout scores. Colston Lovelin and Harold Fannin have elite breakout scores. Just as an example, what's really dragging down the average over the last few years is the twenty twenty four class and then this year's class, and I don't think that's all that surprising. I don't think that also signals that nil or transfer rules are majorly impacting age adjustin production at tight end. In twenty twenty four, the top one hundred tight end selections were Brock Bauers, Ben Sennett, and Tip Ryman. Bowers had a breakout score of one hundred quite literally could not have been better. Sentence was okay enough, but Ryman's was legitimately bad. So he's doing a lot of the work and lowering the average in twenty twenty four. This year, we had a lot of Day two tight ends, and we had a lot of average profiles from those Day two tight ends. Not all of them were bad, but it's a lot like this year's wide receiver class, where we have a lot of players to choose from, but not a lot of elite talent to choose from. In that day two range. We're seeing pretty consistent data across all three positions. Yes, we're getting a few more twenty three and twenty four year olds added to each class. That's having a slight impact on the overall age at each class, but it's not super meaningful because our samples aren't like eight players deep. And not only that, the most important thing here the age of the relevant pieces in fantasy football, the day one, the day two picks. Those ages really haven't changed that much. Teams are generally still opting for the younger players with higher end draft capital, and to me, there hasn't really been an impact on age adjusted production, which is hugely important for the ZAP model. Age isn't always a direct input in those models. It's a driver. It's what can change a player's production score because I'm adjusting that production for the age of a player when that production occurs, and even though players may be staying in school longer, it's not having any sort of real genuine impact on age adjusted production, probably because if a players good enough to eventually dominate in the NFL, he'll still be good enough early on in his collegiate career to dominate the touches in his college offense, even if he's playing alongside players who are four or five years older. So my conclusion here is that this changing college landscape is technically changing the player pool for each draft class, though I think that's going to be reverted back a little bit here shortly given the COVID eligibility stuff, but nil transfer rules. They've definitely made some impact on the makeup of each draft class. But when we're focusing on the players who matter most in fantasy football, the high end talent, the Day one, the Day two picks, I really don't think this stuff matters that much. And if your league mates think that it does, if they start making excuses for poor production profiles or they're okay with consent instantly over and over again drafting older prospects, I'd say that's where you can take advantage because those profiles are still very, very volatile, even within this new college football environment. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are restating for it pretty much aywhere podcast can be found, and follow me on Twitter and on Blue Sky at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone. As usual, I'll be live on Wednesday for the Late Round Fantasy Football Show noon Eastern on the YouTube channel, and then on Friday you'll hear another Mailbag episode. I'll talk to you guys then