474: Analyzing 2020's Biggest Misses

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Speaker 1: This is the lad Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa JJ zacher reson.

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Speaker 2: What's up everyone.

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Speaker 1: It's JJ Zacharyeson, the editor in chief at Fandle and at number fire dot com and this episode four hundred and seventy four of the Late Round podcast, the many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast Network. Thanks for tuning in. This show is about the process. I refuse to just give you a list of players that I like and don't like in a given week or a given year and say, trust me, the substance is what matters. It allows whoever's listening to the show to really understand the why. And when you understand the why, you can win in fantasy football more consistently. It's like the old saying goes, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach Amanda fish and you feed him for a lifetime. I hope you've learned to fish by listening to this podcast, but as is the case, if you go fishing, you'll have some bad days. With fantasy football, it's not easy predicting the future. It's definitely not easy predicting the future about the outcome of a small sample sized game, but I don't make excuses as an analyst. Even though it's impossible to get everything right. Maybe that's an excuse. I still try to be right as much as possible, but inevitably, things don't always go the way that I thought things would go. And that's what this episode is all about. Each year, I look at the things that didn't go my way. To put it more bluntly, I look at the things that I got wrong. Why Because I think it's important. It keeps me honest, It shows you, guys that I'm on this journey with you. I'm not trying to hide from my mistakes. I'm trying to get better from them. So today I'll be walking through my biggest misses of the twenty twenty fantasy football season. I'll talk about what the miss was, why I thought the way that I did, and whether or not there was bad process involved.

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Speaker 2: Next week, then I'm gonna look at things that went my way.

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Speaker 1: I've got to start with this one, though, so you guys know that I'm not just sitting here patting myself on the back. Now before I crap all over my bad picks. The conference championship games are happening this weekend and you should check out FanDuel before those games happen, because over on Fandel you can enter the NFL Sunday Million for just four dollars and forty four cents. The winner of the contest will walk away with three hundred thousand dollars. So head over to fandel dot com enter today. Eligibility restrictions apply. Let's kick things off with the worst take of my season, and that was more or less fading Stephan Diggs. In hindsight, it just seems egregious, and it was pretty egregious. I was flat out wrong, and honestly, this is one of the pieces of advice where I'm pissed at myself for the logic that I used. It was just dumb. The logic with not going hard after Stefan Diggs was as follows. The Bills entering the year had two straight seasons of being a pretty run heavy offense with Josh Allen and Brian Dable. The Bills had ranked thirty first and twentieth in neutral script pass rate, and they were twenty ninth and twenty sixth then overall pass rate. They threw the ball four hundred and ninety nine times and five hundred and third teen times if they threw the ball even just a little bit more than that, you were looking at bad odds for Digs to finish as a wide receiver one, because over the five years prior to this one, seventeen percent of teams had seasons with fewer than five hundred attempts. Only four percent of wide receiver one seasons came from those teams, and thirty percent of teams threw at five hundred and twenty five or fewer times, and just eleven and a half percent of wide receiver one seasons came from those teams. Meanwhile, in a similar environment or a similar projected environment back in Minnesota, Diggs had finished just one year as a wide receiver one in points per game. And then on top of that, Diggs had some regression coming from a yards per target standpoint, and that yards per target regression definitely hit. He went from a rate of twelve to nine point two. The problem is that the volume went in the opposite direction. Buffalo went from being this run heavy team to being the eighth past friendliest team in neutral game scripts. This year. They ranked eleventh and pass attempts and tenth in team time targets and Diggs finished the season with a twenty nine percent target share. So not only was the idea that Buffalo wouldn't be pass heavy wrong, but then dig saw a huge chunk of that passing pie. And here's the thing, here's the takeaway that I really screwed up on because projections are gonna be wrong. But it honestly didn't make that much sense that I felt this way about Stefan Diggs, and then I was out here touting DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett because it was the same logic. What I loved about Metcalf and Lockett was that they were being priced is that the Seahawks were going to continue to be this run heavy team. But what happened if they didn't? All of a sudden, there was a massive ceiling for both of those players, And the same should have been said for a talent like Stefan Diggs. It's not as though I hate the talent. He's amazing, He's always been amazing. It's just that the environment didn't appear to be great. But it's not like his ADP reflected a top tier environment. That's why I'm so mad, because the process for this taken in particular should have been avoided. The learning here is something I've tried to incorporate, but it's that if a team level projection and that team level environment, if that doesn't appear to be favorable and it's driving down the cost of an objectively good player, you should probably buy not sell. In a worst case scenario, he likely just meets ADP since he's still a good player. And like I said, that's the logic I use for the Seahawks wideouts, so it's a complete whift to not have used that same logic for Diggs. It was arguably the biggest miss anyone could have had at wide receiver this year.

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Speaker 2: It got me.

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Speaker 1: I also wasn't very high on Keenan Allen this season, but I think this one is a little bit more forgiving than the digs one. Again, this was never about talent Keenan Allen. He's an incredible player. It was more than the quarterback situation. It scared me you had Tyrod Taylor, which you think we could all agree that Alan's season wouldn't have been nearly as good if Tyrod Taylor was under center throughout that season. Our only sample is one and in Week one, Allen had seven PPR points on eight targets. Of course, we should have never assumed that Tyrod Taylor would start all year. Some weird circumstances hit to where Justin Herbert was forced to start, but Taylor likely wasn't going to be the starter throughout the entire season, And I talked about this before the season when talking about Keenan Allen. Number one, Allen was playing without Philip Rivers for the first time in his career and over his last three seasons, in each season he had hit at least a twenty six percent target chair. Because that number was so consistently high, it wasn't a lock for him to be that high with a new quarterback. That was the first thing. But also, rookie quarterbacks generally don't produce high end fantasy receivers. Only nine percent of rookie quarterbacks, according to a study done by Sharp Football Analysis, is rich rebar. Only nine percent of them also produced a wide receiver one in fantasy since the year two thousand and not a lot of them had wide receiver twos either, at just twenty nine percent. Keenan Allen was never bad. That wasn't the reason for not aggress going after him in fantasy drafts this year. It was more so the environment that wasn't just based on how the offense would call plays. There was more to it than that. It was based on a below average quarterback in Tyrod Taylor combined with an up in the air rookie quarterback, and I had no strong feeling about Justin Herbert. I generally have a wide range of outcomes when it comes to my quarterback evaluation, but he ended up hitting and that really helped Allan finishes the wide receiver six in PPR points per game this season. Back in July, I was into Keishan Vaughn. This is another one of those how in the world was that your take? Kind of takes. Now keep in mind this was before he was on the COVID list. This was before the team signed Leonard Fournette. This feels like years ago, but it was a month and a half before the season started. In hindsight, it was a really bad call, but I do think there were pieces of the key Sean von touting that was right. The first one being that I was targeting an ambiguous backfield. Ronald Jones and dark Goombalwalle were the two running backs in that backfield at the time, and neither had high ADPs. That's one of the keys in finding true breakout running backs. Jones, who is the projected primary early down runner, he wasn't much of a receiver. He's never been a receiver, and typically breakout running backs or pass catching backs. At the time, the thought was that Keishan Vaughn could take that on, especially considering he had one of the best final season reception shares in the twenty twenty running back class. He just didn't pan out. Lots of things worked against him entering the season, to be fair, but in the end, if he was good enough, he likely would have been on the field. That's gonna happen, and to be honest, I'd do it all again because when you get into the middle in the late rounds of your drafts, the opportunity cost is getting lower. It's getting a lot lower. If a guy doesn't pan out, it's not the end of the world. I'm also not totally giving up on Vaughn. I think he's a good player, but the chance that he really pans out it's really low given how his year one went. Like I always, good players generally perform, they show up. When a rookie doesn't at all, that's a red flag. It's just that his cost is no longer significant, so it doesn't really matter if you buy into vaugh. It's more so a big deal when you get a Nikhil Harry type situation like we saw this past summer. One thing that I want to be clearer with in upcoming seasons with the fifteen Transactions, Call Him and Podcast is where I stand when I'm selling a player. I can say, sell this guy, and while I try to give context, sometimes that context gets lost, sort of like with what happened when I said to sell James Robinson because of his tough playoff schedule.

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Speaker 2: I didn't mean sell.

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Speaker 1: Him for anything or that he wasn't going to be valuable. I just meant that we should be down on him versus how he was performing. And you've got to then see what the market has to say, which is a crucial component as well. I feel similarly about Nick Chubb. At one point in the season, mostly because of the split with Chubb versus Kareem Hunt, Chubb was a sell candidate. Of course, I never thought that he'd be an unstartable fantasy asset. I was just concerned about where he would go this season, given the splits were more dramatic with Kareem Hunt earlier on in the season, and that logic wasn't necessarily wrong. If you look at Chubb's year over year numbers, you'll see that he averaged a little over one more point per game in PPR formats in twenty twenty than in twenty nineteen. But meanwhile, his running back rush share and overall rush share they dropped pretty significantly. Last season, Chub handled over eighty three percent of the team's running back rushes this year. When you pro rate what he did because he missed time, that number was just under sixty percent, and his target share this year was significantly lower. The difference was touchdowns.

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Speaker 2: Year over year. Chubb scored four more.

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Speaker 1: Touchdowns this year than last season, and that was in four fewer games. Based on a formula that I used for touchdown regression, Chubb outperformed expectation by three point nine this year. Last season he underperformed by three point eight. There was some reason for Chubb doing so well in the touchdown column. Of course, the Browns were better offensively, and the scheme itself helped Chubb, but Cleveland also had a lower than average pass to rush touchdown ratio this year, and that's a number that generally regresses, and even with the context of where Chubb got his touches, he still outperformed touchdown expectation. I think we can maybe expect that to some degree year over year in this offense, but not to this degree. But recommending Chubb as a cell early on, regardless of his injury, it was a bad call. You likely didn't get enough in return if you sold him. With that being said, I'm not that upset about the call itself, because I think there was plenty of logic baked into it. There were different points of the season where I was far too bullish on the Eagles pass catchers, most notably Jalen Rager, but I also like Travis Folgham as a buy at one point in the season as well. A couple of things happened that resulted in those takes just being so far off. One was that the Eagles just never got things going offensively from weeks one through eight, which was before there by and conveniently halfway through the season. Philadelphia was six to last in your per drive and third to last and percentage of drives had ended in a score.

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Speaker 2: That's not great.

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Speaker 1: But through that point in time, Philly had faced Washington, they had the Rams, they the Steelers, they the Ravens. They didn't have a cake walk schedule. Through the rest of the season, things looked pretty good. The Giants, the Browns, the Seahawks, the Packers, the Saints, the Cardinals, the Cowboys. Most of those teams you'd feel pretty comfortable starting your wide receivers against. The issue was at number one. The offense just kind of died. They didn't get a whole lot better offensively. Aside from a couple of spiked weeks with Jalen Hurts, Travis Folgum also stopped fighting the field as much as he was when the Eagles were banged up at pass catcher. That was a miss on my end to think that he'd be on the field no matter who was healthy. Rational coaching to me said that he would, but he wasn't. From his breakout game against Pittsburgh through Week eleven, he was playing at least eighty percent of the team snaps per game. That number dropped to well below forty percent through the rest of the season. Jalen Rager just didn't live up to the hype as a prospect. My model liked him. I liked him. I thought he was going to have a good opportunity to ball out, and he didn't. So lesson learned here. Don't overstate schedule, don't lose sight of where players come from, like Travis Folgum, and really just don't make too many assumptions. I think there were just a lot of assumptions being made about this Eagles offense, about the schedule, and about these players. It wasn't a terrible miss because none of those guys were expensive to acquire get off the waiver wire, but it's at least something to call out.

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Speaker 2: Now. I got plenty wrong this year.

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Speaker 1: It would take me forever if I went take by take and showed off the ones that I got wrong, especially if I looked at the start sit thoughts that I had on the Matchup show each week.

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Speaker 2: I've got to stop things somewhere.

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Speaker 1: Though, And I'm gonna end talking about my bad takes this year by talking about David Montgomery. David freaking Montgomery. Entering the season, David Montgomery was borderline on my do not draft list. I actually didn't mind him that much as a prospect neither. But I wasn't exactly blown away by his rookie season. I don't think any of us were. And in a projected bad offense where he could be limited as a receiver, he seemed like the typical player who was bound to probably meet ADP expectation but not far exceeded. In other words, I couldn't see a high ceiling for David Montgomery, and I tried to only draft high ceiling players. Things definitely broke his way this year, the Tarik Cohen injury being one of those things. We can't assume that Montgomery would have gone from a six point two percent target share all the way to an eleven point four percent one had Cohen been around all year. I don't think that's fair. And Montgomery ended up almost doubling his raw targets this past year, and he more than doubled his receptions. Don't understate the Tarik Cohen factor when evaluating David Montgomery. Now, with that being said, he was a better runner this year than last year. His yards per carry was up, his success rate was higher. We all saw with our own eyes that he looked more elusive on the field, but look guys, David Montgomery wasn't great. He wasn't some RB one until the final stretch of the season when he played Green Bay, Detroit, Houston, Minnesota, Jacksonville, and green Bay again. When it was all said and done, all of those teams were top seven teams for running backs when looking at adjusted Fantasy points allowed. Before that stretch, Montgomery was averaging twelve point two PPR points per game. Before that stretch, he was the RB twenty six and points per game. So yes, I definitely missed on Montgomery. I didn't see that ceiling coming. But the schedule of the Tarik Cohen injury, and honestly a little touchdown fortune two since he scored one point three touchdowns per game during that crazy stretch, all of that makes me cool with missing on David Montgomery this year. I'm gonna be thankful for not drafting that type of player with his situation in profile nine times out of ten, it's just that that one out of ten hit, and that's gonna happen in this high variance game.

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Speaker 2: That's gonna do it.

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Speaker 1: For today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to the late Round podcast. Make sure you are by searching four pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and never forgot to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll be back in your ears on Friday with the Weekly mail Bag Show.